freeform

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Some interesting posts - and a nice, compact re-cap of the issue at hand by -O- - thanks for that. I am one of the group of students who feels unaffected by claims/photos/anecdotes. For me they serve to entertain and disrupt's the mind's attempt to stop the flowing river of experience... the doubt, uncertainty keeps my mind from fixating on a 'truth' and thus stagnating and stopping progress... it also injects a little humour into what could be boring 'spiritual' talk. Uncertainty is very underrated. Not only underrated, but we've effectively declared war on uncertainty. Certainty is the new god that we pray to and certainty only exists in the mind... We want certainty of results, we want certainty around claimed abilities, we want certainty about our own progress. I've lost my certainty a while ago - or rather the importance of certainty. I watch my mind grasp for it, and that's entertaining - it's something to find humour in. I find it cute how easily I forget myself and start grasping again - then notice that and crack up with laughter. Sloppy - this is particularly relevant to you - certainty is important to you. I'm not saying you should get rid of that - but I am saying that you should start doing things about it. You seem passionate and I applaud that - now get to doing something about your passion - conduct some experiments!!! start small, see if your qi or another's can improve growth rate of sprouting seeds - something like that. Start actually being curious and put your passion into action - it's fine demanding it from others on an internet forum, but let's be honest, you might as well be demanding millions of dollars in a public toilet. Find ways of testing people's claims - it's actually quite interesting. I think that when you truly work towards certainty, you will begin to see the magic in uncertainty. As a proponent of certainty, please develop and demonstrate some skill in this area... you might find that once you're actually acting on your passion, people will be willing to be 'tested' by you - at the moment as an anonymous poster on an internet forum demanding proof you just won't be taken seriously. And please don't be offended if I find your quest funny - because I find my own quest funny too.

Bradford Keeney - Bushman Shaman

Jaque Fresco is a sweet old man. He's worked for companies that design rotor blades and de-icers.. although apparently there's no evidence of either of these companies having ever existed. He likes to draw pictures and make cool, futuristic models. This guy lives in his imagination - deeply entrenched. You can see from how he talks and moves that his awareness rarely moves outside of his own head... he constantly makes mental images as he speaks... and rarely accesses the intelligence of his body - practitioners normally call this 'ungrounded'. So he creates these fantastic ideas in his imagination - where they work perfectly and luckily don't need to answer to the realities of the real world here. He's not malicious, just lost in his own imagination. He's inviting us into his imagined land through the Venus Project. I think it's interesting - worth exploring - like a good book or an interesting painting - just don't pretend it's grounded in reality. It's very simple - how have past paradigm shifts happened? The answer is even simpler - it's not through politics or economics or sociological design - paradigm shifts have always happened as a result of a huge leap in technology. We learn to work metal and build tools - suddenly the agricultural paradigm arises (without effort or 'design')... We create engines and the industrial revolution takes us further... We create the internet and we have an information-based society... What's the next step? Well it usually happens by accident or comes in from out of nowhere. Maybe free energy will be the next step - but the society that arises as a result can only arise organically - it can't be designed to the sort of extent dear old Jaque would like to think of. Taoist principles are very simple and very complex... life on earth is a duality - if you try to stamp out all 'bad' it will arise where you're not looking. (good and bad always try to reach equilibrium!) We've lived a life with very little work, lots of free time, and generally good health and a deep spiritual life in the past. Although it's an unpopular idea - but as hunter/gatherers we worked between 2 to 4 hours a day and spent the rest of the time singing, dancing, crafting, story telling, painting, spiritual practices... we didn't rape the earth of its resources... but we did die of famines every now and then - and we had to be very careful with population control (again there's no ideal society with only 'good' and no 'bad')... Have a look at the Kalahari Bushman culture - still lives a very similar lifestyle as the hunter/gatherers of the past. If this is the life you want then you really do have to give up your stuff (they only 'own' what they can carry)... you also have to give up all control and live with a deep respect for the earth and the heaven and your fellow man...

Sad to see the derision to substance ratio of your posts weighing more to one side recently.

That's the sensation I get when my belt route is activated.

bone breathing, and the small and large orbits are intermediate and advanced practices - not something to begin with unless you're open in a certain way. Only a teacher would be able to tell. I would definitely recommend seeing a teacher. Books are ok - but in my opinion shouldn't be practised from. If you don't find a good teacher in your area, consider visiting one a little further afield. A high-level teacher will be able to pass on a transmission and enough practices that could keep you progressing at a fast pace for a year before you'd need to see them again. There are many options of course. However Michael Lomax, who posts here, would be my choice http://www.qigongamerica.com/

When our jing is depleted we get fixated on the erotic. Further to that our mind tries to distract us from unpleasant feelings and emotions that need to come up with anything pertinent - and if you have depleted jing, sexuality is the easiest option. I'd suggest that the best thing to do would be to stop all masturbation. Begin eating rich, jing-enhancing foods. Rub your kidneys daily till they get warm. When erotic thoughts and compulsions arise, don't try to 'block' them out - notice that these thoughts and impulses have arisen - give them some detached attention. (this means don't get 'involved' in the thought - just notice the thought and watch it as if from a distance... this is like admiring a still lake from the sun lounger - rather than jumping in and getting wet). Once you've noticed yourself having these thoughts and these urges, paid attention to them - as if from a distance - then just allow them to drift away. It sounds to me like there are some emotions that need to be expressed that you've been avoiding. So as you're re-building your jing and letting erotic thoughts go, you will probably notice emotions come up. Don't try to distract yourself, but let them out - you may need to cry, laugh, roar in anger, curl up - whatever it is, allow yourself to fully experience that. This may take a couple of weeks or a couple of months. But it will always take as long as it takes - so don't be concerned. Let us know how it goes.

No probs. It's a good thing to do whilst watching a film. You would also really benefit from wall squats. Once you feel your feet, ankles, legs and hips feel more alive, you should go see a particular teacher - preferably a pine tree. Find a tree that looks big and healthy - growing straight. Come up to it and say hello. About 2 feet from the trunk, get into a relaxed wuji posture, with a smile on your face and tongue on your palette. Drop your mind to the heart. Expand your awareness and connect with the trunk of the tree - you should feel a subtle (or sometimes not so subtle!) connection or repulsion. You'll be able to tell whether the tree wants to connect or not. Assuming it does want to connect, place your awareness on its roots and let it teach you how to really ground. You will exchange energies, and the tree will help you balance. Say thank you when you're done. Come back to the same tree next time.

In the winter it's best to reserve your energy. Calming exercise, introspection, deep nei kung - rather than vigorous, powerful, external methods. Keep ejaculation to a minimum. Massage the kidneys daily - gentle but firm - press with the back of your hand and massage in a circle with your arms as relaxed as possible. Don't tap or slap the kidneys. When doing deep breathing make sure you expand the lower back as well as the belly - this increases lung capacity, stretches the diaphragm as well as massaging the kidneys and other organs from inside. Rub and massage your ears until they get hot. Take half body baths daily. These are great - fill the bath so it reaches just above your belly button - but no higher. Use warm water (about 40C 104F) stay in there for 20 to 30 minutes. This is a surprisingly powerful practice if done daily - particularly if you 'feel the cold', have circulation problems or cold extremities. I often do the 312 method in the bath

Energy is going up, but not coming down. Deep breathing only fuels the energy. Do ankle rotations. Get a tennis ball and roll it under your feet for a while. when you've done that for a while you can learn to open your front channel.

I have a difficulty understanding what you mean here. Are you saying your interpretation has a sovereignty? Why? So you see grass and you say "the grass is green" (I consider this an interpretation - the grass has no innate quality of 'greenness' - it's the interplay between your particular sensory modalities and 'the grass' that creates the greenness.)... Someone else comes and says "erm - no - the grass is blue-grey" - This is rape? I guess it's rape only if you uphold your particular view as the correct one - the sacred, sovereign 'truth'... Would you not rather change your view, how you're seeing, to accept that the grass really is 'blue-grey'? Just for the entertainment of it? This would be making love rather than getting raped, no? Why would you choose rape over love-making? If you're willing to make love with every way of seeing grass, surely the world becomes a bigger, more interesting playground? I mean I see your point in a way - but it only makes sense if you're happy to get stuck on one particular interpretation - why not make the interpretation fluid? I guess if suddenly you went "ah - well if HE says it's blue grey - then it must be so - I'll stick with that"... The beauty of our mind is that we can create whatever we want with it - not for some specific outcome that we want to stick with, but just for play! The more love you make - the more interpretations you allow - the bigger the world becomes - the less stuck your mind gets. The modern person loves getting stuck. We love trying to reach some absolute truth. But as far as I can tell the world keeps moving, shifting, changing. If we try to remain stationary in a moving universe we engage in a battle we'll never win. It's difficult for the modern person to hold a contradiction - we want to collapse to one or the other. Like Schrodinger's cat - maybe you were invisible and visible at the same time. I can hold both 'the photos show golden dragon body manifesting' and 'the photos show the effect of a slow shutter speed' - and not lean one way or another... it's certainly more fun not coming to conclusions - or rather coming to two different/competing conclusions at the same time. Light is both particles and waves - there are experiments that prove one and disprove the other - for both sides - which one is the sacred, sovereign truth?!

These 'scientists' you guys are talking about seem way more mystical than the Maxs and John Changs of this world. I reckon it's a little immature to think of 'scientists' as these benevolent truth verifiers. The science world is just as enmeshed in politics, economy and dogma as the rest of us. Firstly - What kind of scientist would risk his career to study 'paranormal people'... think about it. It's likely to be a scientist with no real 'career' to speak of... There are thousands of scientists with no reputation studying 'the paranormal'... is their research being taken seriously? Secondly - Research costs money. A lot of money. To get to the point where it would even register on the scientific community's radar it would cost millions. Of course even with a lot of money it could easily be dismissed... the creationists are pumping loads of funds into disproving the existence of dinosaurs before man. The only people willing to give out this level of funding almost always have an agenda - whether political or good old $$... There are very few organisations with money and power that would benefit from this sort of research. In fact there are very many organisations with a lot of money and a lot of power and already involved in funding many scientific studies that would greatly benefit from keeping this kind of research out of the labs. Thirdly - lets say in a highly unrealistic alternate universe a prominent scientist, with good reputation in his field decides he's ready to face the mockery of his skeptical peers and takes on the opportunity to study a person such as Max... And he manages to partner with a similarly unlikely, but credible billionaire, ready to squander his riches on this sort of project. What exactly would they study? I mean he can't exactly 'verify' that Max can turn into a brilliant white light... He needs something to measure... ok he could measure the amount of photons coming off of Max (this phenomenon has been studied already in plants and animal cells)... But would the headline "Scientist discovers man who gives off unusual amount of photons!" really change the world as dramatically as we'd all like? There are hundreds of studies on all manner of qi-related phenomena... qi gong masters having unusual electrical properties, giving off inaudible, low frequency sound, affecting in-vitro cells etc... there's statistical data on the effects on patients in qi-gong hospital in china... none of that has broken through to the mainstream to challenge our world-view yet. I mean if tens of thousands of witnesses who directly witnessed a 'miracle' at Fatima can be discounted, discredited or just plain laughed at, then what do you reckon would happen if someone like Max turned into a bright light on stage?... I get your sentiments guys. Of course I would love for things that us Taobums cherish, practice and study deeply every day to be validated and accepted or at least seriously studied and examined... but the sad truth is it's just not that simple. It's naive to think that the world at large is curious enough and more importantly open-minded enough. Most of us are set in our ways. The sheer terror of having our world-view torn apart by these 'miraculous' phenomena is just too much to bear - and so we do anything in our power to keep to the status-quo. Just to illustrate the point it's very common for entire families to disbelieve/disregard/distort/excuse/hide from very clear, obvious, unequivocal, evidence of sexual abuse in their family... because the horror of coming to terms with the reality is far too painful - so their entire psyche blocks the possibility of this being true in every way it can... and this can be the case for dozens of members of the same family... You might think of this as an over-dramatic comparison - that maybe so, but the mechanism is the same... It's also the same when a follower or maybe a couple of thousand followers of a guru are presented with unequivocal evidence that he or she is a complete charlatan would disbelieve/disregard/distort/excuse/hide from the evidence. I propose true skepticism. Most people claiming to be skeptics are never skeptical about anything except the things they have a prejudice against. It's most important to be skeptical with your own beliefs and assumptions. That's the only truly skeptical answer here...

Ahmed - cool! - let me know how you get on. I'm always interested in 'spontaneous' practices, and would like to meet with Master Wong.

You have a great opportunity here. This increase in sensitivity is good sign of progress. The problems you're having are not with sensitivity itself, but with managing sensitivity. Our awareness is like light. It can be focused to a narrow beam or spread peripherally like a bare lightbulb in the middle of the room... when we focus our beam on something in particular, we ignore everything else - when we spread our awareness we cannot focus on anything in particular. 21st century life is almost solely involves narrowing your awareness into a focused beam. The very nature of reading this is forcing you to narrow your focus. This narrowing has its plusses and its minuses... It makes anything that you're focused on seem very intense. In our hunter gatherer past this narrowing was very useful when hunting... watch some videos of lions focusing on their pray - this is the kind of focus we almost constantly live in - or at the very least aim to live in. When you're in a cinema, watching a horror movie, your attention focuses on the screen, and the sounds... everything else is ignored... since narrowed awareness makes for intense, focused sensitivity we often jump, scream, and are frightened by what we see. If on the other hand you began to spread your focus... notice the seat you're sitting on... notice the people near you, behind you... notice your feet on the floor.. the smell of the room... the space between you and the screen etc. If you do this, suddenly what's on screen becomes part of the background... that edge of intensity is greatly diminished... By spreading your focus you're creating space. when you're becoming conscious of people's vibes your attention jumps to this novel experience and focuses... this makes it very intense... and at the same time you're missing the vibes that everything else is giving off - because it always is - you just need to notice it... Next time this happens just accept it, and notice more. Slowly spread your attention further. You say you feel like by breathing and letting go, the stuff you notice goes deeper into you... I suggest that what happens is by breathing and relaxing you're actually increasing your sensitivity - and since your awareness is focused on one thing, that one thing is felt and experienced deeper. So instead slow your breathing, relax and spread your focus. Let me know how that works for you.

I'm so sad to hear of your tragic news, Santi. My deepest condolences to you, your family and everyone who knew and loved your son Izaac.

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Put very simply we have the Mind and the Body... two very different aspects of you... Some people advocate working solely on the mind - where the body is just a dense hindrance... so they meditate and meditate and do astral travel and visualisations and expand their awareness with drugs and ideas and thoughts and philosophies. Some people advocate working solely on the body - it's actually a path much more suited to most people in this day and age. They focus on the health of their entire system - their organs, muscles, tendons, bones and glands. They do martial arts, qi gong, breathing, yoga, special diets etc. All to purify their body. If you had to put Taoist and Buddhist practitioners into pigeon-holes - Taoists tend to focus on the body and Buddhists tend to focus on their mind. However - most advanced Taoists would tell you that purifying the body is a foundation to further travel the spiritual path. By deeply connecting with the physical you begin to see the spiritual in it. Taoist practitioners work with the energy - refining from the very physical to the energetic and purifying to the spiritual... also - just like the cycle of water and weather systems on our planet they bring the spiritual down and ground it in the energetic and physical aspects of themselves... Many Taoists emphasise practice - rather than philosophy. You will notice that as you start practising qi gong that your mind will stop racing, your sensory awareness will be turned up and you will develop a strong and noticeable 'presence'. This is the result of consciousness anchoring to the physical aspect of 'you'. Sexuality for some Taoists is an important aspect of practice - conserving your semen, whilst practising specific qi gong techniques has certain effects on many systems and glands in the body. Sexuality is not ignored - it is either sublimated or used as a tool - but it's never ignored or suppressed. Developing a child-like mind has been mentioned - it's one of the effects of good practice. Being able to find joy and curiosity in everything you observe... having simple, un-contrived motivations and seeing other people, yourself and the world in a non-judgemental, natural, loving way. Accepting the good and the bad that life has to offer with open arms. Developing this state of mind leads to powerful spiritual experiences eventually... And it all starts with qi gong practice. Find a good teacher (there are several great ones here that would accept you providing you show maturity and balance) and learn from them. It's as simple as that

I'm not sure where you get this impression. As Mal said - Tao just is - and it includes within it all contradictions and extremes... You trying to move with the Tao is part of Tao and you trying to move against the Tao is part of Tao... This is a paradox to the mind, i agree. This state of oneness is not a fluffy, happy, heavenly playpen (well it is... but it's also the opposite - at the same time) - it's perfect in its balance and flow... "There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so" The thinking mind pretends it's separate from everything... it pretends to be individual and unconnected... this isn't good or bad - it just causes a lot of effort... to pretend to be individual requires a lot of effort - it's a very big lie and requires constant vigilance to keep reality from seeping in and to warp, delete and distort all incoming information in a way that keeps the mind on its throne... How does this relate to the video of the girl throwing puppies in the river? It's interesting to watch your responses as they arise and notice the millions of subtle and not so subtle distortions, deletions and additions your mind makes. Watching the mind assert its importance is always both tragic and fascinating... but at least you get to see the layers of 'stuff' you add to seeing a moving image in front of you on the screen. By 'understanding' what's going on, the mind asserts its importance - the king of 'you' understands all! There are split-second judgements and double binds that happen without the un-aware noticing it happen... I saw this video - which means it really happened - which means the girl is evil - she's even laughing - which means she's really evil... These are all 'un-grounded' assessments (as I call em) - meaning they come not from what's really in front of you - but from the mind. For all we know the video is fake!

I hope one day to have an opportunity to learn from you Michael.

Haha. You're sweet. And very clever too. It's definitely less painful to go into thoughts than it is to delve deeply into yourself. Maybe some day you'll have an opportunity to stop your 'mental gymnastics' for just long enough to have a true, spontaneous, impulse born from somewhere much bigger than your personal self.

no - I get what you mean.

"Kinda"!? "in a way"!? It sounds like you've chosen a path, and you're now experiencing the (common) effects of it. Remember that the mind likes to throw up doubts and concerns when it feels like it's losing its (illusion of) control. It's good to check with a doctor even if it's just to set your mind at ease.

There are also 'formless' - qi gong methods in Taoism. Stillness Movement is one such practice - but there are many more.