Wilhelm

But what's intuition other than memory plus pattern recognition? 🤔 Is this really a sufficient guide for arts as subtle as these?

Health is important, for sure, but if it were that simple wouldn't every pro athlete qualify as a master? 🤔

That's fair enough! I'm guessing, but are you a Tummo practitioner? If so, you've probably got your own way of describing this process in detail I'm sure.

edit: nvm. not a fan of pile-ons.

Based

Yeah that's what I figured too - Yin/Yang dynamics naturally creating a third sort of Qi, which my teacher just calls mean Qi (mean as in average)

I think it matters for us outer door students insofar as I know Damo could find 100 guys who work as hard as I do, so I try to suppress my impulse to be a little shit (though it still gets out sometimes) less I give him a reason to put me in the corner lol Who do you think I learned it from? As much as anything I think the difference is that I've got time to talk to you at length about this sort of stuff - but I can count on my left hand the number of people I talk to about the arts. It's next to impossible trying to manage the amount of people that are in the IAA - so I think putting up basic personality filters is a fair thing to do. Now I'm glad we've come around full circle to the OP! It seems the same skepticism he brought forth initially is reflected in this post. I should say for the benefit of those reading that I believe all three of us (me, you and the OP) have yet to travel to the source of the arts to examine whether these ideas are true (do true masters charge, do they require character tests, etc.). For now I'm taking for granted the word of those who've been there, but there's no substitute for checking it out yourself. I also think its easy to assume our own cultural norms and values would apply there as well (people 'deserve' the truth, and access to information being a human right) but I wouldn't be surprised to find the Eastern Arts live within a very different culture than the Western world...

Do you think this was an inaccurate assessment? Edit: you were right to point out earlier that I don't know the true 'you', only the 'mask' you present here. It just seems to me that this 'mask' seems to embody the above qualities sometimes, along with a range of positive ones like intelligence, idealism, drive, passion etc.

You're right about this. I'm a little shit too and ought to work on being less judgmental. Yeah that's a good assessment of the situation. Dude I was there. You were straight up disrespectful, and I get that you've got your own side to the story but how could such a smart guy like yourself not see that there might be consequences for acting like that? Basically I think all the points you raise are valid (even if I disagree with some of them), and I think you're right to consider them deeply, but I wish you would do so more respectfully with your teachers so it would be easier for you. This approach was probably super useful for you in college, but the difference here is nobody is under an obligation to put up with you if they don't want to - even internal arts teachers.

Edit: gonna take another minute and think about how to respond

Have you ever worked in a daycare, or pound, or school? You've got all these little shits around and there's always one that's such a pain in the ass. Now if that were YOUR kid, and you were dealing with them one on one, you might have the resources to manage them properly. But they're not, and you don't! So you put them in the corner, and go back to managing the rest of them. I imagine running an online school is like this 😂

Now we may have attended different lectures but I was under the impression that the central idea in cultivation is that being yourself isn't good enough. And whose word would you take more seriously - those of your trusted advisors and friends, or a hot-headed young man with no background in cultivation? (Meaning no disrespect, that applies to me as well) FWIW if somebody told me 'youll know when you're older/more developed' that'd probably get my goat as well! I hope we can all look back on this as the silly whims of our lesser selves in a few years.

Well I appreciate that you're being consistent in your approach. I was worried that you were demanding transparency from others but not your own teacher, but it looks like you tried to ask him and chose not to push further so you could avoid what happened with Damo (I remember some of your interactions with him btw. I don't remember them way you do but appreciate that you might view them differently than me). I think that's a fair opinion. I've heard of both advanced students and teachers causing themselves serious injury or death, so I might disagree on that level but maybe it's dependent on which methods are shared (I would disagree that all methods are safe even if a teacher is supervising). Fair enough. But can you appreciate why this attitude might be distasteful to even a well-meaning teacher?

??? Secrecy in the arts is this big a deal for you, but you haven't asked your teacher why he prefers it that way? Just last week you were saying you thought questions should go by your teacher first. What gives?

Did you ever ask your teacher about this? Having (if I'm not mistaken) a relatively easy to perform choreography that's said to completely replenish your Yuan Jing seems like the sort of 'ultimate life hack' that could benefit anyone. After learning it did you immediately go and show everyone you care about how to do it?

As far as I understand projecting Qi is possible at any stage of development, but for a long time you've not got enough 'juice' in your system to affect anything outside of yourself. Consolidating and building the Dan Tien as well as opening the Du and the Ren meridians are great things that take quite a bit of time to do, but as Earl Grey was suggesting there's more too it than is commonly found written down, but luckily there's some teachers who specifically teach the method for this (Rudi from authenticneigong.com comes to mind). If that specifically what you're trying to accomplish that'd be a great place to start. Even though the Dan Tien and SHO are probably prerequisites it's really hard to convey all the things you'll need to develop them in books.

Short answer - not like that Long answer - maybe? Does the book list the progression like that? Step 1 open small heavenly orbit, step 2 project? If so I think a few pieces are missing (how do you get the voltage to open the SHO, where is the projected Qi coming from etc)

Could you talk about this a little more? Is this something that arises in all of us spontaneously or do the polarities have to be cultivated to some degree to relate enough first?

Thanks for sharing 🙏 As far as I know this classic hasn't been translated to English yet aside from this edition (where it seems liberties were taken in interpretation): https://www.amazon.com/Jade-Writing-Yellow-Court-Classic/dp/1456481657/ref=mp_s_a_1_3?crid=33ZDNE8AOM8OQ&keywords=yellow+court+classic&qid=1671546949&sprefix=yellow+court+cla%2Caps%2C119&sr=8-3

That's interesting. I'm assuming you're talking about something beyond the Frantzis/Chia popular methods. What led you to develop this theory?

Very interesting, and mostly in line with what I've been taught! In the system I'm practicing this happens rather early on after consolidation/stilling enough that certain markers show up. Then it becomes the 'fuel' that ignites the cauldron' (which took me 3 x 100 day periods of abstinence from sensory indulgence spread across years to finally get going). I wonder if it's happening later in your system whether you're using it differently. This is the main differentiator as far as I can tell, or did you definitely mean suppression? The main place I failed the first two attempts was in allowing stimuli to initiate desire which I then suppressed, but maybe you mean to suppress the stimuli from allowing desire to arise in the first place? Anyways the suppression increased the internal tension until that - even though I never indulged in the desire - there wasn't enough of a consolidation to work with the substance. This is deviating from your initial topic of sex though so next I'll try to get back on track

Respect bro, this is real shit. This is me for sure - just gonna put my own thoughts to spark further conversation from those who know. So you already know this (cause we heard the same lectures) but the system I study encourages initial Yuan Jing consolidation to the point where it can be used to ignite the cauldron - I think it considers Yuan Jing replenishment beyond this point a later goal. This means that abstinence is a useful temporary tool for consolidation, but not an ongoing thing (and I know your system disagrees with this - just providing contrast). My thoughts on the matter is artificial suppression of desire would lead to internal tension that in extreme cases can result in sexual pathology (i.e. abstinent Catholic Priests doing goofy shit). I think the crux of the matter is how much Yuan Jing is necessary for you to replenish to accomlish your goals in Nei Dan - because if your system teaches continual abstinence then yeah its gonna be super hard to avoid leakages through desire.

Edit: Nvm. Other folks said it better. Thanks for sharing, anyways 🙏

Thanks for sharing. You're clearly a practitioner who's achieved some things I'm unqualified to comment on, so please know the following is general commentary that doesn't have to do with your experience I think I would say there's a difference between something that can be physically mapped and something that can be conceptually modeled, and I think problems can arise from confusing the two. Asa Hershoff here talks about various models that arose for the chakra system, including the popular seven chakra one (that he traces back to Jung interestingly). More classical models seem to contradict this one, but its so ingrained in popular Western consciousness at this point I can't imagine most would take kindly to hearing the model they had used for years might not be the be-all end-all. Similarly I learned the arts through the Jing-Qi-Shen model, and its has proved a really useful way for me to 'categorize' all the reactions I feel to the practice, but I'm not sure I could definitely prove its correctness as a model. If you feel heat/tingling/bubbling/magnetism, and then those are all physical sensations, so couldn't it be said that this is your body's way of interpreting something non-physical?

Well noted!