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Quite simple, project your energy outward into a ball with you in the center. I call it 'drown in energy'. After that, with intention melt/merge into that ball of energy. Viola, a protective ball. Now you put your intention, just say be active while you're asleep... etc.. I call it 'programming' How do you know it won't turn off when sleeping... well you'll know at the next morning. Practice makes perfect. Your goal is a long lasting and good protective ball. At beginning, it's quite possible that you'll make a pretty holey ball or easily collapse ball. How do you know a good ball? Just test it. What type of qi/energy to make the ball? It's free to choose, nobody says you can only say one type of energy to make the ball. From my experience, when I was celebating (not that I have a partner though), I experienced almost weekly 'nightmare wet dreams'. Low level Spirit is stealing energy throught that. How do I know? It's like after doing astral projection for first time, your body is empty, dantian is empty, you feel sluggish and very tired, most of all there's a connection left behind and the incident time is always the same around 4AM. Also did sanity check by asking my counselor and my counselor taught me the first paragraph. My findings so far are at second paragraph. Does it work? Well, kinda. It went from weekly to biweekly and it still ruined my celebating, lol. Asking higher being might works but it's like lottery. It's like dealing with human society. You ask someone to fix your stuffs and if you're unlucky, you might call someone incompetence instead. I'm not saying the higher being is fake but it's quite a possible an impostor comes to fool you. If you know how to differentiate real and impostor, well...you won't open this thread. Another option is to buy protective amulet or get initiated in something like kalacakra, all that imbued with automatic defensive system. In all honestly, you don't need to do anything, just like ONE said. Your energy will automatically protect but it is shared with other activity. I rarely do that protective ball anymore as I found out about that. I just do it after when I get awaken after retaliating from nightmare, sensing there's a need of extra energy in protection department. Nowadays I just cleanse/ground myself of the accumulated negative energies due to daily activities before sleeping so energy can flow better then do daily strengthening/storing energy so the automatic stuffs has more energy and power for its activities.

Some stuffs are actually the same thing with different name and we correlate more to some words because our past experiences. Some has very broad yet cryptic meaning leaving the interpretation to the reader and some has very detailed yet very personal, hard to replicate, description. All in all everything is like seeing a pyramid from different perspective, you see it as square from below, you see it as triangle from its side, you see it tetrahedron from another side, or you see it as square with X sign if you view it from top. If somebody says it's square/triangle/tetrahedron, it's right as that's what they perceive to their utmost ability. Only when you see it from the whole perspective, it becomes a pyramid. Your friend might be actually studying the art as the master does yearly workshop in Italy. I, myself, began to study Practical Method Taichi a month ago and I like this one as, IMHO, it's more 'modern' as in you can use some modern science to approach and somehow describe the phenomenon you feel. Finding wasted and unnecessary movement is one of my joy these days. I hope you have a smooth journey sailing the path.

Hi there. Welcome to TDB About the state of bliss while playing basketball... I don't know anything about Wu Wei but I think you were in Jhana state. I don't know which Jhana as I'm forgetting about many details now. In sports term, they call it 'in the zone'. I do have a theory about this, background thinking is wasting energy (thinking you should do this, do that). As a result, you make subconscious minuscule wasteful movements according to that background thinking before doing the real action, body is strained subconsciously and get tired easily after some accumulation. When you eliminate those waste and coupled with 'every breath burns food into energy', you're making more energy than spending it... viola, increase in energy. About Neijia, if you want to study something without using excessive term of 'qi' or elusive 'mind-intention', you can try see Practical Method Chen Taiji. It focuses on yin-yang separation expressed using precise internal body movement. It cuts a lot of 'wasted' movement from normal Chen style Taichi making it looks robotic and far from usual Taichi elegance movement.

Desire and no desire, both can be practiced, follow example or life freely, dao doesn't care. A way that can be told is not eternal Dao. They may fade with time. No worries, there're ton of others way to reach Dao. Familiar? DDJ ch 1 and whatever chapter. You want magical shortcut? Get attunement/empowerment/whatever-they-call-it, it's akin to someone jump start you, but in the end you walk with your own feet till the end. Dangerous? Oh yeah, if the person who do that don't know what's s/he doing. Same stuff with every other thing in life, dangerous when uncontrolled. Do you trust s/he with your life? Those dogmas are just one of many ways that others had else found, embraced, and got result. If you're not comfortable with it, let it go, why suffer? - Basically a rip off from OSHO's story Just a rhetorical. "How long do you want to keep on contemplating?"

Lol, it's like asking month of pregnancy to a woman and found out it's just a bulging fat stomach Over here the red dot could be just a decorative.

or you can ask to use spoiler when posting images (more than 1-2). When it doesn't work, passive aggressive way might work

I don't mean about imagery to be forced away but it's harder to get the imagery when eyes are not closed. If it comes, just let it come, then just don't cling. After that, back to your original purpose. After searching tid bits, I found this https://dhammawheel.com/viewtopic.php?t=15338 So, you choose which kind of meditation you want. Imagery or not. About close eyes or not, there are different interpretations, like here which says mindful about tip of the nose or your version about closed eyes. From my experience, if you want to get distracted fast closed eyes seems the way to do it, but if you want to be mindful about your body/breath, half closed eyes and see tip of nose is just harder to get distracted by those.

Vipassana, insight into true nature of reality. IMO, that's exact opposite of mental imagery because mental imagery is made from your value and perceptive. That's why they encourage you not to close your eyes when doing vipassana so. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

Hello, welcome This seems to be a good article for you https://flowingzen.com/16952/sensing-your-qi/

According to Buddhism, you can do good deed (e.g donation) under the deceased name, hoping them to rebirth in a better condition. This is usually done for deceased relative but I don't see why it won't work for other living being as well. Just pray and hope for the best.

I thought this was some kind of youtube link. I jumped the gun

I know it sounded like something out of novel. He mentioned in the book, he got several empowerments throughout his training. Also later on, there is a chapter about mastering willpower. He mentioned that horse stance strengthened his willpower a lot. Who knows what really happened. Maybe he has great willpower? Maybe Shifu Tan helped him without him noticing? Maybe it's something different altogether?

It depends on what you're looking. It mostly aims for healer. I got his master key book. To me, his journey is far more interesting, it mentioned some paths that needs guidance and glimpse on what's there. Apart from that, the book covers trainings that are 'safe' which you may find many similarities with what you've learnt before (depends on your mileage and system). His youtube channel contains the video of example of the training you get in the book (like connecting universe, middle dantian, qi sword, qi ball, 4 golden wheel)

which chry has better properties? I tried brewing full bloomed and it's like drinking dirt. The bud ones are nicer in taste and have a slight sweet taste as it is.

Different system has different way. You choose which one you want to follow.