Bindi

I’m curious, is shedding everything and becoming light a similar goal to creating and nurturing the ‘immortal foetus’, or is it something completely different?

It’s always worth checking, it’s an easy trap to fall into. I am truly glad to hear that you don’t do this. No! In following what has been presented to me, my goals have concomitantly adapted and morphed out of sight!

My motivation was the desire to feel ‘happy’ which I would recognise now as a desire to feel content. But where you made a vow and decided to adopt a code I worked on expelling what was making me unhappy. Do you agree with this (below) from Welwood, the originator of the term ‘spiritual bypassing’? Have you genuinely considered whether you are using your adopted codes to bypass your emotions? http://www.johnwelwood.com/articles/TRIC_interview_uncut.doc

“Your mind has its own ideas of what you think you need, but it's rarely correct”. I fully agree, but if I am guided by my dreams am I ‘picking the trauma to be worked with’? There is a grand design in dream work, it requires only that we follow it and work with what is presented to us at any point in time. FWIW I rarely have any dreams now anyway, it seems that what needed to be released has been. My subtle energy body now develops in its own predetermined way, I merely follow its progress, and occasionally do what is required to enable its unfolding. I don’t feel I am violating underlying Daoist principles.

In my view unfelt emotions are split-off baggage, welcoming them when they arise in ‘the work’ and feeling them is respecting their emotional nature. When they are felt they have delivered their message and are then released. I did work with emotions within a system, it wasn’t random emotions arising and random feeling, I worked with a deliberate method that involved remembering and analysing a dream to understand it intellectually, and then letting go of the mental side and purely feeling the feeling. There is a certain equanimity required when feeling the feeling, especially because most stored feelings are the hard to feel ones, equanimity is needed to allow them to be felt, but I think your idea of equanimity might be a bit more austere, somehow allow an emotion but don’t actually connect to it in some way. This quite frankly confuses me. I agree with you that there is Qi work to be done and that it is valuable, but for me Qi work achieves different outcomes, it clears channels that have nothing to do with emotions, for example channels down the arms which can then carry Qi ‘current’. I think there is an institutional fear of emotions that has also become part of the spiritual belief set, something along the lines of a patriarchal perspective that has dominated for the last couple of Millenia at least. I think things are changing now though, emotions and their value are being re-evaluated in the last 100 years or so.

Seeing the emotional ‘system’ as a channel that is blocked informs my perspective which cannot then be otherwise, ie., a blocked channel is not exactly a choice, and the consequences of a blocked emotional channel is inertia, and this outcome is certainly not a choice. My perspective rests on my personal understanding of the energetic subtle body’s design, and my solution tackles the energy blocks directly by releasing unfelt emotions by allowing them to be felt. The alternative, attempting to solve emotional problems via a mentally chosen filter, in this case the spiritually accepted filters of compassion or oneness or non-judgement or [insert own], from my perspective seems to solve some of the emotional unease, and it can make you feel more successful in your spiritual endeavours, but these spiritual filters require these choices to be deliberately and repeatedly made on the mental level. Perhaps this spiritual filter might become the dominant mental state, and to yourself and all those around you even, you can appear to have achieved a spiritualised outlook, but it isn’t ultimately authentic. Ultimately, these filters cannot remove the root emotional causes, so to me you’ve just learned an alternative mental strategy, one more in line with spiritual aspirations, but you can never let your guard down, you will still always have to catch yourself doing the wrong thing and correct it, no matter how rarely that is. Spiritual bypassing involves imposing on oneself higher truths that lie far beyond one’s immediate existential condition... Spiritual teachers often exhort us to be loving and compassionate, or to give up selfishness and aggression, but how can we do this if our habitual tendencies arise out of a whole system of psychological dynamics that we have never clearly seen or faced, much less worked with? -John Welwood https://tricycle.org/magazine/psychology-awakening/

I don’t think we do cling to negative emotional states, this sort of state that you are referring to - things like depression or harmful habits - is the consequence of not being able to feel the original ‘bad’ or ‘hard to feel’ feeling. Feelings like shame, sadness, anxiety, things we’d prefer not to feel, are pushed away and split off, which works in the short term but in the longer term creates a lack of emotional energy flow. So then we’re left trying to deal with this state of non-flow, which we try to mitigate by harmful habits to reduce the painful awareness of an overwhelming amount of backlog, or we find we are depressed and stuck in the non-flow with no hope of escape. The solution for me was to regain a split off feeling, one feeling at a time, and allow myself to feel it, which was invariably unpleasant, but reducing the load of ‘bad’ feelings did lead over time to emotional energy being able to flow freely again. So now, for instance, if I’m feeling anxious, there tends to be a reason, for example a job interview, and I consciously allow myself to feel my very reasonable anxiety, and after the event there is no extra split off baggage, I remain up to date and able to experience the next emotion that appears. Yes emotions are like waves, never ending, but they add a lot of flavour to our lives, even the hard to feel ones, and in general emotions contribute an entire half of our conscious makeup. In my previously posted sword picture, the black snake represents the emotional channel, it is inconceivable to me that this channel could be left unflowing, because it feeds the other channel, the white snake which represents ‘mental’, in a never ending loop. At least to my perspective, it is these looping and integrated channels that when flowing freely allow the central channel to be ‘nourished’ and filled.

My friend said they were called the ‘swords of truth’, so yes I would agree swords signify mental, our ability to cut through to the truth, and I gather from another ‘seer’s’ information that emotions are processed in a semi-circular bowl, which is very close to your goblet image. I’ve never come across any information that puts the two together like in your pictures though.

Yes indeed I have my own personal version of this, a friend of mine ‘saw’ a small sword come out of each one of my eyes maybe 30 years ago when I was questioning her intently about something, and she described them to me in detail. I painted this picture at the time, the most relevant part was the hilt of the swords, the swords themselves were fully golden but I didn’t bother painting the full thing. I gather, having shown it to a couple of people, that it looks a bit phallic, but hopefully you can get over that

I see differences - the two side channels are opposites, polarised, male/female, I see them as yin and yang, while the central channel is ‘neutral’ - a different dynamic to the Jing, Qi and Shen of the dantians. I suspect the Christian Trinity is equally dissimilar though I haven’t thought much about it.

I like that as a trinity, but I also really resonate with the concepts of the 3 dantians and the three main subtle channels. Despite the significance my linked article refers to as the three I personally think of the three flowers up on top as the fulfilment of the potential of the three channels.

I’ve come across a ‘unity of three’ lately, similar to this concept “Three Flowers Condensing onto the Head”. Three is the way to go

I don’t know, there’s an alchemical stove which became the ‘ding’ or tripod, there’s ‘supernatural beings‘ in the chakras/glands/organs, cinnabar to gold exists in alchemy as does being welcomed by the immortals when alchemy is successful. Heaven and Earth are also very important in the neidan journey, the only thing missing seems to be any later references to cups and dishes made of alchemical gold. Absolutely agreed.

But nor is it that ^ simple. It’s not like once the channels are flowing freely everything is fine. The neidan process talks about birthing something, and nourishing it until it is fully grown. Does a child have this ‘something’ fully grown and then starved of nourishment when the channels close down, only to be rediscovered again later, or is this ‘something’ birthed only by an adult?

The very earliest reference to waidan according to Pregadio was: To me this is likely to be an already garbled early story that has mistaken internal subtle energy realities for external objects, a mistake that led to countless deaths and unrealisable hopes until it became obvious that the early alchemists were going the wrong way about it, at which time some bright person sought to discover what was now considered to be the golden ‘elixir’ within.

I more or less agree with you. To me conflicted or negative emotions muddy and seize the natural and spontaneous operation of the subtle energy body, I guess in childhood at some time. I do see emotions as having a specific channel, specifically the ida or rasana channel, but only because that has become apparent to me after doing ‘emotional’ work as my path since I was in my late teens. My perspective seems to be tantric, if you consider the quote below:

I appreciate your contribution to this site, and I completely agree with your teacher, “step by step process of the dismantling of the illusory sense of self” captures the concept of the work that needs to be done perfectly IMO. I lose interest in this site when the alternative, a sort of mystical and surprising momentary awakening is overwhelmingly promoted as the ultimate aim, while the dismantling process it seems to me is condemned as unnecessary and futile action. If the mind forms the subtle energy body system, it follows that it can’t be formed ‘correctly’ unless our minds are first informed as to what ‘correct’ is. Which is to say I agree that a teacher and a method are required, unless you are the one in a googolplex. Unfortunately I think most teachers don’t actually have a clue though.

How to Sort Your Thoughts From Your Feelings: And Why it Matters By Jonice Webb PhD We human beings are equipped, separately, with thoughts and feelings for a reason. They actually originate in separate parts of the brain. Thoughts are a product of your cerebral cortex, whereas feelings originate from your limbic system, an area buried far more deeply in your brain. Your thoughts offer you information and logic, whereas your emotions offer you direction, motivation and connection. When you’re able to coordinate these two influential forces to work together, you are harnessing the power of your brain. Yet coordinating these two separate-but-related processes inside ourselves is definitely not easy. Most of us don’t do a great job of it. Some people are more thought-dominant, meaning they rely more on their thoughts; others are more feeling-dominant. It’s especially hard to make your thoughts and feelings work together when they do not agree. Most of us often feel one way about something that we think the opposite way about. ... So how do you harness and coordinate your own thoughts and feelings? How can you blend them in a healthy way to make them work for you? Five Ways to Separate Your Thoughts From Your Feelings & Use Them Both Recognize that your thoughts and feelings are separate and can be different and even opposing. It’s normal, and it’s OK. Don’t just ask yourself what you think about things in your life. Instead, once you’re as clear as possible on what you think, ask yourself what you feel. If your thoughts and feelings match, you will enjoy extra clarity. If your thoughts and feelings are complicated and/or at odds with each other, then consider which, in this situation, is more trustworthy. What parts of your feelings about this are more helpful? Why do you feel this way? What do your thoughts have to offer here? Are there some points on which your thoughts and feelings agree? Use your feelings to inform your thoughts, and use your thoughts to manage your feelings. If you are like most people, you are probably more in touch with your thoughts than your feelings. So learn more about your feelings, how they work and how to manage them.

Sounds good, what was the ‘right way’ of working through emotions for you? From a modern psychological perspective: I’m not proposing that this model is 100% correct, but I cannot agree that “thought is the continuation of the emotion of the heart” is 100% correct either.

Thanks but I’ve never been drawn to the Chinese way of understanding emotions, I prefer to keep things very simple. I could agree with your statement though - “Thought is the continuation of the emotion of the heart in taoism”, if it was followed by its opposite, ‘Emotion is the continuation of the thought of the head.’ Endlessly looping, like the Taijitu symbol.

But, the monkey king finally learns about virtues only when he learns the teachings of Buddhism. With your logic virtues are then receptive yin forces? So the monkey king is unbalanced and has to find balance in Buddhist teachings? Still sounds intrinsically pro-Buddhist to me. The heart-mind of Taoism with its yang fire character sounds more like what I would consider to be ‘mental’, and it’s opposite, yin and it’s water character, is what I would refer to as emotional.

Surely a worshipped Monkey God didn’t have the negative attributes (“restless, unsettled, capricious, whimsical, fanciful, inconstant, confused, indecisive and uncontrollable”) associated with the saying heart-monkey [心猿] horse-mind [意马]. It might not matter what you call the forces you are working with, but I think it does matter quite a lot how you understand these forces, and what you do with them. For some it seems that Buddhism and Taoism are compatible, I’m not one of them though. You state that the material that is worked with (emotional and mental material?) is not two separate or opposite forces but aspects of the same one, yet the heart of Daoism is the perception of Yin and Yang as two opposite but complementary forces.

From the American Buddhist Journal “Wisdom Quarterly”: Monkey mind (or mind monkey) comes from the Chinese word xinyuan and the Sino-Japanese shin'en(心猿), literally, "heart-/mind-monkey"). It is a Buddhist term meaning "restless, unsettled, capricious, whimsical, fanciful, inconstant, confused, indecisive, uncontrollable." In addition to Buddhist writings -- including Chinese Chan and Japanese Zen (two Mahayana sects giving their pronunciations of the Pali term jhan'a and the Sanskrit dhyan'a), Consciousness-Only, Pure Land, and Shingon -- this "monkey mind" psychological metaphor was adopted in Taoism, Neo-Confucianism, poetry, drama, and literature. "Mind-monkey" occurs in two reversible four-character idiomswith yima or iba (意馬), literally, "thought-/will-horse," most frequently used in Chinese xinyuanyima (心猿意馬) and Japanese ibashin'en (意馬心猿). http://wisdomquarterly.blogspot.com/2014/07/monkey-mind-in-meditation.html It’s not surprising to me that a Buddhist term doesn’t entertain the concept of two opposing forces, nor that it refers only to mind consciousness. Opposing forces are fundamental in Daoism of course.

Beyond the mental channel and the emotional channel there is the central channel. If energy is flowing through this central channel it’s not going to be doubling up on the production or transport of emotions including love, as that’s already covered by the emotional channel. The central channel must serve another purpose neither mental nor emotional, beyond mental and emotional consciousnesses.

I think ‘love’ and decisions to love are neither here nor there for me, they’re certainly not my end goal. From my perspective - which aligns with the neidan point of view - the end goal is producing the elixir, a goal beyond emotions, even the nice ones.