freeform

SJ - would it also be interesting to consider whether it's impossible to cultivate anything without some form of relationship/interaction? I know you tend to de-personalise these things - clever little illusions of the mind - to name something as 'chi' and therefore remove any inherent intelligence or any kind of anthropomorphic 'personality'. When I try to place myself in your world, I come into a world of compartmentalisation. I guess this is partly what you mean by power - the act of removing the spirit from 'chi' and making it into a basic, almost lifeless 'tool' or 'resource' - this is a great act of control, not unlike what most of humanity is doing anyway, but just more purposeful. Why are you now trying to open your heart, SJ? Do you realise you have to give up all your power? all your control? You see - if you really want to open your heart, you have to be prepared to lose everything. When you're chasing power it becomes a problem to have relationships - relationships with nature, with your body spirits, with loved ones, with ancestors, with other masters etc... With power, you have to constantly train and build and protect yourself from losing what you've accumulated. When you're coming from the heart you surrender everything you have. You give up all your (illusion of) power. you have to become an empty vessel for the divine to work through you. Once you're empty enough and your heart is open and sincere in its wish to connect directly to God/Tao, you become like a walking lightning rod and at the perfect opportunity the spiritual lightning strikes you and you shake and convulse, incorporating the high voltage and extreme brightness of the light into your body. At some point the current runs through you constantly - you can't hold or accumulate this current - it's far too big for you to hold - you just let it run through you as it cleans you out in its own intelligent way. You just have to get out of the way of this process. It seems that at this point you start to radiate love and all kinds of karmic 'debts' are settled. Whether through dreams, actual relationships, illnesses, whatever. When you have a powerful current of energy running through you, none of this is a problem, because you're completing processes for you, your past, present and future selves as well as for your ancestors and even for humanity itself... This is very frightening for someone concerned with power, but for someone concerned with Love, this is just part of the process - we are all one and we all want to ascend - and our ability to help that happen is a gift - not a burden. Whoever your teacher is, has been or will be, you have some kind of relationship - and by 'teacher' I mean pretty much anyone or anything - from a falling leaf to your father. The relationship can be a struggle for power or it can be a mutual opening to Love where you help each other evolve and grow spiritually... (To anyone concerned with power this seems sinister - to anyone concerned with Love this will trigger a sense of wonder...)

Agreed with Yoda, The key is not to control movement of energy in the body! Whatever happens spontaneously should be allowed to play through - your body is far wiser in matters of the body than the mind is. 3 3 3 2 2 2 1 1 1

SJ - might be worth considering: If you think in terms of relativity - When Quan Yin answers your prayers is she answering the prayers of a demon!? I love Lin, and although I didn't follow that thread, from what you quoted, it seems to me that he's re-enforcing your (and other's) fairy-tale Christian-centric idea of spirits and demons. I like to follow the idea that we're infinite spirits that chose to come to earth to experience limitation and duality... not only did we choose this, but we waited in a very long line for the opportunity to do it!! The funny thing is that as soon as we are born into a body, as soon as we start to experience duality we lose our connection with the infinite, we get lost and confused and we feel this huge separation and loss of the divine... I suggest that we're here to fully experience limitation and duality... including the ultimate duality of 'finite' and the 'infinite'... not to try and run away from limitation and live only in the infinite... and in the same way not live only in a finite, limited way. We're here to witness the dance of the finite with the infinite - this is alchemy. Why do I say all this? - Well - it's because it appears that in this world of duality there is always an equal amount of yin and yang - good and bad... The mind tries to control things by separating good and bad... by making it seem there is more good than bad or more bad than good... we live lives of chasing the good and avoiding the bad, and so we miss the underlying balanced perfection that already is. When you start thinking in terms of good spirits and bad spirits it's again an attempt to control (control = power) - when you stop that and instead witness what is you can't help but feel Love (not as an emotion, but as an underlying perfect 'tone'). At this point you lose your concern over what is better or what is worse... because it becomes self-evident that it's all the same. I'm not denying suffering or joy - but when you're suffering the joy is hidden and when you feel joy the suffering is hidden - our heart is more than capable of feeling both at the same time!! really! if you sincerely ask for it and succeed in getting out of the way enough for it to be revealed, you'll feel the huge amount of energy and Love created by the joining/friction of joy and suffering (or rather - by the discovery that joy and suffering have always lived together - just neither side of the coin is hidden any longer). Lin says to avoid any master with even a hint of darkness - but I would avoid any master that only seems 'good' - because the 'bad' is there too - it's just in the shadows controlling things quietly, unseen. These church ministers are a 'good' example. I'm so sorry to hear about your daughter. All I could do in this situation is truly forgive the man - as painful as that may seem. And it's very difficult and cathartic to say this, but only with full forgiveness can the perfection of what happened be revealed. Power vs Love!

What you call 'chi' a shaman might call 'spirit'... The five elements - you can view them as qualities to chi or you can view them as directions or seasons or organs or spirits... This is 'circular thinking' as Keeney likes to call it (I think he got it off Gregory Bateson)... Regarding the side-path of seeking power from spirits. The Kalahari Bushmen literally see horizontal and vertical 'strings' - the horizontal ones will give you some form of 'power' - you could shapeshift into a lion, or some other animal, help with the hunt, affect weather etc... but by the wisest shamen these are seen as unnecessary diversions from going to your heart where you set up a resonance, or a space that becomes the vessel for the divine to fill. When your heart is fully open and you sincerely search for it, you can find the great vertical string that leads directly to God... they then climb the string and get cooked by God. They also say that if you look closely, the string is composed of all their ancestors one on top of each other. You make deals and transactions with everything around you - constantly - this again is circular thinking... As I push these buttons on the keyboard they provide resistance and push back - and this in turn creates pixels on the screen - and I look at these pixels, translate them into sounds etc etc. We live in a world of inter-relation - everything is connected with everything else - the spirit of this forum provides us with a wealth of information, and we pay back by adding our own experience and thoughts and information to it... So SJ - you're right now indebted to a spirit! In the world of power these interrelationships are a problem - power looks for control, and when you are dependant on others and others are dependant on you, it creates less scope for you to show your power and control. When you concentrate on Love these inter-relationships provide a nurturing feedback-loop that allows you to grow and expand further and further... but we're getting way off-topic...

Indeed!!! very good point - and I completely agree. My heart is far from being completely open and I do catch myself attempting to pass off control/power as love... but it's painfully obvious when that happens... As one of my teachers likes to say - 'you can always tell the difference by the quality of the spaces in between the thoughts.'

Firstly - I'm glad you decided to meet with Max - I think you will be pleasantly surprised. Secondly - "It's what shamanism is all about." - you mean you're one of those impossibly rare souls that can understand what something is all about!!? I'm just going on the assumption that you really don't know all about shamanism - because at the very least you're missing a very important piece. You say shamans cultivate power by interacting with spirits - which is in fact true - for a certain kind of shaman... According to Bradford Keeney who studied bushamn shamans in africa amongst others, the wisest shamans consider that level of practice as the beginning stages - a kind of adolescent stage of development. If a shaman wants to grow s/he has to leave behind power and concentrate on love... Once you connect to and cultivate unconditional Love, as a shaman, you stop dealing with politics and power struggles with spirits in the lower astral and start to connect directly to the original source - Tao, God, whatever you wish to call it.. the strongest of the bushman shamans are considered to have been 'fully cooked by God'. To me you seem a fairly powerful guy - but I have not had any impression of love or an open heart from you - maybe that's why it's hard for you to see that in others...?

I think that's actually the best way to keep thoughts! Keeping thoughts sketchy allows you to place more trust in experience than in words... It seems that's how the San do it... the needles, heating, cooling, cleaning giving, receiving them, how they move, the threads are all loose ideas designed not to give any concrete information - just to keep your attention on experience than info. By the way - where did you get Egyptian cultivation info from? How is your practice with the rods?

Well - on more of a comical note rather than a serious one... but I agree! would be great to see what ensues... my guess: Steve will be silent for a while, then eventually come up with a million and one magical reasons for not meeting Max... I actually agree with him that there is no malicious intent in what he writes... just all kinds of his ego-crap that gets stirred up by the energy... It's just a little cruel to project your own crap out to everyone else - but hey - each person deals with it in their own way. And Steve - you're not kidding anyone (apart from yourself maybe) when you say you gain no energy from this - all this drama stirs up a lot of emotional energy and to many of us it's quite obvious to see how you relish the opportunity to stir up more drama and feed off the energy that results from the friction... this could be seen as a form of emotional vampirism (to put it in a dramatic term that you might like).

Scott - I didn't mean to confuse anyone, I guess "disintegration of the ego" has the connotation of "making the ego go away" - but that's far from what I meant. By dis-integration I mean literally breaking the integrity of the ego - break the shell - the illusion of "this is who I am". Like breaking the outer shell of the egg - all the content starts oozing out. It might be surprising - but a lot of people into spirituality only ever bolster the shell - breaking it is hugely difficult. The breaking is not 'killing' - it's the initial penetration of light into the internal darkness of the interior space of the egg. The 'the ego seeming more powerful than ever' is like finally breaking down the door to your cellar, turning on the light and realising that it's more cluttered than you ever thought possible. And please - Kunlun is not a third party that does something to you. It's an inter-relationship... your hand is not doing the scratching to your head when you get an itch, it's a far more circular relationship...

Oh - I'm so glad you liked it!! It was a really important book for me too. It helped ease my doubting mind. I certainly felt 'recognition' and my body would also erupt into spontaneous shaking. I'm planning to treat myself to the CD set, Ian - would be happy to share it with you, if you like. By the way - check out his website - some fantastic videos of the Bushmen, St Vincent guys - even an 80 minute 'n/om talk' by Keeney himself.

Many hundreds of thousands of people have been killed in the name of books. Would that count as a liiiiitle serious? You raise an interesting point - 'seriousness'... tends to cause a certain heartlessness... the killings in the name of books tend to happen when the books are taken a liiiitle bit too seriously. Looking for 'truth' is a serious pursuit. It leads away from the heart and into the depths of the mind... I couldn't agree more on the the 'cautious openness'! I like the term! That's how I approached Kunlun in the first place. I had both reasons to doubt it and reasons to be interested by it. I was both repulsed and attracted. But I never decided to be fully one or the other. I really don't need to know about the history, lineage, explanations, descriptions etc. I can feel what the practice does for me - I feel the connection to lineage and the effect it has on me. The "knowing" forces too much of the mind into something that needs to be felt by the heart. Cat - you ask a great question. And here's my cautiously open take on it: Kunlun forces a very quick and sudden disintegration of the ego. What happens internally is reflected externally - which is - many hidden, unconscious ego aspects arise and can be seen. These doubts, fears, blockages, habitual patterns can be very painful and sore. We habitually like to stay away from this pain so these doubts and illusions take on form to keep us from having to experience it. The illusions and doubts become 'serious' - or rather we start to take them seriously. As I say - what happens internally is manifested externally - so we have these archetypal monsters, daemons, worms, vampires surface into this 'collective conscious'... To me this is a good sign - it means it's working. I feel bad for Chris who has to constantly defend something he loves and wants to share with everyone. The disrespect shown towards his friends and cultivation family is hard to bare. Sometimes it's difficult to not take these things personally. I know that's the case with me. But if we stay compassionate to everyone - including those that instil fear and doubt we can navigate both internally through our own stuff and externally.

Isn't it funny - how whenever something different - something with energy - something new and unusual enters into the 'mass' we always see a real polarity of responses. The funnest people I've met have always been either loved or hated. The same with the best, most challenging books, tv, movies and art. In fact most things of any real value have had this kind of dramatic, provocative, love-hate response. It's natural. The people with what seems like nothing positive to say really do have a positive intent - I'm sure. The people really trying to explain their heartfelt love for this are sincerely trying to share something they see as wonderful... just as the ones with only negative things to say are only being protective - and rightly so (doesn't this happen with aspects within our own selves?). A dog chasing its own tail. So I find this "let's share positive things about kunlun" thread a little predictable... I remember making sandcastles by the seaside... whenever I would proudly finish digging a big, wide hole in the sand, it would be filled very quickly - with water or sand or friends or crabs Similarly any castles I built would quickly return back to the source - the endless sand covering the beach... By focusing on positivity we invite negativity in. Why would we want it any other way? Why try to build permanent sand castles? what good are holes without being filled? I always had more fun at hide and seek when I knew there was a good chance of being found. It's late - I should go sleep now. If anyone wants to find out whether Kunlun is for them go read some practice blogs - AugustLeo's for example is very genuine, vulnerable and real. And have fun - these discussions get so laborious sometimes...

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That 'sinister feeling' I recognise very well. It's the feeling that the little mind generates when it's threatened. I've had this many times, and have developed a real taste for it. Yumm

SJ7 A member here, 'fiveelementstao' I think, had a really good explanation of the difference between most cultivation methods and the methods taught in Maoshan and Max's Kunlun schools... Most go from 'something to nothing to something'.... Kunlun goes from 'nothing to something to nothing'.... this really set of a light bulb for me. I agree that your style of training requires to really get deep into the 'something' the ten thousand layers of the body and mind and energy... working layer by layer and building up to a state of emptiness, of nothingness, of simplicity... Kunlun is the opposite - we start with the very simplest of methods... we learn nothing (that statement deserves to be re-read several times). We unlearn everything. and surrender all our acquired 'something'... we surrender it into nothing... then from the nothingness arise the ten thousand things...

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Yup I wore my Qlink for almost a year. You know how audiophiles tend to buy ludicrously expensive stereo systems with the intent of creating the least amount of interference between the recording an the ears. Where-as most hi-fis tend to accentuate the middle and the bass, which to an untrained ear might sound good, but to an audiophile would sound unbalanced and artificial. The same is the case for the Qlink - for the average person it would help, but to a qi gong practitioner it may be amplifying a narrow range of energy and therefore unbalancing the 'whole'. For orgone devices using fine powdered metals, check out the Wizzer's Workshop - he uses all kinds of materials including ormes, paramagnetic earth and so on. ePendant is also worth a look at - will be a little far fetched for most, but some people might notice the power of it...

Some Bums may remember a thread a while back briefly discussing Nityama aka The Tantric Mongoose - a teacher of tantra and sexuality. I noticed that we recently got a new member representing this teacher, so I thought I'd start up a discussion on this work. www.nityama.com/blog So I guess I'd like to know a little more about what kind of practices Nityama teaches... what's the practice like for men, what it's like for women... how does Kunlun practice fit in here... what you've personally gained from working with your teacher etc.

What a refreshing post on sexual cultivation! Welcome to the forum, autopoetic. It would be very interesting to read more specifics about your practice. I unintentionally started this 'retention' business around May. I've noticed an interesting cycle to my sexual energy. Without regular kunlun practice my hormones build to an explosive level and it becomes rather uncomfortable. So although I'm able to use the energy in useful ways, I would like to be able to have the coveted non-ejaculatory orgasm without forcing, pushing, squeezing the energy up.

Wasn't AugustLeo an electrical engineer? he might have some cool additions to the capacitor/conductor analogy... I also thought of someone sleepwalking through life as a resistor - not much gets in, nothing gets stored, not much released... I'm sorry, I don't really know what Liping teaches - I only know of his Dragon Gate school... Combining, I believe, wouldn't work - I mean a capacitor conducts to a certain degree, but if you're going the conductor route you'll have such a huge voltage working through you that starting to control the process (resist the flow) could blow the whole circuit! Similarly as a capacitor, if you conduct too much, you could lose all that you've stored! In K2 we don't really direct the energy - to me it feels like (once there is enough free-flow) you 'pressurise' the energy - (add voltage(?) - here's where my lack of knowledge in electric circuits shows) - the pressure then opens up more room for more current to flow through, the energy moves by itself, we don't direct.

I'm sure there are ancient shamanistic aspects in Liping's system. Most systems have it to some degree - the five animal movements, for example, are shamanistic - you embody the spirit of the animal and let it's power run through you. There is, however, a constant underlying theme of collecting, refining cultivating by direct will and intention. in 'conductor' arts you may well do these things, but you're never directly guiding or controlling it - it just happens - you may hear practitioners of these arts say things "the energy moves me" - rather than 'I move the energy'. In capacitor arts you may tap the energy of the spirit, but it then serves a purpose in the rest of the cultivation. You collect and guide it to fulfil a purpose. both these paths actually converge at the higher levels... it just depends what your heart leads you to.

With Kunlun you become a 'conductor' - with most other systems you become a 'capacitor'... I've only read about Wang Li Ping and his practices, but it seems he goes the capacitor route - storing, building, cultivating energy. Kunlun clears, opens, flows the energy. The capacitor type practices mirror agriculture - you sow the seeds, you tend to your crop, cultivate, harvest then store, refine etc. The conductor type practices mirror pre-agricultural, tribal, shamanistic hunter gatherer societies. With these practices you invoke the spirits of animals, gods, the universe to flow through you. The challenge here is to allow more and more power to flow through by clearing any obstructions and resistances and surrendering all control. This is, of course, a complete over-simplification, but it's the general idea... The capacitor system is more 'modern' - the conductor more ancient... The difficulty of the capacitor system is that you need to work very hard, need to be very consistent, very exact, controlled, you can't make mistakes because you will lose what you've built and stored... The difficulty of the conductor system is pretty much the opposite - you have to let go of all control, which sounds simple, but can be very frighting - you have to let go of all that you think that you are, and in our society which is based on complete control of everything this is very difficult indeed... And again - this is over-simplifying into black and white something that really isn't that black and white - but it gives you a general idea of the difference in the paths.

That sounds a lot like something a teacher might say, Xeno...