freeform

Might sound weird, but congratulations! My advice - and I used this metaphor before - and I have found it quite helpful: Imagine getting to your home one day - opening the front door, walking in and discovering on your doorstep a beautifully wrapped present right there on the floor. It's got a bright shiny bow, colourful, sparkly wrapping paper and a little note saying "For Sloppy Zhang". By the way - pay attention to the feeling of your feet on the floor and your butt on the chair as you read on. Now imagine you've been on a vacation... for years... decades even... and as you come up to the front door of your home, you insert the key, turn it and try to push the door open, but you can feel an obstruction! you manage to push it just enough to be able to peer in... So you do, and you notice that the house is so full of nicely wrapped gifts that it's almost impossible to get in! This is the situation most people are in... What you have managed to do is take out and unwrap enough of these gifts that you are able to get in through the door and are now unwrapping more and more as you get deeper and deeper into your home. All the gifts are books. They're filled with elaborate stories. All about you and your life. Some of them are great! You love reading them over and over and over again, coz the stories make you feel good - secure, comfortable, content. Many people get stuck reading the same 5 or 6 books over and over, stuck in the hallway, unable to get deeper into their home. But that doesn't concern them, coz the stories in the books keep them occupied, so it's fine... You on the other hand, you want to get home - I mean really get in there, not just the front porch or the hallway, but all the way in - deep inside your home, where there is a fireplace, with a gentle fire burning keeping your home warm for you. And you don't want to be there temporarily, you don't want to wade through a bunch of nicely wrapped presents and unwrapped books to be able to get to the fire in the centre. You want to have a clear, effortless way in there and out of there, unobstructed and easy to navigate. So you've started going through all the presents, unwrapping them, reading some of the books, throwing some out, filing some for later, placing the ones you really like on the mantelpiece... and now you've come across a book that frightens you! You've unwrapped it, peeked inside the book and it really scares you - you've not come across books like this before, so you have no idea what to do with it! It's a book about you, but the story makes you feel uncomfortable... So this is what I suggest. Take the book and feel it in your hands. Feel the weight of it. Feel the texture of the cover. Hit yourself with it. Throw it on the floor and listen to the sound it makes. Prop a wobbly table leg with the book. Stand on it. Hit it. Throw it against the wall. Feel all the ways that your body can make use of this book. Feel how your body responds to it. The story inside is inconsequential - it's only a story - the physicality of the book is far more important! Once you've allowed your body to experience the physicality of it fully, in every way possible, take this book... make your way to the fireplace in the centre of your home and throw it in... let the book be the fuel that warms your home! Now go back, collect all the other books that you've unwrapped and do the same thing - let your body respond to the physicality of it. Then, no matter how much you like or dislike the story, take the book and throw it into the fire. Let the heat created spread throughout your home. Every present needs to be unwrapped, every book needs to be felt by your body and if you want to live comfortably in your home, and maybe even think of enlightenment some day, you need to let go of each and every book, no matter how scary, how comforting, how blissful, how tragic - it all needs to be let go of. And you're in the process of doing that now. You're free to read the books if you want, but don't get stuck in the story... it's of no consequence... the best thing about the story is its entertainment value. So feel your butt on the chair again. You come up to your front door, open it and find another beautifully wrapped gift there in front of you. What will you do?

This is something that I'm finding difficult to put together in my mind, and hopefully I can get a few opinions from you guys. I practice all these 'weird' things that many people out there don’t understand. When someone asks you 'what's your hobby?' - do you tell them you practice Taoist Internal Alchemy? And if they say 'what's that?' what do you answer? Does practicing this stuff alienate you from others that don’t? How do you cope with this? Also sometimes you may know that someone would really benefit from a practice, but they're completely closed to it, what can you do? I know that if you push 'em usually they'll close up to it even more but if you don’t then they stay the way they are without any improvement. If you manage to convince them to 'give it a try' they might do it once or twice, with no benefit and go back to the way they were without ever experiencing the benefits. What can you do?

Nothing to worry about. In fact it's a good sign. You're re-establishing a link to your divine intelligence - which is closely linked with your bodily intelligence, and not very linked with your ordinary, mental intelligence. So it's not a surprise that you're freaked out! I know many people that have this kind of thing in Kunlun practice - just let go and let it do its thing

K word Ratu Bagus African Bushman Shamen also - I have posted this before - but have a look here for more on Shi De Lon.

A reliable teacher told me that the Qlink closes the chakras - so that outside influences don't disrupt their function.

Song Yongdao, Thanks for your post - very interesting, thanks. I also believe that this form of spontaneous practice originates from the oldest lineages of all - in Africa... However, your understanding of African religion seems really very limited... The kind of evaluation an English gentleman anthropologist might come up with studying the 'brutish barbarians'... They actually have a very developed system and experiential understanding of spirituality... they have the dan tiens, yin, yang, central channel etc... The system is not in any way theoretical, but experiential... talking about it is not what they like to do. Because you don't look hard enough (there are many others - this kind of thing is very anti-theoretical, so you won't read much about it, but you will find it if you're open to it)

I personally wouldn't hold the breath if it naturally wants to resume.

Words/Silence is a false and highly subjective duality... still fun though

Robert Anton Wilson is my hero!

I think the real enjoyment of this place is not the 'information' or the words, but the familiar characters and personalities. The information can be useful but it's the social energy that's enjoyable. The cool stuff is always in between the words. I don't come here for help with practice... although sometimes I get that... I don't come here to get more avenues of 'research'... although sometimes I get that too... I don't come for the drama, the arguments, the youtube videos, the 'my master is better than yours' posts... but I get all of these... I actually come here for the people! but I enjoy the other bits too

*Sigh* It's interesting to see it all rise and fall. We're all participating in each other's evolution. The good, the bad, the criticisms, the congratulations are all like the inhales and exhales that give us life. Chris, there's no such thing as bad press. You've done a wonderful job and have brought a lot of hope to a lot of people. You don't need to defend yourself, you have nothing to defend and there is nothing to defend against. I think -O- mentioned the distaste we seem to have for the negative... Contraction is just as important as expansion, pain is just as important as pleasure and sadness is as important as joy... A pendulum swings both ways, if you try to make it swing one way more than the other, then the other side will also get the momentum, and at some point the pendulum will swing back with more force... Also - what is visible and what is hidden? Sometimes we tend to get a big, black sheet of paper and some sticky tape, then go up to the pendulum and tape the sheet of paper up, covering one side of the pendulum path, so that we only see it swinging on one side... whether the positive or the negative is visible, it doesn't matter because it always swings both ways, just one half is hidden... We tend to fixate on one half or the other of where the pendulum swings, but if instead we focused our awareness on the swinging motion of the pendulum then we can be spiritually nourished by all of its movements... not an easy task - as paying attention to motion requires constant presence, whereas paying attention to location requires much less (think of the difference between watching football on TV and actually playing the game). There is a still, neutral point (in the pivot) - but it can only be found if we pay full attention to the full range of motion the pendulum provides for us. Some of you will think "what on earth is he on about".... some of you will "get it".... for some this post won't even register (it doesn't engage in the drama, so the volume is comparatively low)... for some it will make sense now, for some later, for some not at all... some will see it on one level, some on a deeper level, for some it will cascade down through many levels. Some will get the significance, some will not, some won't even realise there is any significance to "get"... And every single one of these outcomes (and the millions of other outcomes) from this little post can be spiritual nourishment... not only this little post, but every single stimulus, every sight, sound, sensation, smell or taste can be spiritual nourishment if only we allow it to be.

I completely agree. I don't mean to judge Yoda. And I support his decisions 100% In fact I have no doubt that he is doing exactly what's right for him. But people need to realise this was Yoda's 'process' and that each person will have their own process. With their own lessons. People have wildly different reactions to a stimulus... I saw the film Bruno this weekend - some people were disgusted and left the cinema 15 minutes into the film... some were roaring with uncontrollable laughter... some just had a steady smile... Taking any one person's reaction to the film diminishes your own ability to experience it for yourself free of another's 'spin'. I realised early on and it's been stated before that you're almost guaranteed to have a 'process' - what it will be for you no one can really know for sure. This should not be approached as a hobby, like you would approach a weekend tai chi class or gardening - Kunlun involves spiritual transformation, you shouldn't approach this thinking you can just stay in your comfortable, safe cage that you've built over the years. And when it really gets going then the significance of 'transformation' really hits you. For me personally, I've had almost no experience with any reptilians or anything like that. I have about as much interest in that as I do with what's on TV - I may watch it from time to time, maybe laugh, maybe cry and then get on with real life. I believe that the spontaneous movement part of Kunlun comes from the African Bushman Shaman lineage - although they often have very powerful experiences of all kinds of beings and ancestors and ascended masters, after the experience it is all let go of and treated as a joke. Max reminds everyone to keep a childlike nature for a good reason.

-O- I have found each one of your posts illuminating. Even in your writing I can feel a real three dimensionality and a vulnerability to you... this speaks volumes in itself. thank you, thank you, thank you.

Sloppy Zhang. really nice post.

I have utmost respect for Trunk, and he's been very level-headed, non-dramatic and extremely helpful to the community of online cultivators. So I don't like reading assumptions about Trunk scaremongering or having some kind of 'agenda', because I know that Trunk always comes from a place of service and compassion. I do, however, take issue with 'seriously freaky dangerous problems' in the case of Yoda (I do like the phrase though ). In all honesty Yoda, who I also respect deeply, has not really put forth any real evidence of any actual harm beyond what fear and paranoia could twist an event to make it seem sinister. Yoda's wife believes he is over-reacting - the only real 'harm' is that his daughter started talking about ghosts, wakes up in the night, has shaken kunlun style etc. Yesterday I saw something that made me think of this situation.. This family was walking along and the small child fell over. As she fell over she looked at her mother - the mother immediately reacted with shock and horror - you could see it in her face in a split second, and as soon as the child saw this she started crying, wailing, tears everywhere. I have also witnessed a similar event where the parent made no big deal, the child just got up, got a hug and carried on. Children tend to look to adults to learn how to react to what's there! So if the parent puts a 'bad' spin on what the child witnesses, that's how it will play out. Yoda enjoys the freaky side of life... you can see it in pretty much every practice he's taken up... at the moment he is involved in a lineage which was 'revealed' to someone by an 'ascended master' - the system is heavily concerned with spirits, gods, deities, talismans, and other magickal techniques... nothing wrong with that, but it needs to be taken into account! So Yoda was always pushing for the 'freaky experiences' in Kunlun... he was at some point really excited as was his daughter that she really 'got' kunlun... a lot of the stories of his daughter waking up in the night and doing spontaneous movements were presented with a very positive spin. Something spooked Yoda, and suddenly everything that was the evidence of effective practice took on a sinister spin and became evidence for something being very wrong. So I'm not saying there are no problems with the practice. I'm open to the possibility, but there was only really a couple of cases (one I think was dizzydazzle's experience and mgd's) where it struck me that something actually went wrong beyond 'personal stuff', but dizzydazzle refused to reveal any more (I'm genuinely interested) and mgd's experience became very clouded by an emotional drama that made it almost impossible to distinguish any concrete problem from mgd's own spin on things. I think it's important to be level headed with this, stay out of the drama and actually watch what's there without engaging too much of our own 'stuff'.

Haha! yes quite possibly... but the drama seems to only really happen outside of practice. The thing about effective dismantling practices is they have a very difficult period where you quite literally fall apart... kind of like a mental breakdown... having a black hole strip us of our 'identity' - all of the aspects of ourself that we could hide behind begin to disappear and so we tend to grasp onto anything that makes us feel 'real' or secure... and this can be anything from seeking power to getting stuck in bliss to becoming engaged with thought or behaviour patterns or emotional dramas... But we carry on with practice and we drop these things and reach a new level of openness and freedom... and we carry on practising and we find yet another layer of deeper 'stuff'... and so we carry on, dismantling and dropping away anything that is not needed... This sounds kind of dramatic, but in reality it's not - you used to be free from most of that 'stuff' as a kid... I think it's important to have a sense of curiosity and playfulness with this stuff... it's much easier when you do. As soon as you start taking anything seriously you will be able to tell that you're building - not letting go

Kunlun is a bit of an upside down practice... it's very different from about 80% of qi gong and spiritual practices... Most try to build. You build a strong foundation, you correct your thoughts and intentions, you control your behaviours and emotions... you build and build and refine and build... the idea is to build a stairway up to 'heaven' (enlightenment, or whatever you might wish to call it). Kunlun dismantles. It does this by letting go. Letting everything go... letting 'letting go' go... letting thoughts go.... emotions go... everything that has been built needs to be let go of... Letting things go is difficult - all the things that you thought were 'you' - they need to go... all the things that you thought were important to you - they need to be let go of too... it's like a slippery slope and there's nothing to hold on to... can be quite alarming and can also be very blissful... So in Kunlun we dismantle everything until the underlying heaven just comes through. Kunlun is not the only path that achieves this through dismantling. ---- So for me it's funny when the Builders and Dismantlers clash. Builder: "are you crazy!!!? - you're willing to give up all the things that you hold important in you!!?" Dismantler: "You're crazy for carrying all that 'important' stuff around - when none of it is real, it's an unbearable burden that keeps you from who you really are" Builder: "...and what's with all the abstractions, contradictions and lack of concrete knowledge?" Dismantler: "I hold no knowledge - everything I need comes to me in the moment... held knowledge is not based on now, but on history" Builder: "that makes no sense!!" Dismantler: "yup - fun isn't it!?" Builder: "errr no."

You're quite right - at least in how I do my practice - forcing is definitely counter-productive. And yes - there may well be a learned cautiousness in the body of flowing upwards. So it's best to notice the upwards movement that is already there... I find that when my dan tien is filled and I allow it, the energy moves upwards... They key is always to have your awareness focused on what is 'there' rather than what you want to have happen... notice what's there and you have a much better chance of manoeuvring to where you need to go effortlessly.

The chi is always flowing both ways - you might be finding it harder to notice the upwards movement as you're accustomed to the sensation of downwards movement... flow from one to the other and it will be effortless: Sometimes, after flowing down, as your dan tien is filled, just invite the energy to 'expand' and see if the energy moves upwards...

I didn't see any spontaneous movement there. simply collapsing to the ground is not spontaneous movement... pretty funny though Check out The Shakers of St Vincent... they have some real spontaneous movement brought from the African lineage. http://shakingmedicine.com/shaking-medicin...ng-medicine.php - have a look here for research on spontaneous movement practice from around the world...

Injaculating will not (in my oppinion) reserve your jing at all. You will end up redirecting it in your bladder and pissing it out... at the same time creating stagnation and damaging the 'piping'... If you're really set on conserving sexual jing, just stop masturbating... stop arousing yourself and you will see that in two weeks it will be much easier... you have low libido as it is, so why would you want to in or ejaculate at all? If you do stop all sexual activity, you will need to do a lot of exercise and the breathing as suggested by others. In the mornings when you wake up, sit on the edge of your bed, bend forward, rub your hands together until warm and then rub your kidneys as you breath slowly and deeply into the area... rubbing your ears is good too... get a tennis ball and massage your soles by pressing onto it and rolling the ball under your foot. The reason you got such a quick and thorough response is because we've seen it before and most of us know the dangers and can see how you might really damage yourself.

I would recommend stopping all Chia practice. Stop microcosmic orbit! stop injaculating! this is what I have found from my practice: my main practice, involving spontaneous movement, re-distributes the stored sexual essence throughout the body, but especially the bones and belly. If I start concentrating somewhere specific - like up the spine, the energy, if it encounters a blockage, starts pooling... and unless you have done a lot of qigong, you're very likely to have quite a few blockages... what happens is the energy pools and when you sleep it slides back down the spine and collects in your sexual centre, making it far more likely to 'come out'... I can't recommend anything specific for you to do, apart from stopping what you're doing now, because you may damage yourself. Check out Trunk's site... focus on opening your up body... good luck.

I agree with dwai, Josh and Scotty. [edit - and also Uncle Screwtape, Xuesheng and probably what Tao Meow whispered ] I remember as a kid playing with the streams of water that were irrigating my grand dad's plot... I could dam up and redirect the water... it was fun... I also remember a much bigger stream nearby... Some of the adults decided it would be great to dam it so the kids could swim around in the pond created and the over-flow could irrigate the plots... so they got huge logs and earth and stones and dammed the stream off... in about a week the water started getting through the cracks... a day later, the dam was gone... So next time they brought in a huge plastic sheet to keep the water from seeping through... by end of next week the dam was gone... So they decided to bring in the heavy artillery... they redirected the stream temporarily and drained the area to be dammed, dug down and created foundations, then they poured tons of concrete to create a heavy duty dam... this lasted a while... maybe a month ... but by next month the stream just went round the sides of the concrete... In the they decided to let the water flow where the water wants to flow... Emotions are not controllable. The part of you that 'controls' is like a capricious 2 year old, your emotions are ruled by a far more powerful, far wiser part of you... If you put up dams to stop emotion, it will get through somehow eventually... the best thing to do is let strong emotion flow through completely don't stop it and don't get entangled in it - just let it flow. This is true both mentally and energetically - don't engage in the drama just watch it arise and flow through, don't ignore or suppress or try to change the feelings in your body let them arise and flow through your whole body and out... There is, however, a point before an emotion becomes a powerful torrent... I feel it as a little tugging in my body... if I pay attention to the tugging, it's like noticing the little stream before it becomes a torrent... notice the tugging - it has an important message, if I receive the message at this point then the emotion won't escalate... if I don't listen to it, it will get louder! Of course this requires a level of sensitivity and awareness that we are building with our qi gong and meditation practices... For someone starting out, I would recommend to play with noticing the sensations accompanying the emotions and eventually you'll be able to notice the sensations before the full emotion kicks in...

I like this - it's a productive topic. Thanks. Regarding emotions and beliefs... personally I see it like this: emotion just IS... it doesn't come from beliefs, it's just there... imagine emotion as water... it's there and it flows... that's about it... beliefs are like a network of tributaries, dams, lakes, waterfalls... beliefs are the structure to support the water to flow in a certain way... ... so if you let an emotion play out, and pay attention to how it flows (rather than the drama and the words that are the result) - you can notice the structure through which the emotion flows... so you learn the 'belief' behind it - but not a belief in the ordinary sense - that can be expressed through words... it's more of an internal energetic movement pattern... you could probably verbalise it, but it would be a disservice to do that... emotion itself, I find, has no flavour of its own - it's perfectly balanced... as it flows through the different terrains of the body and mind it picks up the flavours of the places it flows through... and what comes into awareness is this flavoured water... we normally have a tiny taste and then commentate and commentate and commentate... (it's a good strategy to avoid feeling the emotion) the land of emotion is far wiser and more powerful than the simple conscious mind... emotion is the mediator between the infinite part of us and the very finite part of us... if we can tune in carefully we notice that before dramatic emotional storms there is usually a little energetic pull or push - it's a message from the land of emotion... and it's usually not even noticed... or is ignored... so the delivery of the message has to get louder... we can't stand the power of this and so we go into our mind and talk to ourselves about it, which disconnects us further from the body... this all happens in milliseconds - so very easy to miss it... so what I try to do is move in the opposite direction - move deeper and deeper into the emotion rather than out of it into 'thought'. It's actually a natural path to follow... it's like falling down into a well, when normally we try to climb up and out of it.. of course it's much more scary to fall down than climb up... but it is easier