Neirong

Add me as well

It is good that people come out and write about their experiences like this. Self-learning and self-initiating, paired with reading random books, is a recipe for disaster, especially when the topic of study is occult and magic.

While India has ancient roots and a lot of advanced cultivators, as far as I know, almost no one of them is publicly available. Those who are public are usually made-up conmen, false gurus who have not even touched internal cultivation practices. They are more interested in a celebrity lifestyle, driving motorbikes and helicopters and enjoying luxury lives at the expense of the "followers." False gurus merely parasitize on ancient teachings; they assume the posture and outlook of a "sage," pretend to be spiritual, and talk nonsense, sometimes mixed with quotes from ancient texts. There is no genuine spirituality behind them; they cannot lead anyone somewhere they have not been themselves. Often, those gurus are leading violent cults, covering up all sorts of crimes. Osho is one of the publicly known examples.\ That said, I would not bother to read anything written by SSRS, Sadhguru, or the rest of all the similar but different personas. Surely, you can find Bhagavadgita, Patanjali Yoga Sutras, and some other original texts instead of opting for new age scams?

I once met a "Master" who claimed that excessive energy and spiritual power converts into body mass. The more lies and nonsense you accept, the further away you are moving from the truth, from ability to cultivate, to open third eye, advance spirituality and anything of that sort. 1. The misguided students who when experiencing problems with their body, instead of seeking solution and change of lifestyle, believe those are signs of "progress" in 2. The Ancient Arts getting desecrated and defiled by trickery, lies and deception, made to pull wool over eyes. Professional swindlers with a tied-up tongue who will claim whatever imperfection and flaw found in them to be a sign of "spiritual development" and "internal attainments."

The masses love to create a glorified Image of a Guru and mythically imbue it with all kinds of enigmatic, mystical, and supernatural qualities, then kowtow to and revere it. It becomes comical at times. You have many threads on this board related to anything that Damo teaches or ever talked about, and they get overrun by his followers praising the great teacher. The thing is, I know plenty of people around me who are Damo's age or older, who look much better than him, have more energy/vitality than him, and have better intellectual and physical body development than him. But they never did: - TCM, Bagua, Martial Arts, Qigong, Daoism, Internal Alchemy, or anything else related to what this person teaches or practices. They never taught and never pretended to be someone special. So, the question is, why even bother? It is unlikely that you will gain more from a system in 5+ years than a person who has taught it for 25+ years. We have an observable living end result of this method. It does not seem to be anything good. It is a clear bottleneck and a dead end. What you can get, however, is one of the many pathogenic qualities the teacher has. Learning is not always a good thing, you can learn bad things, and copy mistakes of your teachers. Not all food is good, not all knowledge and information is beneficial. This is what people see without utilising ESP abilities. You ask anyone who is not related to this school/system and not brainwashed by the cult they usually give out similar statements. To be clear I don't have anything personal against him. It is not my concern what people are doing with their lives. In general views, I am pro-cultivation and I am not supportive of degradation. But I also believe in a freedom of choice, and if people chose degradation and delusion, so be it.

Someday, people will realize that talking a lot about something does not equal competence, knowledge, or skill. Talking is just talking. I would personally avoid people who talk too much, as this would mean instability, deviations on the level of "Vishudha chakra," and lack of intelligence.

There is no need to go that far in search of "confirmation." Reincarnation has long been a part of human culture in many different countries all around the world. The most obvious example is education. In many cultures, kids are given a broad selection of topics, arts, and activities to "play" or "learn." Sometimes, they unveil unusual talents at the soft age, when most of their peers can barely count 2+2. The reason for this talent is straightforward: the subconscious field is active while the new conscious and new personality is still developing. Engaging in activities that are linked by solid experiences with the subconscious makes it possible to carry over skills and experiences from past lives into the current life. Someone who engaged in music for multiple lifetimes will find in himself a "talent" for music. He will learn faster and achieve higher degrees of mastery with less effort. Same thing applies to any other practice, or art, even meditation and cultivation.

When it comes to passing exams, I believe it's more effective to focus on actual skills and knowledge rather than relying on luck, charms, or reciting mantras. There are practical skills that helped me to ace all exams, while I spent less than 1/100 of the time recommended by the guidelines preparing for them. For some exams, I have only studied half an hour, for others up to to two hours and got the top scores, University recommended 200-400 hours of study time per module. The amount of time saved studying allowed to spend more time on cultivation and things that matters. Fast reading, Photographic memory, Satori - Absorption state, Visualization. Developing these skills through cultivation shouldn't be overly challenging for those who are genuinely interested. While many people strive for impressive abilities like napkin burning and zapping, cultivating mental skills and qualities is also a worthwhile investment.

Consicousness is your upper mental bodies development. With it's development and growth, it begins to expand, you will not only perceive things like energies, energy bodies, entities, even things like past lives, but also dimensions beyond basic three. Magi Adepts have their brain turn into a supercomputer in a sense, it is possible to do many things via "Internal Interface". There are hundreds of functions, each could be called "siddhi". For any normal person, sudden expansion of consciousness without proper guidance and prior training/preparation will be a traumatic experience, often paired with irreversible damage. There is a reason why so many people interested in esoteric arts are insane/inadequate. Same as with other practices, upper mental bodies also require energy and investment to grow,. But not the energy developed in qigong/neigong, but the energy of a higher grade. The one that is developed via magic tradition training for example.

The whole point of finding a teacher/school is to save time. So, you don't need to learn the different language, go through thousands of books, travel all around the world, try out hundreds of practices to see if something works or not. Structured teaching will have a step by step approach with milestones along the way, so you don't get overwhelmed and lost in confusion. And time is money, so a good teaching will naturally pay for itself.

Not nearly; a lot of traditions and practices can go as far as having opposite goals. For example, there are spiritual traditions that put their goal at dissolving and dissolution; the idea is to exit the "Samsara circle" by going back to the "source," which would be global consciousness. They view life as suffering and want to cease it permanently. That would mean the destruction of an Ego, Self in the broad sense of this word. You will cease to reincarnate and cease to exist as a standalone entity. Others, like, for example, the Magus tradition, work on developing the self to a level that it starts to transcend life and death, changing bodies, reincarnation is nothing more than changing clothes; the core (Self) does not dramatically change. You are able to continue the work you did in your previous life, in your next life, and so on. Another example is mediumism; think of a sail that is affected by winds or what we could call external signals. For a medium or a channeling practitioner, it is essential to have a less structured/fixed consciousness, that can easily attach itself and be carried away or possessed by external signals. Magi would have an opposite development, where they grow their consciousness and mental body stronger to a point where external signals cannot easily sway them. You become resistant or even immune to entity possession and hypnosis and gain more power to deal with ghosts, spirits, and elementals. Humans are an insignificant part of the Universe. When someone speaks about knowing everything, ultimate truths, it just shows how lacking they are in their comprehension capacity. Breathe in and out, turn your head upwards, and look at the sky at night. A finite mortal being can never comprehend infinite reality. Various teachings also have different starting and end points; for some, the endpoint, the final destination, would be the entry gates to another. Think of it as if you are going to kindergarten, then it ends, you start school, then it ends, then start university, there it ends, and you go for professional work. You cannot immediately begin university if you do not even know how to walk, read, or write. For example, the state of awakening, the permanent cessation of internal dialogue, and the ability to see the spiritual world and energies would be an entry gate/early condition for magic cultivation. But most people and I have observed a lot of various teachings and traditions and talked with masters and teachers, and they never reach this level, even after 30-plus years of daily training. Some don't even think that is possible. Quite a lot of people, even dedicating their lives to "esoteric" practices, believe it is all a fantasy. One University professor made an example for how learning works, that is applicable to cultivation as well. "Imagine climbing a very tall mountain sparing no effort, when you finally arrive at the peak, you feel that you have "won, conquered" your studies, but then you look around, and see that another mountain that is twice as tall and steep, stands right at the peak of the first one, and you could not see it from below. That is an excellent general model for how the knowledge works, now imagine climbing through that cycle 30 times, with each subsequent mountain being twice taller and more complex. You would still know nothing compared to infinite reality, but you would have some perspective if you looked behind. A lot of people don't really want to develop or evolve themselves; they just want to tick a checkbox in their ego that they have "succeeded." Trying to limit the reality to their own perception and capabilities.

Some systems on purpose include bloat/filler practices for the sake of making it a quagmire to go through and waste time. As if the life is not already short enough. They would also lack some credible elements of a functional school, such as access to teacher feedback, examinations and tests, observable progress, and benefits. While siddhi may take time to develop, if you do not feel any observable benefits in day-to-day life within 3-6 months of practice, I would not bother or recommend such training. If it does not work for a person, better find another training/teaching. Flaws of the teaching can all be covered by a cult figure, a collective delusion that they are doing something meaningful and worthwhile. While all they are doing is waving hands around. At that point people develop placebo effect sensations, that practice benefits them in unknown way. So, if you see a cult figure, better avoid. It is even better if your teacher or someone who spars with him participates on a competitive level and has a known rank in martial arts. Then you could avoid delusions. Most online MA teaching is an info-business scam.

The damage comes from the energy/power a person can operate/has. A lot of beginners are practicing all kinds of mumbo jumbo practices/teachings without any real/tangible negative consequences because they simply do not have the power to damage themselves. As few people go deeper into internal arts, magic, well even physical sports could be counted. There proper methods, foundations become vital as you don't want to gamble with your life. If you do improper practice physically, you will tear muscles/ligaments; with energy, you will get blockage/stagnation/pressure in some cases blood vessel rupture; with magic, you can simply lose your sanity and mental health. An extremely dubious practice with an extremely shady background, a secret home lineage master who was hiding for 10,000 years but suddenly decided to reveal his secrets. A public cult praises him as some sort of enlightened immortal, aka living god. An easy practice that absolutely anyone can perform, but that promises everything you can imagine from healing to enlightenment and siddhis.

Following public advice from random people on the internet as a cultivation manual is as bad an idea as it can get. It does not matter how plausible or believable it may sound; there is likely an error inside that would be throwing your life and potential away. That is like copying an exam paper from someone who pretends to be smart and brags about it but scores the lowest on all tests. I have seen some of their posts, and they are riddled with delusions and internal character flaws. The statement about yang qi leaking to the earth is absurd, but it comes from people who made claims about "Visualization is not real practice", "Mercury Ingestion is safe and sound to promote online", "Spiritual Practice of non-eating and aversion to food," "Damien is the great master of Meditation". Most people who "look" good online come here to brag and boost their image, to fulfill their Ego cravings/desires, tick appreciation points, even if in the same post they are writing how it is vital to cull Ego and how they made a lot of effort in this direction. It should be further noted that wherever someone disagrees with the person mentioned above and those absurd statements, he falls into ad hominem attacks, and truly believes that the other side of discussion is actually evil incarnationn and spreads lies. Inability to think or accept that you can be wrong and over attachment to acquired views, is one of the key traits of an NPC character, non-awakened being. With those traits they seek others who support their delusional views, and end up forming a Cult. Spiritual practices to begin with should focus on awakening one true self. There is no point in gaining any abilities or powers, if you remain in the mental state of a monkey. It can be read for entertainment purposes, a lot of those pearls of wisdom end up turning into internal memes in actual cultivation circles, but following such advice will likely get a person killed/malnourished. --- As for the grounding itself, it is possible to connect to the earth through proper practice without a need to sit or stand on it barefoot. The idea that you always need to touch the ground and stand barefoot on it comes from leaked instructions given to beginners. It is not uncommon for Teachers to modify instructions based on students' capabilities. You do not need to stand in the cosmic space and go above the atmosphere to connect to the heaven-upper channel. If you go high in mountains you can feel that heaven connection is stronger. It would be easier for most people to sense the upper channel in the mountains, but it does not mean you need to sit on the peak of a tall mountain to even practice.

Why look for martial artists, then? Why not musicians, writers, singers, artists, and even farmers? The thing is, the majority of martial arts people are not very smart to say the least, and thus, they cannot be enlightened in any way. Getting hit in the head and doing physical training just does not grow/develop your brain or spirit in any meaningful way. Muladhara (physical body) is as far as possible as (Sahasrara) Spiritual body.