Bindi

To me I am consciousness riding the current. water in dreams indicate emotions, but water is also used to symbolise subtle energy, like water as Jing that fills the lower dantian. I don’t know why it works so well in these analogies though.

A book I’m reading at the moment, “The thread of the Dao” by Dan G Reid, asserts that Daoism developed as an extension of the story “Patterns of the flood.” I’ve posted a couple of relevant paragraphs from his book below a Wikipedia article on the legend. This information is fundamentally interesting, but I also have a personal take on the story. Great Flood legend Main article: Great Flood (China) During the reign of Emperor Yao, the Chinese heartland was frequently plagued by floods that prevented further economic and social development.[25] Yu's father, Gun, was tasked with devising a system to control the flooding. He spent more than nine years building a series of dikes and dams along the riverbanks, but all of this was ineffective, despite (or because of) the great number and size of these dikes and the use of a special self-expanding soil. As an adult, Yu continued his father's work and made a careful study of the river systems in an attempt to learn why his father's great efforts had failed. Collaborating with Hou Ji, a semi-mythical agricultural master, Yu successfully devised a system of flood controls that were crucial in establishing the prosperity of the Chinese heartland. Instead of directly damming the rivers' flow, Yu made a system of irrigation canals which relieved floodwater into fields, as well as spending great effort dredging the riverbeds.[12] Yu is said to have eaten and slept with the common workers and spent most of his time personally assisting the work of dredging the silty beds of the rivers for the thirteen years the projects took to complete. The dredging and irrigation were successful, and allowed ancient Chinese culture to flourish along the Yellow River, Wei River, and other waterways of the Chinese heartland. The project earned Yu renown throughout Chinese history, and is referred to in Chinese history as "Great Yu Controls the Waters" (大禹治水; Dà Yǔ zhì shuǐ). The "Pattern of the Flood" reflects two contrasting approaches to navigating overwhelming forces, often symbolized by water. In ancient Chinese myth, Emperor Gun attempts to control the flood by building massive dams to block its flow. His rigid resistance ultimately fails, and his transformation into a being symbolizing futility reflects the limitations of suppression. In contrast, Gun's successor, Emperor Yu, adopts a transformative approach by removing dam walls, dredging riverbeds, and guiding the water into new, harmonious channels. This paradigm shift from forceful suppression to adaptive redirection symbolizes wisdom and balance, teaching that enduring solutions arise from working with, rather than against, the natural flow. The story of Emperor Gun and Emperor Yu can be deeply symbolic of the emotional clearing process within the heart and mind. Gun’s strategy of building dams mirrors the common response of suppressing or avoiding emotions, attempting to block or contain overwhelming feelings like fear, grief, or anger. While this approach may seem effective temporarily, it often leads to increased pressure and eventual failure, as suppressed emotions can erupt in unpredictable and harmful ways. Yu’s approach, on the other hand, represents emotional clearing—working with emotions rather than against them. By removing barriers (the dam walls), dredging the riverbed (delving into the depths of buried emotions), and creating new channels (redirecting emotional energy constructively), Yu allows the floodwaters to flow naturally. This mirrors the process of acknowledging, understanding, and releasing emotions in a healthy way, enabling a state of balance and harmony. Applying this wisdom to the heart/mind suggests that clearing emotional blockages is not about suppression or avoidance but about creating space for emotions to be felt and processed. Just as Yu's method resolved the flood sustainably, emotional clearing allows for deeper healing, resilience, and the ability to flow with life’s challenges. But very importantly I would emphasise that unlike the lesson of wuwei referred to in the second image above as the solution, Emperor Yu's approach to managing the flood transcends passive acceptance of natural forces (associated with the Daoist concept of wu wei, or effortless action) by incorporating deliberate, active intervention. While wu wei emphasizes harmony with the natural order, Yu’s method aligns with an understanding that achieving balance sometimes requires proactive engagement. Yu's active removal of blockages—such as dredging riverbeds, creating channels, and ensuring water flowed where it naturally should—demonstrates the necessity of addressing obstacles that inhibit harmony. His interventions are not about overpowering or suppressing nature (as Gun attempted) but about working with its inherent tendencies to restore equilibrium. This aligns with a nuanced interpretation of wu wei: it does not mean doing nothing but rather doing what is essential and in alignment with the greater flow. Yu exemplifies this by acting thoughtfully and purposefully, removing impediments while respecting the water's natural direction. In a spiritual sense, this could parallel the process of emotional clearing. While one might strive to flow with life’s challenges, actively addressing internal blockages—such as unprocessed emotions, karmic patterns, or mental clutter—ensures that one can align more fully with the natural flow of life. Yu’s proactive yet harmonious method shows that spiritual growth often requires intentional effort to remove barriers while remaining aligned with larger, universal principles. From personal experience I further interpret Gun as a symbol of the ultimate karmic bind, his approach to addressing the flood—constructing dams to restrain the water—parallels the way karma can limit and confine the flow of energy, emotion, and spirit within an individual. The karmic bind represents accumulated patterns, unresolved emotions, and restrictive tendencies that attempt to control life's natural flow, often leading to stagnation or eventual upheaval when the pressure becomes too great. Gun's ultimate failure highlights the futility of attempting to suppress or rigidly manage karma without addressing its deeper causes. His transformation into a creature (a giant fish, mythical dragon or other being, depending on the version) might symbolise how the karmic bind can manifest in unexpected and distorted forms, influencing our lives and perceptions. Yu, by contrast, represents liberation from the karmic bind. By removing barriers, dredging the riverbed, and redirecting water into natural channels, Yu demonstrates how acknowledging and transforming karmic patterns can restore balance and flow. This approach resonates with spiritual practices aimed at clearing karma—not by suppression but through understanding, acceptance, and purposeful redirection of energy. To me the lesson is clear: while Gun’s karmic bind creates pressure and limits growth, Yu’s method frees the individual, aligning them with the natural rhythms of life and enabling a harmonious relationship with the forces within and around them. Some authors have tried to relate the emperors in the pattern of floods story to historical figures that were engaged in actual efforts to respond to flooding in China. From Wikipedia: Historicity There is no evidence suggesting the existence of Yu as a historical figure until several centuries after the invention of writing in China, during the Western Zhoudynasty—nearly a millennium after the traditional dating of his reign. What was eventually recorded in historiography consists of myth and legend. No inscriptions on artifacts dated to the supposed era of Yu, or the later oracle bones, contain any mention of him. The first archeological evidence of Yu comes from vessels made about a thousand years after his supposed death.[39] During the early 20th century, the Doubting Antiquity School of historiography theorized that Yu was not a person in the earliest legends, but rather a god or mythical beast who was connected with water, and possibly with the mythical Dragon Kings and their control over water. According to this theory, Yu was represented on ceremonial bronzes by the early Xia people, and by the beginning of the Zhou dynasty, the legendary figure had morphed into the first man, who could control water, and it was only during the Zhou Dynasty that the legendary figures that now precede Yu were added to the orthodox legendary lineage. According to the Chinese legend Yu the Great was a man-god.

To me the guardian of the threshold is that which generates karma, this guardian restrains the spirit or soul from the causal level until it is overcome, at which point the spirit or soul is free to explore and integrate the causal body with the subtle body.

As it is stated in the Bhagavad Gita, chapter 8, verse 12, "Mind, including ego, thoughts, and desires, must fall in the heart, while the life-force (or Brahman Shakti) is released to the sahasrar." Beyond ego death there has to be identification with “Brahman Shakti”, and “Brahman Shakti” has to rise to the sahasra via the jiva Nadi. Brahman Shakti is the driver of the rocket, without this it’s all just academic.

I don’t claim to know anything about the Dao, instead I find myself interested in what I can see and know. This child isn’t the Dao (I don’t think it is anyway), so it is evolutionary. Once attained it may remain, impossible to be undone, like I can’t unborn myself, but I am quite certain it needs to be created, it’s not pre-existent, only it’s potential is pre-existent. So it’s not the equivalent of the ‘Self’, or original nature, or any pre-existent unchanging entity. Maybe, but in evolutionary terms as a group we don’t lose our evolutionary gains, instead we build on them. An individual might be born that has lost an evolutionary gain on a personal level, but as a whole we tend to progress. In evolutionary terms, maybe we as we are are not the end of the line, we’re not evolutionarily fulfilled, it seems to me that there is a whole subset of people trying to progress and we have different methods that we’re trying. To me, the best way to know what is at the end of the path is to put one foot in front of the other and see where the path leads.

Yes this is one view, likely the most dominant view here, but one I completely disagree with. Sorting out emotional and mental ‘knots’, which has to be strived for most strenuously, allows new forces to come into play beyond the emotional and mental levels, and these are the forces that produce the child that wasn’t there before, and couldn’t be there without emotional and mental clarity. Once the child exists, I can’t do anything towards it’s teaching and development, I can’t make any difference no matter what I do or don’t do, and at that point only can I agree to any extent with what you have bolded above. To declare there is nothing gained before this child is produced is to declare oneself a winner before the race has begun.

There is the wounded child, and this wounded child needs to be healed, but even if the wounded child within is healed this is not the end IMO. I think the wounded child is the place to start, but I don’t believe it’s the end. I believe the neidan child is the product of the emotionally and mentally healed wounded ‘dual’ child ie. the emotional and mental inner child. To me the best description of the neidan child is as the child of ‘true yin’ and ‘true yang’, they are the mother and father of it, who care for it and educate it. Birthing and then [true yin and true yang] educating this child seems to me to be the point of our current existence.

Also if you think about the dynamics shown in this picture, maybe neidan is not so divorced from the concept of kundalini as some like to think, considering this ‘energy’ comes from the very bottom - though it’s water not fire.

I agree the two side channels are “Yin” and “Yang”, but I don’t agree that they are synonymous with Shakti and Shiva, as Shakti and Shiva are the polarities associated with the central channel specifically and are an entirely separate issue.

I do understand that a state of mental stillness is pleasant, I experienced such a state for a few days, thoughts appeared but flowed away quickly and naturally and seamlessly, but when this state came to an end I saw a single thought that got trapped and lay on a floor that had been apparently reinstated, I watched as a few more thoughts piled on top and very soon I was back to my normal mind, it was as though a momentary opening in the bottom of a channel that collected thoughts had closed over. But this isn’t the fundamental light that I’m referring to.

I have come across the word jyoti that refers to what I’m thinking of: Jyoti ज्योति, jyoti "light", "radiance", "flame", "brilliance", "brightness"; "luminary", "celestial body" This is the light that fills the universe; the light of our consciousness. Also, jyoti is a burning light in lamps (dipas) in Indian temples. In Hindu texts, the prefixing "jyoti" indicates the divine origin of the described objects, phenomena, deities, in other words, appeared from the divine light — the original source of creation. The question remains though, is it literal or figurative, I tend to think literal, as I have come to believe that all ‘spirituality’ is based on physical states, even if that physicality is made of subtle energy.

Like in my quote from Gopi Krishna, after his kundalini experience settled down he was able to see a fundamental light everywhere including within himself, so it may well be possible to see this fundamental thing with a new evolutionary sense developed.

You say the “emptiness” is always underneath our perception of form, but below you state that it is completely visible to anyone who has been shown what to look for. As you are equating the Dao with emptiness, I would then ask in what way is the Dao visible?

Fair ‘nuff, I’ll report if things go awry 🙂

Specifically in relation to karma, I have come to believe through personal experience that this is exactly kundalini’s role in the central channel, I believe that kundalini is the only way we can resolve all karma (in an orderly way following natural laws), and that resolving karma in the central channel via kundalini rising is the natural next step after first resolving the mental and emotional complexes that we are weighed down with from this life. In this approach there is no danger of overwhelm, and only a teacher who inappropriately meddles with a followers kundalini could create an overwhelming karmic situation.