Sahaja

No I am saying two things, one to your response and one to those I hear being strongly opinionated in their views of what the Buddha said 1. Saying something is “the” original is conjecture. 2. Taking a strongly held position on the specifics of what the Buddha said and meant to the point of being argumentative (I’m right and you're wrong) is inconsistent with what the Buddha is purported to have said in the Kalama sutra.

I am continually amazed by the level of certainty expressed about what the Buddha actually said and what he meant by it given that earliest writings we have are from hundreds of years after his death. This certainty becomes even more ironic when viewed through the lens of the Kalama sutra.

Don’t overthink this. It’s a very long process (many years) and by the time that this might arise the other things that might accompany it will make whatever happens down there a lot less important. I seem to recall something like this (kosohitavatthaguyhoto) associated with the historical Buddha . So if it happens to you you are in extremely good company!

Dreams seem a little like zi fa gong when I think about it. Yang chi triggered in sleep to clear out blockages of qi in the heart/mind to restore balance and function lost through the challenges of daily living.

It seems to me that we often mistakenly conflate our attempts at understanding the mystery of life/concept of God on a human scale using human terms so we can relate to it, with the actual components and underlying characteristics of that mystery. Religions and our concepts of God/life’s mystery generally evolved in eras where the reality of vast times and space with no human presence was not known or accepted intellectually. Based on what they understood, believed or wanted to believe, or what they thought best met their personal needs their best answers to this great mystery was to make God(s) in man’s image visually or behaviorally and/or to place man in the center of the universe between heaven and earth. Even systems without an apparent God set up complicated theories (e.g.the great merit tracking scoreboard in the sky, etc) that imply man’s centrality to the bigger scheme of things. Seems to me this echo continues until this day even in the alternative scene irrespective of the evolution of our knowledge about our relative place in the physical universe. This may sound like I believe there is no God/no gods/no mystery, but actually I think it’s man’s stories about them that I take with a “grain of salt” (some need a pound of salt!) as I continue to see in their stated or unstated assumptions humans/human culture being placed in the center regardless of our many inherent cognitive and behavioral limitations and our relatively small place in the underlying vast scale of time and space. While it’s totally understandable why we would use ourselves as the yardstick to measure this mystery, it reminds me of the old joke of the man who lost his watch in the street at night but looked for it in the grass in the park because the light was better there. Perhaps it’s as simple as learning to feel and to listen for glimpses of the truth of that mystery in the darkness rather than solely relying on our vision to see it and relying on what we think we see as the absolute definition of that mystery.

I enjoy the experience of the qi moving in me. I like the feeling something is being added in terms of knowledge and capability. I like that it is making me more accepting of what is being lost through time and decay. I like that there is mystery and unknown in it. I like the juxtaposition that I can touch something that is profound to me that is not meaningful to others. I like that the qi showed up and showed me things before I had the story to explain it - and that it continues to do this.

Static postures are good for building qi and strengthening the lines in the body which transmit the energy in the moving form. While building qi is extremely important, it’s also important to balance it periodically with some movement to avoid stagnation of the qi.

I believe that spontaneous movements are often associated with yang qi that gets freed up in the practice and that we go to the ground (prostrations etc) as the bodies natural act to ground/stabilize this yang qi to the yin of the earth. The advice I have received is to stay down and let it do its thing to complete the process of grounding. From my experience it’s a pretty common form of spontaneous movement. Generally spontaneous movements are a function of your qi getting activated not which qi gong set you do.

what I derive from the story is that some times your role in life appears to require you to do something you don’t want to do but not doing it also appears to have consequences. This story to me says in reality the full consequences of any action are unknown and out of my control. So follow your dharma as best you can and let go of the effects of your actions because in reality you don’t know what the full effects will be and you can’t fully control them. All you can do is what you are supposed to do with a good heart and intention. I’ve actually used the story of Arjuna in a motivational situation at work once with an employee who wanted to quit because of how crap much he was being faced with in the office in Chennai over a very sensitive issue. I’m not sure I was philosophically correct or aligned with the original intent but I think the discussion helped both of us.

While I respect and find great value in the stories in this book, I also feel a bit of a rationalization in it for the caste system from the priest or royals perspective. Telling the sudras (and others) you don’t need to drop everything and become an ascetic to find God - Just do your job with detachment from its fruits. While detachment is a wonderful and powerful concept, placing such an emphasis on doing your duty in a caste milieu feels a little self serving to me. Perhaps they felt pressure from the sramanic religions (e.g. Buddhists and Jains,etc) that emphasized these more ascetic approaches and there was concern for maintaining the social order, I don’t know. Unfortunately using religious precepts to maintain order in society is a pretty common historical pattern certainly not limited to this instance.

My reservations with practices using lots of imagination or lots of intention is that they may distract from the awareness of real cues that arise in practice. If your mind is very busy creating things you might miss or ignore something or screen out something that is actually arising that will teach or show you something important. Also the amount of energy that accompanies these cues in my experience is inversely proportional to the amount of intention used. The more you back off with the intention the stronger they manifest. This may not only affect perception of these cues but possibly some of their transformational aspect as well. my experiences with psychedelics in my youth makes me circumspect about their use in spiritual practice. I saw how they could weaken certain mental constructs and inhibitions that might provide some initial benefit but beyond that they seemed to me to be more like experimenting with mental illness than doing sadhana.

“You guys are idiots. All you need is 1, just 1 meditation technique to take you back to god. Yall saying books and dvds cant do shit lmao stay oppressed by your guru u know from geocities on yahoo or somethin.” You are probably right (on both counts). The rub is which one to choose. Perhaps given the name you’ve chosen and your views, the anupaya from the Pratyabhijñā school of thought might be a good choice for you. A bit tricky method though.

Learned standing practices from a number of different people in both yoga and martial arts/qi gong over the many years. The specific cues/postures for current standing work, the guidance on requirements for time/effort expended, how to deal with the sometimes intense somatic feedback from the practice , and how it fit within other elements of the related practices that led to this outcome came directly from Lotus Nei Gong. Guidance from medical doctors was more along the lines to learn to live with the problems with my leg. The rebel in me enjoys this irony.

Taoist texts - Actually, while I wasn’t looking for this nor is it the reason why I practice, , I did have a very specific visible positive health outcome from standing many hours in wuji. It was not easy to do this because of the structural issues in my leg (quite intense change process at times), but there was a visible improvement in its structure that put a smile on both my wife and my daughter’s faces when they saw it which, in turn, put a smile on my face. My wife still periodically checks my leg to see if it’s changed back, she tells me it hasn’t. asking people why they do self cultivation is a pretty existential question. Most people don’t have any interest in these types of activities. others pursue them very strongly with a single mind but might be hard pressed to say specifically why they put so much effort into it. I think I have been in the latter group (self cultivation nerds?) since I was first exposed to Daoist, yogic and Buddhist texts when I was 13. If pressed for an answer the best answer I can think of is to be to be better at living life and now that I am old to be better at managing the end of life. Hard things to put metrics on but perhaps putting a smile on my wife’s and my daughter’s faces is about as good a metric as any.

Perhaps you should try it and see for yourself if it has any value for you.

i think you can read Damo’s books in any order if you are just interested in theoretical information. However, I think these books would be most beneficial if they are read concurrently with doing the practices so that you can directly experience what they are talking about to see if it works for you. In Damo’s approach Neigong provides the foundation for Neidan (white moon) so neigong comes first. In his approach neigong is designed to give one very strong somatic experiences of Yin and Yang qi while developing the physical and energetic layers of the body to give one the discernment to access and the juice to later do the more subtle work with the layers of the mind. It emphasizes the qualities of ting and song as the basis for many of the practices. Unlike like some forms of Tantra (and some of the other teachers mentioned above) , Damo’s approach specifically eschews sexually based practices and those reliant on intention (those directed by the mind with a strong agenda like using the imagination/visualization). It emphasizes putting the conditions in place that enable energetic processes to naturally arise, like the MCO, without being reliant on being governed or directed by the individual’s mind.

Growing up I was attracted to martial arts as a way of development of whatever potential I had. I was intrigued by the possibility that the world was more than it seemed. Practicing gave me a sense of confidence and a sense of fearlessness. I was primarily interested in how it made me feel physically and mentally not so much in fighting, which I tended to avoid if possible. . I do remember using it when coming to the aid of my best friend when he got jumped at an inner city high school where we were attending summer school. I came in kicking with my steel toed boots and shouting and it seemed to work in changing the trajectory of the incident , though I later found that the leader of the group I confronted was known for carrying a gun in his boot…probably was lucky I didn’t get shot! I think this confidence engendered by my training also helped me in my adult life - as a bartender working by myself in some dodgy areas with some “interesting” customers - and when I entered the corporate world doing things that I was not fully prepared for whether it was presentations to senior execs cajoling them to spend large sums of money or dealing with my life being physically threatened in Nigeria while conducting labor union negotiations there. now in my retirement I am enjoying revisiting the martial arts and cultivating their internal energies. I like the feeling of the Jin swelling up in me or the energy moving through me when walking the circle. At my steadily advancing age it creates a strange juxtaposition of a feeling of strength mixed with a weakness associated with my aging body losing its functionality. While martial arts that focus on teaching you to fight others don’t really interest me (and it many cases aren’t that realistic or useful) I still enjoy the development aspects of martial arts. I think they helped me survive on my path this far. It’s also kinda fun watching others my age reaction when I do the splits!

I wonder how electric eels do it? I imagine our normal bioelectricity charge that does all sorts of things at the cellular level and keeps us alive is pretty low voltage relatively speaking. Having felt the “embrace” of the magnetic field and muscular contraction associate with yin chi fields certainly opened my mind about the possibility of fa qi. The moving/thickening of chi inside the body (which can also be quite strong somatically) also seems related. sort of looks like a similar process - just the opposite direction.

Been doing forms from lotus nei gong. There are forms that specifically help shape and re-form the yin field in the abdomen as well one’s that specifically thicken the chi. Once the process starts and laogong opens there seem to be a lot of connections/interactions between different parts of the body (as well as attention and the breathing) with the yin field in the abdomen. I can’t say I understand all these connections, but they definitely affect my experience of doing internal martial arts forms in a good way.

fyi - when I saw your comments on fasting and “kundalini” I remembered a problematic connection between the two from my yoga studies so I checked the IAA fb site on fasting and found this quote I’d thought to share with you ‘During the period of fasting I did NO energy work at all since this is dangerous to do when you are not eating, just to make that clear! Fasting is for breath and mental work if you do any practice.”

I have been blessed with a number of competent teachers over the years. But my experience is when the dialogue goes much beyond the “how do I do this” or “why does this do this” into their own personal views I often have found significant disconnects with my own personal views that on occasion have been a bit surprising. Perhaps this is a good thing in some respects as it helps me keep perspective on the teacher student relationship.

I am reading the White Moon book while also taking online class on the same subject with the author. The class is a better, more nuanced teaching vehicle than the book but I am happy to have the book as a resource to provide more in depth context. Having experienced some of the background processes I am sure affects how I view and understand the material in the book. Feeling the Ming line is quite different than just reading about it. I think the learning issue for me won’t be the efficacy of the material but in my own readiness and commitment (and karma). For me books, in general, are not as effective for learning something as online lectures, live online is better than recorded online because feedback is available real time, and live in person provides the best transmission (but relies a lot on memory if you don’t have a recording of what was originally taught to refer back to ). some combination of the above is the likely sweet spot for learning.

it seems like your bigger urgency is about your back (rather then when in the program you will you develop specific qualities ) Did someone specifically tell you that learning neigong will fix your back? Did they tell you which quality or process that is developed in Neigong that would solve your back issues or is this just a general expectation you have ? If it’s just a general expectation, that seems like a pretty big assumption to make given that the health of your back is at stake. Suggest, if you haven’t already, that you specifically discuss your back problem and your expectations for the Neigong program to fix it with your teacher or with Damo directly. Could be something specific covered early in the Neigong program that would help that you should focus on (health issue could sort itself out early in the program - I’ve seen that) or it could be that what you need isn’t even addressed in the Neigong program or even that there are things in Neigong that could make it worse that you should avoid, at least temporarily. Knowing when in the Neigong program qualities arise in you will not directly answer any of these important questions for you. But I think asking your teacher, another IAA/LNG teacher or Damo specifically about your back problem will give you the clarity you need to proceed. if all you really want is more info on what to expect and you don’t find it by asking questions on this site, suggest you dig into the countless Q&As on the LNG/IAA Facebook page (that has a search function) or ask other students and teachers for feedback on your questions on the LNG/IAA discord channel. You can also look ahead in the IAA online catalogue to find out when processes like the MCO are covered in the program. You can also choose to view the fact that no can exactly say when things will arise for you personally as a positive thing in that they could very well arise in the next moment, particularly if you aren’t expecting them!

I think using the term semen (jingye) for Jing (vital essence) over simplifies things and may send some down the wrong road. Here is an article that describes one view of the nuances of the Jing -qi shen interaction based on a different classic text that I think gets at your question https://lotusneigong.com/the-classics-of-breath-and-qi-consolidation/

The word “defilement” has always put me off. Seems to imply duality and also a rejection of part of oneself that even if it isn’t the best part is still a part.