wilfred

sure enough, increasingly lucidity and even breakthroughs via dream states significantly shifted my waking experience to be more aware of 'awareness' or the 'basic ground'. along with this comes more direct perception of energy - the gaps between everything become clearer as the mind penetrates the subconscious/subtle side of our reality.

the implication is that it's subjective - all of it. a more purified mind stream = more ability to discern materiality at its square root, direct perception of energy through awareness.

i would recommend looking into diet - specifically tonic herbs like he shou wu, rehmannia, dendrobium. these build jing quite powerfully as after a while you can feel it coming online through physical indicators/hormonal effects. then you start adding in yang tonics for maximum results - cordyceps (respiratory) and eucommia (bones, ligaments, marrow) are very good ones. i don't think there's any need to retain for that long, you can have your cake and eat it if you nail the energetics of what you're consuming. of course you may have extinguished plenty of lust and have ample outlets, but for a guy in his early 20s i do think sharing with women should be on the agenda. especially while living in a western society. retention is useful but that usefulness is relative to the amount of energy you're dealing with and potential issues that need to be worked through. a teacher would be invaluable here. on the meditation tip working through the body is the thing i've found most effective for transmutation, clearing issues and increasing qi output. you need to actively spread your energy/awareness through the body in a balanced way. a good qigong practice helps with this too.

the new Hawthorne LP dropped today

some do, some don't. where i live there's plenty of the latter and it's quite horrible. i saw numerous dog poos on the pavement throughout my walk today. and not just big lumps, it's often spread out into multiple pieces from previous people who stood in it. i will forever live in paranoia of stepping in dog poo or some type of poo

every day i go for a walk around the local area for an hour or so, excellent for digestion and soaking up some vitality from the environment, listening to my music and reflecting the only thing is i have to watch the ground a lot to make sure i don't step in dog poo, which is pretty annoying.

i don't use twitter but this is unbelievable...

karma baby, energetic formations before any of that other stuff manifests. the correct mind training & purification necessary to perceive it. penguin OUT.

welcome, shazlor!

and how exactly do you know this?

yo!

thanks for the contribution. you are correct in a sense, perception of energy is the teacher. the rest is like guidelines or rulebooks of how energy behaves and the best teaching will resonate at an experiential level. if we are aware enough, this is the feedback mechanism and ultimately the vehicle in which we experience the world - through perception of energy and not ideas. i won't get into teaching per se only to add that i believe dhamma is as close to the rules to the matrix as you will get. the more you line up with that the more things open up and energy becomes available to you. often the energy you can feel is the incoherence in the system, so the idea of a practice should be to balance energy through the body and keep you grounded. this should allow you to become increasingly aware of blockages and hopefully react less to things in the daily life. a practice or teaching is only worthwhile if it makes you happier and a nicer person. energy is just an expression of our capacity or incapacity to be OK and at peace with things going on around us. not just outwardly but at a deeper felt level, this is where self-honesty or a teacher can come in handy. if you can find a teacher that can show you experientially (via transmission) there is nothing ideological or dogmatic about that. just ignore the rest and trust in the experience, sounds like you are on the right track! peace

i think this is exactly what it is, in most instances. this is why getting more grounded can be a deep, lengthy process for those with lots of blockages in the energy body. good point on the food front. one of the most grounding foods for me would be nuts.

the mental chatter is in large part a result of misorganized energy, namely a lack of grounding and too much energy in the head, stimulating thoughts over an embodied experience. in addition to suggestions here, this recent thread may be worth a look http://www.thedaobums.com/topic/40540-grounding/

the paying attention to the breath at the nose is not going to do much to bring the energy down, on the contrary. if the issue is not being grounded ie too much energy in the head, the nose is on your head, this is where you'll be building awareness/energy. much better to concentrate inside the body, at the belly/dantian, if doing this sort of practice. the practices that will yield the most fruit in terms of grounding will be the ones where you are focusing your awareness inside the body. so certainly not things like astral projection.

most people these days have their energy drastically up in their heads, leading to lots of incoherence, delusion & issues. at a crude level, usings ones body through a lot of physical exercise will increase the level of awareness and energy running through the body. the problem is a lot of intellectual activity (such as using technology) where our thoughts are abstracted sends energy upward. so if you have habits that involve a lot of thinking, cutting these down is a part of the solution as specific practices that balance/bring energy down. thankfully our system is intelligent enough to maintain a coherent state (energy centre in the dantian) without us doing much to maintain it, if we are living in a balanced way. on the practice front you have all types of things which are energy balancing/grounding (tai chi, qigong, etc), reorganizing our energy is preliminary to this spiritual work or any higher practices. a huge amount of junk (karmic energy/conditioning) can be lurking in the subtle body and as more awareness flows through the body, more of this will automatically be 'fruited'. so it can be easier said than done to bring our energy down due to blockages that need to be worked through. a large part of why we get 'ungrounded' in the first place may be due to distracting ourselves to remove awareness from unpleasant feelings lurking in the body. personally the most powerful grounding practice i have encountered is meditation through the body, part by part. but it's a very potent practice and probably not ideal to do all the time depending on ones situation. a lot of stuff can be brought up very fast. breathing meditation with attention at the dantian is a simple one that could help bring energy down. or just abiding in the physical awareness of your entire body, as much as is possible. i believe getting grounded is so essential to any of this energy work and our general well being and am surprised the topic does not come up more often. so basically pick your practice, find a teacher if possible or some good instructional material. do more physical exercise and cut down on the stuff that is cerebral in nature. even going for a walk is much better than sitting on a computer. a teacher would have recognised you had too much energy in your head immediately, potentially saving a lot of time. i would imagine it's the main problem for over 90% of people asking for help on the internet. anyone who is not sufficiently grounded with their energy well organized (most of us starting out) should not be focusing on anything else before that. it's the starting point for all paths and practices, as far as i'm concerned. good luck!

definitely a good idea to try and get in front of a teacher etc BEFORE reading lots of books etc on the topics. a lot of the time literature conditions us with lots of preconceived ideas/views. directly experiencing energy in its various forms or having a transmission is the ticket to start freeing yourself, especially as a western cultured person. you can get all the context afterward and it will make that much more sense. a lot of people seem to get lost in the world of views and it can easily feed into delusions if you're not careful. here's a practical recommendation that requires no additional understanding or technique, was personally very helpful in feeling some energy early on. buy a box of Dragon Herbs Spring Dragon Tea (Gynostemma leaf based) and start drinking it daily, see if there any energetic differences you can notice after drinking it, immediately or cumulatively. it's a nervous system modulator and effects all three 'treasures' (jing-qi-shen) so may be very noticable indeed, in a good way. http://uk.iherb.com/Dragon-Herbs-Spring-Dragon-Longevity-Tea-Caffeine-Free-20-Tea-Bags-1-8-oz-50-g/21483 having said that, sounds like you are well up for seeking out this stuff! which is awesome, good luck

yes the intro is supposed to be relatively brief with no real dialogue around it. if people want to share their full stories (as they often do) and get immediate input from other members, strike up discussion around it, this is the place to do it. we hope this encourages new users to dive into more of a discussion before potentially hitting the other sections, extending their welcome so to speak. there are many posters who don't make it past the initial introduction, so this is designed to get newcomers more active and comfortable with the forum.

i lump it in with karma. i've seen descriptions that the visual of 'seeing' it is things flickering/shimmering etc. again something to be seen either way, but i don't see why not. it's a part that goes along with some of the things western science is saying, not that that means much, but a hint that such a concept could be described on an intellectual level and is how the universe behaves.

i think it is a see for ourselves type of deal, whatever it is insight into karma and & dependant origination is master level stuff, so it might be a while i think it's easy to get a feel that there is an energetic process at work on behalf of this stuff and the stock is something that can be worked through (and all the benefit that brings) until there's far less stuff arising...maybe even none. certainly takes a lot of awareness and none of the delusions that could pop up as we do something that does something, but isn't really clearing the stock to any significant degree. i think this is where the need for a good practice comes in, much more chance we can at least clear something in the daily life. a lot of what's going on in the world is making it increasingly hard, it's a very stimulated, fast-paced society, at least here. it's easy to get caught up in that gravity.

i think the 'free will' comes in if we let it happen or not, like a computer being defragged but it has to pause every time the user starts up another application (bad analogy i know) maybe if you zoom out far enough it isn't the case, but that's hard and not necessarily useful to comprehend early on. i guess what i am saying is that its hard to have insight into karma so it may be best not to try and 'figure it out'.

nailed it. we are continuously being perfected, the resistance is an inability/reluctance to get ourselves out of the way. we're lucky to have an existence with such amazing oppurtunity for insight, the potential to allow the process to play itself out to completion.