Vajra Fist

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Everything posted by Vajra Fist

  1. Entity attached somehow

    I've honestly had readings with mixed accuracy from Eric. Case in point, he told me a couple of days ago that two systems I had been practicing together for a year or more are conflicting. Two months ago they were apparently fine together, even complementary. You could take this either way. Either Eric isn't always spot on, or that energy systems change rapidly and that what is present one day is often different to what is there the next. Honestly I'm inclined to believe its a bit of both. I'd honestly not take it too seriously. You can end up pretty paranoid about stuff that you can't see, imagining all kinds of stuff. Maybe what Eric saw as dark energy was merely what you had attracted to yourself through your worry. Or maybe what you told him about your fears influenced somehow what he thought he saw. Just get outside, go for walks in the woods, or a run in nature, do some gentle yoga or mindfulness meditation. Play a sport. Don't fret about this too much. Any negative entity, even if such things exist, won't stay too long in a mind that's positive and doesn't take life too seriously.
  2. Another Forum like this

    I think they make it more complicated than it should be. The vajrayana forums in particular can be a little impenetrable.
  3. Flying Phoenix Chi Kung

    Thanks buddy, that makes a lot of sense. Better to work these things out as you say than have them hidden and carried with you lifetime after lifetime. Now that you say that, I remember one of my teachers saying that a fundamental distinguishing factor of a true path is 'not to be easy'. Thanks for chiming in anyhow, good to know I'm not alone in this.
  4. Flying Phoenix Chi Kung

    Thanks @virtue that's good advice. Unfortunately it's not a slow anger which is often easier to pull apart and analyse. Its a sudden flash of irritation, where before there wouldn't have been anything. Like when I'm trying to talk to the wife, and the kid is banging a saucepan behind my head, normally I would have laughed at the absurdity of it, but instead I yelled harshly at the kid to stop. Sounds like a little thing but its definitely not how I normally am as a person. I'm not a beginner in internal arts either, having practiced various qigong and meditation for nearly 20 years now. And yet I can't remember any meditation having this adverse effect before. I wonder if it is a sign of qi deviation? But if so, it would have had to arise purely from FP as I've stopped anything else these last few days. It could be that all my prior efforts have kept me at the beginning stages of internal arts, and this is a sign of heavy emotional purification, which has only arisen because FP is a higher yoga. If so, then it may be merely a phase in the process. But - with the greatest respect - I see a lot of people with more experience under their belt at FP who still display these flashes of irritation, at least on this thread. Which makes me wonder if its something to do with the system and the way it works on your emotional system.
  5. Flying Phoenix Chi Kung

    Does anyone else have anger issues arising from practicing FP? I've been practicing less than a week but I'm noticing strong emotional turbulence and irritation, when normally I'm pretty even-keeled and non reactive. It's a very noticeable shift.
  6. Flying Phoenix Chi Kung

    Purely from the physical side of trauma release, it is true we keep a lot unconsciously bound up in tensions within our bodies. In hatha yoga, I've seen many, many inexplicable emotional releases occur - particularly in hip stretches, strangely. It seems that's a major repository for stored emotion. I've seen people burst into tears during something as innocuous as cobblers' pose. If the emotional release occurs in yoga through stretching, its a slightly different approach in qigong, when it occurs through deep relaxation. When you feel palpable sensations of qi, your body can sometimes relax into it. The same way you get a full body relaxation from laying on a memory foam mattress or in a flotation tank - your body feels fully supported and you can let go. Not to discount the mental/emotional approach above. But sometimes stuff is stored in your body at a very deep unconscious level, and the only way to release it is through movement practices.
  7. Flying Phoenix Chi Kung

    @Equidivium thanks for sharing your experience, you inspired me to start practicing FP again.
  8. Another Forum like this

    Dharmawheel is great too. Don't go there often enough. Rum soaked fist is good as well
  9. Tai Chi Ruler

    Sorry I never practiced the ruler as part of sun taiji. I imagine though from the similarity of the movements it was once an integral part of training which has become left out in modern times.
  10. Flying Phoenix Chi Kung

    Spot on here. The second exercise (zhan zhuang type exercise for 30mins) and the fifth (full lotus for one hour while holding various mudras) are borderline torturous. Amazing in hindsight I stuck with it so long. But I still had health problems during my years of practice, its not a panacea. Conversely, I just practiced the first three monk serves wine meditations from vol2 consecutively - the first time I've practiced FP in about a year - and I've been blissed out all afternoon. Top notch qigong, this.
  11. Flying Phoenix Chi Kung

    Falun Gong practitioners believe Li Hongzhi reincarnated several times throughout Chinese history and left behind different esoteric practices and traditions, which have been handed down for hundreds or thousands of years until today. In this life Master Li apparently had several teachers, each of whom taught him the stuff he developed in previous lifetimes. Then he combined it into the form which you see now in Falun Gong. I practiced it for over a decade, and while I found it very powerful as a practice, I'm honestly confused about the way it has positioned itself politically in recent years since I stopped. But really that's a different story, which would derail this thread. I just wanted to clarify that the origin of the practice is different from FP, which is - if I remember from this thread - purely from divine revelation (Feng Do Duk was apparently passed this tradition wholesale from a goddess). Incidentally, I find the sky blue qi cultivated from FP very similar to the blessing energy sensations in Medicine Buddha sadhana. That could point to a divine Buddhist origin for FP, or it simply could be both practices tap into a non-aligned trunk of healing energy from the universe.
  12. Tai Chi Ruler

    Good vid. Having practiced both sun taiji long form and the ruler exercises on the masterworks international dvd, definitely see a lot of similarities - specifically in the rocking movement.
  13. The psychology of conspiracy theories

    Yes sorry I was being glib. For the record I am a socialist. But people on the far right tend to view liberals as oppressive in their advocacy of equal rights, freedom of choice etc, as though its a threat to their so-called Christian values. The rightwing conspiracy mill these days see the liberal movement as an anti-Christian plot.
  14. The psychology of conspiracy theories

    I should be so lucky. I'm not saying that journalists don't present the truth in a slanted way, we do because the things we find newsworthy agree with our own views of the world. This is confirmation bias. But at the same time, to say that unconscious bias is part of a greater conspiracy or plot is just vastly wrong. The exception of course are the less reputable, more polemical ends of the market, like the Daily Mail. The journalists there might have left wing views but they know their editors will kill a story if it reflects a certain narrative. That is not because of corporate or political interests, but because they know their readers will also want to see things that support their own confirmation bias. The best outlets are those that don't have a politically defined readership. The BBC has incredibly robust internal mechanisms to ensure their reporting is free of personal bias. But still they get regular accusations of bias not only from the right wing, but also from the left. That has increased vastly in the last five years, as political views are vastly more polarised. If you see a story that undermines your view of the world people are very quick to claim bias, even if the story is provably true. Whatever bias there is in media is purely in how news is selected and presented. There are very few examples of outright lies being printed in mainstream media. If a journalist makes up sources then they normally get fired pretty quickly. It is extremely competitive at the top and factual errors even as minor as mis-spelling of names are rarely tolerated, let alone huge fuckups like a failure to corroborate sources. I once knew a guy who worked for a major national paper here in the UK who got sacked very publicly for making up quotes. He hasn't been able to find a job again since and that was nearly a decade ago. Anyhow - off topic totally.
  15. The psychology of conspiracy theories

    As a cloven-hoofed member of the "MSM" I can indeed confirm this. We no longer care about verifying every off-record source with at least two other off record sources, nor is getting a story wrong a major source of professional embarrassment and often also a sackable offence. Instead we just spaff out any old bollocks in the hope of attracting converts to our satanic plot.
  16. The psychology of conspiracy theories

    One of the weirdest things that have come with Trump is a kind of factual relativism. Where no one is politically independent and truth comes from the mouth of whoever you trust the most.
  17. The psychology of conspiracy theories

    Interesting how conspiracy theories have swung from the stock-in-trade of the left wing to the right wing. Back when I was an edgy politics student it was all about capitalist brainwashing, Gramscianism, and Rage Against the Machine telling people to wake the fuck up. Now its the lefties who are apparently all in charge and they want everyone to be (variously) vaccinated/aborted/atheist/gay. Its weird the way the world turns.
  18. There's an excellent kundalini sub-reddit filled with people with similar experiences to yours. The mods are excellent and might be able to point you in the right direction better than us here. I wish you the best, sounds like a rough ride.
  19. Shaolin Temple Europe

    I agree completely, he's probably the only Shaolin teacher I can think of in the west who is 100% true to the Chan roots of the style. He specialises in a 13 luohan rou quan form, which is like a Shaolin tai chi form. I'm based in the UK so my teachers are more focused on the sanda side of the art when you get beyond the foundation stuff, which is pretty much just kickboxing. I prefer this side of Shaolin much more. And I think they have a pretty wide curriculum at the European temple. One of the senior abbots doesn't do MA at all, and focuses exclusively on meditation. They also teach a range of qigong, like the 13 luohan, yijinjing etc.
  20. Shaolin Temple Europe

    I was planning to go to this monastery for a couple of weeks this summer but my plans were foiled by COVID. They've released a wonderfully filmed documentary about training there and the master, Shi Heng Yi. Enjoy!
  21. Personal Practice Discussion Thread Request

    Hi new mod team, doing God's own work. Mind if I grab my own PPD? Mostly so I don't spam the forums with my ravings and odd thoughts.
  22. robert peng yi jin jing

    Awesome, thanks! Do you still practice it? Worth $300?
  23. robert peng yi jin jing

    @liminal_luke Thinking of taking the course starting next month. Quick question on the exercises: is there much in the way of visualisation? I tried his Master Key series recently and was put off quite a bit by the amount of visualisation that requires.
  24. Evocation

    Isn't this the dude who wanted sex with dakinis a few months back?