Neirong

Ah yes, a "very deep lineage" like Longmenpai, the one that the Chinese government has actively promoted for many years, labeling nearly every Daoist organization with it. The majority of Taoists today are affiliated with Longmenpai or Quanzhen. However, there is no available information about rigorous exams, testing, or any formal qualifications that these individuals might possess. In fact, anyone could buy a ticket to China, take a photo with a random person dressed as a Taoist, and claim to represent a "deep lineage." This is likely what we are seeing here. In essence, it is a religious structure managed by the government, with no real connection to esoteric internal cultivation or spiritual awakening. Does anyone think a person like that would ever be accepted in Internal esoteric circles? There is absolutely no testing, verification, or credible evidence to suggest that Damo belongs to an ancient "Esoteric Taoist tradition" or possesses any sort of attainment within it. That said, there are some general ethical guidelines available to the public related to Longmenpai/Quanzhen. This does not align well with sitting in a bar, smoking expensive cigars, drinking whiskey, doing drugs, scamming, and engaging in many other glorious activities of the modern guru.

Buddha did not create or invent the concepts of reincarnation and rebirth; Buddhism is a relatively modern religion. These concepts far predate Buddhism. The spiritual world exists whether or not anyone believes in it—it is an objective part of reality. All around this thread is an astounding display of secular and cultist worldviews, locked into a narrow paradigm that fails to describe the entirety of existence. You are not truly seeking or pursuing the truth; you are only interested in confirming your established biases. This, to put it mildly, is the opposite direction of cultivation or spiritual development. A silly statement to make on a public forum. You could try to make a list of how many actual buddhists are there, by verifiying their credentials, wherever they have at least a decade of in-person training in any reputable temple under qualified Buddhist Master, wherever they have any genuine attainments. Refrain to talking only with these people if you cannot bear to talk with "non-buddhists". Similarly, as with any other tradition, you don’t become a Buddhist or a Daoist simply by reading a few random books, attending a few random seminars, or believing that you align with certain values. Preserving the self into the next life is the very first step of real self-development path. If you cannot achieve that, death will multiply your attainments by zero. There is a checkpoint that allows one to accomplish this, but the majority are never able to progress that far. Life is short.

Karma, apart from being a balancing mechanism, also serves as a lesson system. Until you clear your 'lesson,' you will not be able to move further; it will hold you back in your development. Rebirth is necessary because no one can truly clear the entire system curriculum in a single lifetime. If you are properly cultivating in each of your incarnations, you will make meaningful progress, each subsequent incarnation will likely surpass the previous one and go further.

This is very basic/fundamental esoteric knowledge. There are dozens of worlds beyond the one you know. People learn this in authentic schools. @kakapo never attended a school nor had a qualified teacher, which is why he reacts that way when any esoteric term, such as astral travel, is mentioned. This was just a simple example. It’s not about the spit; it’s about how people create problems for themselves. You will always be able to find some ignorant people fighting windmills or imaginary stuff, or hitting their head into the wall repeatedly. Instead of dealing with real problems and advancing, they would be stuck in a loop. There is a significant difference or gap between imaginary concepts and the natural laws of the universe. When two objects collide, the weaker one gets damaged. This is also why, when people attack someone who is spiritually accomplished, they end up broken, with holes in their energy field, and accumulate massive negative karma for years to come. (These are the consequences of their actions.) It is very hard, if not impossible, to advance in cultivation and make spiritual progress if there are issues with mental health, the energy field, or physical health. Principles of ethical conduct are usually taught as part of the schooling process. For example, when you evolve your mental fields, your thoughts will start to affect reality, and you will have to bear responsibility for them as much as for your actions.

People often imagine the world as having human qualities, including the pettiness of an ego that seeks to punish someone. In reality, however, the world operates more according to global laws of physics and a self-balancing system. For example, if you hit a wall with your arm, the wall resists, and your hand will likely break or get hurt. Over time, you would learn not to hit walls with your arm, avoiding unnecessary harm. The complexity increases with dimensions. If you spit upward, gravity will bring the spit back down toward you. When it comes to energies, thoughts, and mental activities, the system becomes even more intricate, as humans live within a self-created bubble of perception. They find a new person and present him as a reincarnation of Dalai Lama, to uphold tradition or prestige. It has no real value or meaning outside of their tradition. Soul gets pulled down (hooked) from spiritual world during rebirth. Karma is not a negative thing, an ability to carry over something is vastly positive. That will allow someone to make meaningful progress. Doing right steps and practices in this incarnation you will be able to influence yourself in the future lives.

It is 100% fake. The guy must be happy to have followers who believe his "art" is real deal abilities. It is a praise to any magician/illusionist. He has no connection to internal arts or cultivation what so ever. Even if the video is in poor quality and edited, you can still see the center of gravity, tense body and wire pull from above. This is nothing even remotely close to real levitation. I have seen one other guy in this occupation, who sells his parlor tricks as spiritual attainments, his name was GrandMaster Wolf.

I am not interested in chatting with book quotes, if there is no personal experience there is nothing to discuss. He was a drug addict that ended his life poorly. An example of a person who failed at Magic studies and it backfired. Humans try their best to avoid any objective and verifiable milestones with an uncomfortable reality check, and instead shift discussion to talking about rose ponies, golden unicorns, pink rainbows, and fluffy clouds. Whatever makes them feel better, but I won’t be responding to this thread anymore.

It does not follow you; it exists on the planet itself. This is a normal balancing system. Every action has consequences. The world does not end when you die, so if you were not able to account for your actions in a previous life, you will account for them in the next one. It is also a learning experience. If you did not feel pain when putting your hand into fire, you would not be careful enough to avoid burns and significant damage to your vessel. Similarly, if someone wants to progress spiritually and evolve, they must understand the laws and principles. It is a safety mechanism as well. Nobody wants a deranged person taking on an important position. Imagine a company that hires a worker. He does a good job for himself, becoming rich and famous, but in the process, he destroys half of the company. To the ego, it may seem that he did nothing wrong. He worked for his own benefit and did so with great success. Some people actually think that karma does not exist, and they go crazy in their current life, accumulating massive debt. That debt will be paid by hundreds of their future incarnations and may even lead to the recycling or permanent destruction of their soul if they fail to learn the lesson.

All these videos are fake. It would not be so bad if they were not used as a promotion material to sell pseudo-esoteric courses for $3000-5000.

It is quite easy to explain in the context of today's reality. Buddha likely did not have such examples in his time. When you load a role-playing game, create a character, and start playing, are you the character? For most people, it is too difficult to grasp this distinction because their memories and abilities (skills) are confined to the character they control. Their memories start from childhood, they will end upon death. Many become so immersed in the game that they lose the connection between themselves as the player and the character they are controlling. Think of it as leverage: when you are playing the game, it is easy to train your character because you see the benefits. Your stats improve, and you recognize the value of not wasting time. However, when you are the character, the situation changes. Look around, and you’ll see that the vast majority of people are not engaged in cultivation or self-development. Instead, they are entirely lost in various egregores, ideas, and functions, becoming puppets or slaves to a particular paradigm. You could also call it a corruption that comes from living in a certain environment. The environment affects people who have a weak spirit. A weak spirit cannot regain awareness of itself and has no access to memories of past lives. If your memories and experiences were not limited to this life and this body, you would be an entirely different person. That kind of power is necessary to make any meaningful progress on the cultivation path.

Exactly, I see it all as connected factors. 1. Teachings may not be secret, but people often cannot find them, either because they disregard and disrespect the teachings through their own volition or because they seek a "resonance." They fail to consider that a resonance for someone just starting out could very well stem from negative qualities or imperfections. Some people want their ego to be stroked the "right" way to accept teachings, and as a result, they end up falling into destructive cults. 2. Secondly, there’s the issue of fluff and noise. When you search for a teaching, you’ll find hundreds of options, some even using similar names. It takes experience and connections to discern which one is genuine and which one is a waste of time. 3. It’s also true that in education with levels and grades, you must complete the previous levels before being given access to the next one. This naturally filters out many people, as it’s not just a matter of paying for a seminar or listening to a lecture. You have to put in the work, achieve results, and make progress before you’re allowed to proceed further. Similarly, you can’t enroll in a university program without first completing school or equivalent institutions. I simply cannot teach or practice many things with students until they develop their third eye, ESP abilities, strong energy sensitivity, mental resilience, visualization skills, concentration, and many other co-factors or skills. You are making a lot of assumptions on behalf of everyone. The world is not some idealistic, romantic fantasy. In general, passing down evaluations opens the door to cheating. For every person who is honest with themselves, there will be a dozen who deceive themselves, and over time, that small error will grow. A minor mistake left unchecked early on can lead to dramatic consequences later. You build a "castle" of spiritual development, but if you make incorrect measurements at the very beginning, it means that after decades, you may have to tear down the entire structure and start over from scratch. The permanent cessation of internal dialogue is a good thing. Even if it is not used in spiritual training, it would significantly improve quality of life. This is not difficult to test through meditative practices. The example is simple. A still surface of water represents a silent mind. Even muddy or dirty water can become still under the right conditions, given enough time. However, if you apply pressure or shake the glass, the mud will cloud the perception channels, and the "quality" of internal silence will vanish like a mirage. While two people may maintain a silent mind for a long time, the difference between a glass full of mud and one that has been cleared of it is like the difference between heaven and earth.

Spirituality, intellect and mental faculties can also be taught, trained, developed in a systemic manner. It is just that there are not many people on the entire planet capable of doing that. So a lot of people are forced to do self-found path, which usually is rather shallow and does not go far ahead. It is much easier to teach and learn something tangible like martial arts or hatha yoga, rather than something abstract and mental, like spellcasting or arcane magic. Laughed from that. If people think they can find someone to spend time, effort and expertise on them for free or for the price of an entertainment ticket they are utterly delusional. Self-evaluation defeats the whole point of milestone achievement because humans are inherently biased toward themselves. If someone seeks personal development, they will inevitably start projecting what they want to see and convince themselves that they possess those qualities. Especially after they spend some time and effort on this. Even this forum is filled with people who claim to be kind, morally upright, understanding, and compassionate, traits highly valued in traditions like Taoism or Buddhism. There are entire threads and sections of forums designed for self-praise and mutual approval, where people circle around each other, declaring themselves fantastic human beings with countless merits. However, if these qualities are not objectively checked and verified, and they usually are not because most people do not belong to a strict temple or a real-life school, and no one would bother to waste their time and energy putting someone through harsh conditions to test abstract qualities. As a result, these self-proclaimed traits hold little real value. In truth, what you think about yourself is irrelevant. A drug addict who smokes hallucinogens may believe themselves to be many special things. Early meditation practices usually work in a very similar way. Your self-perception does not equate to objective reality. If you think you are a very smart person, it may influence how you feel about yourself, positively or negatively, but it will do nothing to help you pass exams. There are books about how to feel yourself "Healthy", thousands of positive reviews of happy readers who got "Healthy" practicing those methods, but then they felt healthy and suddenly died. Why did this happen? There are many fraudulent cultivation systems and teachers who teach you how to think positively about yourself. This is not a cultivation system. This is not an esoteric system. This is "scamgong" nonsense, spread by scammers for fools. There are no victims here, people simply are not interested in finding or search for truth, nor they are willing to accept it. In reality, a small trigger can transform someone who sees themselves as kind, benevolent, compassionate, or even enlightened into a psychotic madman. I have seen too many such cases to count. I would never trust or take seriously what people say about themselves in public forums. You go around here, and everyone claims to be ascended or enlightened, yet somehow they have never been able to see a real energy form with their own eyes. It is like saying you are a trillionaire but having to ride the free bus your entire life because you could never afford any other form of transport. This is why mental health is so important, and why a fundamental approach to training is equally critical. I will give you another example from the physical world. You buy a water hose for your house. It looks fairly good and shiny, with no signs of damage or wear. It is brand new. The seller says it is the best in the world, backed by glorious advertising. You put it to work under pressure, and it explodes into pieces. It cannot handle the pressure. It was not even made to handle the pressure. There are no fragile people among cultivators. Is it a milestone? It is experience, countless tests and checks, massive pressure that would kill untrained individual on spot.

Right, I walk down the streets and see people randomly stumbling around, only to suddenly become MMA world champions. They have a sudden realization that transforms their bodies from a lazy heap of fat into a chiseled god-like statue with perfect muscle proportions, all with the flick of a finger, without any effort. In every sense, spiritual training is far harder, more demanding, and more complicated than any other form of training required to achieve something meaningful in life. Yet, on public forums, there’s a widespread advice that you don’t need to do anything and that everything happens naturally. You just have a realization, and that’s it. What’s more, spiritual development is a gradual and lengthy process. If people do not begin proper training until a certain age, or if they waste their time on random "bullshido" practices while waiting for enlightenment to come instead of engaging in proper training, they essentially miss the opportunity of a lifetime. Human life is short, after all.

You are on a Daoist Esoteric forum, in a thread titled "Highest Spiritual Teachings." The level of self-projection here is insane. First, you flood the thread with complete nonsense. Now, derailing the thread into politics in hopes of getting it locked. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Pulling it back to the main topic, I mostly agree with the following views: Some people will do everything in their power to avoid encountering or engaging with "esoteric" teachings. There is a second layer to the secrecy: the presence of fake teachings, pseudo-esoteric books (98% of books in esoteric section of a bookshop), and various cults. These may satisfy the desire to belong to an esoteric group, but in reality, they divert people away from genuine spiritual growth. In simple terms, it works like a Google search. You search for "magic," but you either find a new Netflix movie, some cringe anime, a virtual game, or a schizo cult of Harry Potter LARPers. You are highly unlikely to find any genuine resources on magic cultivation by searching for it online. The third reason is simply luck. If you happen to meet a Master or an Adept of Internal Arts, and they take the time to explain what they are doing, you have a good chance of starting on this path. For example, I don’t really hide the fact that I work with meditation or energy cultivation. If people show interest, I help them begin sensing Qi. However, I also make it clear that if they want to seriously embark on this journey, they must commit to daily practice and be willing to invest in it financially.

This is factually incorrect. I wonder how being born outside of society and never hearing about Christianity would help someone advance in the Christian tradition. You need someone to initiate you from within. You need someone to introduce you to the religion. Moreover, any religion is an Egregore, and Egregores are based on human minds. The benefits of engaging with a religion through a powerful saint, rather than a regular person who barely believes, are incomparable. A saint, who embodies and radiates the profound energy of the religion often accompanied by siddhis and spiritual abilities can offer a transformative experience. In contrast, being introduced by someone on the outer layers of the egregore, with limited faith or connection, pales in comparison. The difference is like that between heaven and earth. Most people who follow religions may not even realize that these are powerful energy channels they could benefit from. Instead, they practice out of habit, societal norms, or tradition. Then don’t do it. One of the key differences between public "esoteric" forums and closed "internal arts" schools is that on forums, you are taught and advised by random people without any qualifications, skills, or testing—or worse, from public books. Schools, on the other hand, strictly forbid such practices. Each school would have its own criteria and qualifications, milestones to achieve, that would be required to start teaching. It's a controlled environment. People who preach in public often exude confidence and use public opinion or authority to push their views. The results of these "free teachings" are on full public display. You do not even know what it is. To summarize the previous questions, the third eye or magical powers are not mere gimmicks. They are not like an iPhone that you buy and discard. They represent a complete and fundamental transformation of a being at the core level, permanently altering the way you perceive and experience reality. Monkeys living in the jungle have DNA structures almost identical to ours, yet their lives and world experiences are vastly different from humans'. To put it simply for someone without esoteric experience, the difference between someone who cultivates esoteric arts and unlocks these powers is far more profound than the difference between a human and a monkey. Yes, but even in the advanced or later stages of cultivation, having access to peers of equal or higher levels to communicate and share experiences with is an invaluable asset. For solo cultivators, however, this lack of connection often becomes a fast track to insanity, mental ailments, and qi deviations. The main reason it seems people choose the solo path is to avoid scrutiny and reality checks. This allows them to quickly ascend to a self-proclaimed "galactic demiurge" level and feel satisfied with their delusions. The common problem of self-guidance is that people realize something, and that's it. They get stuck on it feeling they have achieved/attained something. Their bucket gets full with a realization. On cultivation path, you will pass through thousands realizations, and will never stop on any one of them. "There is always a bigger mountain" I don’t see how anyone could develop with such a mindset. You are essentially giving up on cultivation because of karma or other excuses.