Bindi

The eight of the eighth? A secret club? Sensational news

In my personal experience, I saw a red cap (which I understand to be my Kundalini cap), and my mother saw a red blinking eye waking up (root chakra), after I had converted my jing energy and brought it up to the MDT, and not before. I believe the MDT is associated with Qi, so experientially, for myself, I do equate awakening kundalini energy with Qi, very specifically. And in another personal experience, I had a dream of a snake forcefully striking the back of my neck where it joins the head, it kept striking without venom until I realised that it was just physically obstructed there and wanted to pass, and that I just needed to drop my head forward to allow it to pass. This is clearly kundalini symbolism, which in Daoist terms I believe would be referred to as the Jade pillow, and to allow Qi to pass the head needs to come forward, and also the neck can be tapped at this point to allow the energy to pass through. So again, there seems to be a strong similarity between Daoism and kundalini terminology in my experience. I would find it hard to not notice these similarities, and once noticed, I would find it even harder to ignore them. The similarities are interesting to me.

I agree with everything you've said, but my understanding is that that whole process of refining and transforming and rising is with awakened kundaini. I see releasing kundalini as being the final part of the process, which should in no way harm after the whole awakening process is complete, when not just her influence or her energy but her whole self rises...something like that.

I agree, not-weird, and with very few bells and whistles. Now being awake, that might be something else altogether

From what I can gather, Qi might be equivalent to awakened kundalini, but released kundalini is a whole different ball game, that's like high voltage electricity. Probably kundalini can be awakened to different degrees in different people.

You might find some useful information at the kundalinicare.com website.

I was with a good friend the only time I tried mushrooms, I was being fairly enthusiastic about all the colours, and asked if she could see them, she said wryly "Yeah, depression in technicolour". She was a funny one (funny ha ha), though she was going through a bad patch at the time.

Just taking things back to the concrete level which I like to work on, I’d like to throw in some thoughts about ida and pingala. I’ve been a bit confused about ida and pingala for a couple of weeks, and I’ve started figuring out the issue after looking into it. My issue was that though ida and pingala are associated with feminine/soft(Ida) and masculine/strong(pingala) qualities respectively, yet my first hand information about them was that they were both female. So what I have found out is that there is another division in Hinduism that explains this, and that is the concept of odic and actinic forces. Ida and Pingala are both odic forces = dense and heavy and of the material world. I think they are both yin in this sense, but yin is divided into Ida - the feeling current, associated with the moon, and pingala - the intellectual current, associated with the sun. For myself, and this seems to be in line with Hindu thought, these dense yin energies need to be brought higher chakra by chakra and merged with the sushumna channel (which is actinic - actinic force is the pure life force coming from the central source deep within, throughout the nerve system) at certain chakra levels. The sahasrara chakra, the ajna chakra, and the vishuddha chakra are primarily actinic force centers. The anahata chakra, which allows us to look out into the external world and within to the internal areas, is primarily a mixture of actinic force and odic force called actinodic. The lower three chakras -- manipura, svadhishthana and muladhara -- are primarily odic force chakras - they are the forces that make up the physical world.

Jeff, I don't know what you mean by 'eternalistic'?

I have looked into the non astral dreams of avid astral travellers, and find as the previous poster mentioned that their non astral dreams do suggest that most people use astral travel to "fly around and indulge in fantasies", often taking their sleeping and dream state to be a ticket to a personal fairground. Sometimes people believe that they are making spiritual progress while astral travelling, but their non astral dreams suggest that where they think they see the ocean, they are in reality trapped in an artificially constructed pool, with the ocean on the other side of the pool walls, and no way to get to it astrally. My overall feeling is that astral travel tends to involve ego, being under the control of the monkey mind.

I'm contemplating non attachment at the moment, and this is where I've got to so far, I'd like some feedback on this though. Non attachment, I gather, is the basis of Buddhism. The place to carry out non attachment, as far as I can see, is in the heart. This idea is from a dream where I am in a warm room with a fire in the fireplace before non attachment is attempted. Non attachment from what? Keeping it really simple here, from desire (or desires, more generally?). What about anger? I am perceiving something more than non attachment? I suspect that anger needs to be completely extinguished, not just detached from? And lastly, can anyone tell me if there is a Taoist equivalent to non attachment, and to extinguishing anger?

Has anyone had any experience in charging from trees to add extra energy into their healing? I've done it occasionally up till now, and it has had the effect of making the healing charge a bit stronger, but the last couple of times the extra tree energy has made the healing energy uncomfortable (to the person receiving the healing). The thing is, that's not necessarily bad in itself, because I can place my hands further away, and the overwhelming energy is reduced, but I'm left wondering is it better not to charge with tree energy in the first place, or can this energy add something, as long as I adjust for it? Also, the feeing of it being too strong for the person did leave after a few minutes, but she had to hit/massage the area for a while to relieve it first. Any comments regarding with this would be helpful.

Thanks for this overview, and I really appreciate your great quote from Dudjom Rinpoche regarding the various paths. It allows me to follow my perception, and go directly to the Mahayana path

I tried charging with a beautiful willow this morning, and did do a healing with that energy to test the yin/yang difference, and indeed it was much softer, no negative effects, possibly a gentle increase in energy. This willow is one that I've always thought was beautiful, but I had never put two and two together before to consider that I might therefore be drawn towards it. It had a root above ground, and in fact I charged with my hands on the root, and I could definitely feel the energy in my hands. Before the healing though, I asked my mother to 'see' the energy in my body, and she saw the root of the tree turn into a small white wooden sled which was carved into a curl in the front, which glided smoothly up to my throat and stopped there where a guard was on duty standing next to a doorway. She didn't see any further than this. I see the white sled as being yin energy, as well as the smooth motion. I also found it interesting to see how my body reacted to tree energy, though it wasn't conclusive.

Could you explain the difference between night and day practice?

This really helps me to understand my past experience with tree energy, and why my tree energy healing might have been so harsh, maybe too yang, thanks.

I have found tree energy very helpful in breaking down gates/barriers/blocks in my own body, at the right time, when its clear that some specific block/barrier needs to be broken down in a specific part of my body. I'm sure these blocks would have taken longer to break down without the extra energy. In my initial interaction with trees, my mother, who sees many things, looked at the energy coming from various trees. One thing that was common was the initial rush of energy from trees as though they were too eager to release energy, but this invariably settled down and became a steady stream. The other thing of note was the colour coming from them, we have huge karri trees where I live, and they have mainly an electric blue energy, and the other large trees here are pine trees, and they have green energy. In one pine tree in particular which we both particularly liked, she saw a wise old man welcoming us. Unfortunately that tree's not on public land.

I thought I might post the results of my experiments with tree energy to offer at least one conclusion. I’m mainly working with one person in healings at the moment, so this experiment was only with her. We experimented once more with tree energy, and this time it didn’t affect her badly physically, but she was zonked out for most of the day afterwards. She said this was neither good nor bad, she just wasn’t really present, and was unable to function. In terms of the healing benefit, she had a lot of qi flow which was good, and a lot of heat, and this helped her condition at the time, but at a price. So then in the next healing session, with no tree energy, the qi again warmed and flowed though not as noticeably, but nonetheless the end result was about the same in healing effect, but with no negative effects. So my current attitude: it’s not worth it, the increase in effect was either too small or unnoticeable, and the price to pay far too high.

I arrived here because Taoist alchemy comes up a lot when I google terms relevant to where I'm at in my journey, and I hope to find like minded souls