freeform

Thinking comes from a different (much shallower and more limited) part of you than does 'Intention'. When you focus your awareness with thinking, you will only be present to a minute proportion of what's already here, and you end up missing that which you're looking for... imagine yourself on a completely dark football pitch, searching for your car keys - would you rather use a beam of light the size of a laser-pointer beam or the sun which illuminates the entire pitch? 'The Law of Attraction' as you depict above comes from the thinking mind... you could call it false yang...

I've been doing Intu-flow for a while now... It does a lot for a simple routine. Gets the blood and lymph flowing, opens up the joints, works the fascia, tendons and ligaments, increases body-awareness, increases range of motion in all directions, stops the joints 'leaking' chi, opens up the spine and develops coordination - this is what effect it has had on me, and I'm on the intermediate level still... All of this helps with posture development - especially the body-awareness and coordination, because that stops you unconsciously adopting positions that compromise your posture... The past few weeks I've only been able to do it once or twice a week, since I've been working late - and I've noticed quite a big difference. I especially like the spinal movements, as every bit of it from the sacrum up tends to gently crack and click into place, then sitting and standing up straight is effortless. I find that if I do it before a session of kunlun, during the kunlun there's less shaking and more circular, slow, qi gong-like movements coming up... Christoph, those shoes are not to my taste, but I've been wearing 'vivo barefoot' shoes that have very thin, flexible soles and I really love them, it opens up a whole new world of texture below you.

YM, You say you have oppinions - I say that when you give importance to oppinions you sell yourself short - you're so much more than that! Of course I have my own opinions, but I tend not to take them seriously. My opinions are so extremely limited, so extremely coloured, shaped and manipulated by the mess that is the ego that they cease to hold any reasonable value... Over time, as I progress with my practice, my opinions have become much less certain, much less 'true' and important and much more entertaining ironic and silly! Since we're talking of power - The ego thinks itself as all powerful - the judgements we make within our opinions are a subtle way of exercising that power. The ego is also rather sneaky (which is great for the entertainment value!) - it can denounce power whilst covertly asserting its own power... (you must be in a position of authority/power to be able to denounce anything - right?) In this very post that I'm writing my own ego is flexing its muscle - it's portraying itself as some sort of an authority - but the other, deeper aspects of myself can see this happening and be present to it and maybe even find it funny (if not funny then rather tragic). The impulse to write this post came from a deeper place than the ego - it's a place that loves unconditionally and I'm suggesting that the impulse for your original post also came from the same depth, it's just that you got distracted by the shallow, surface reaction of your ego... Imagine that deeper aspect of yourself to be like the filament in a lightbulb - it glows and creates light - the light must then pass through the outer glass of the bulb, and then through a whole series of lenses and filters that is our ego - the light that comes out at the end is dim, coloured and distorted, projecting all the dirt and dust that covers the lenses and the filters. I'm interested in the light of the filament - not the distortions - and I'm challenging your ego a little so that a little more light can get through... All this might seem off topic, but in a way I'm attempting to demonstrate the difference between power that's directed by the mind and Power that comes from the heart...

YMWong, you do seem quite sincere - but it also seems you don't yet realise the great super-power you are wielding by proclaiming "everyone is looking for POWER!" I must admit that most of the topics with 10 - 20 pages of posts are usually arguments about who's powerful, who's not, I'm more powerful than you - my master is better than yours etc... You'll find that many (if not most) of the Bums stay away from these threads... These debates about power certainly get the emotional energies moving - why were you, yourself, moved to read all those topics and then make one of your very first posts here about power? Then - quite unconsciously, I'm sure, you presuppose that you're in a position to judge what's Daoist and what's not!!! wow I admit, this is all a bit tongue in cheek, but there are serious connotations. Hidden within everything you think or say there are unconscious assumptions that to a trained eye reveal the current preoccupation of the ego. It becomes quite entertaining catching yourself at it - notice that by commenting about "everyone", and then telling us what fake Daoism and real Daoism really are, your ego positions you and your opinion as more true, more important, more correct than 'those power-hungry cultivators'. Nothing wrong with this, it's just that you might miss the irony and entertainment value of your very own mind! Welcome to The Taobums!

WYG, As I understand it all you need are Kunlun 1 and Red Phoenix. Everything else is just refinement or aimed at developing other aspects, but ultimately are not necessary for developing the Golden Dragon Body... You can depict a landscape with a photo, but you can also paint, draw or sculpt it - the photo already describes the landscape, but the other mediums add a different perspective/quality... Bear in mind I'm yet to meet Max, but this is what I've understood from reading the posts and the book about Kunlun (the same posts that you've read).

Fantastic topic! Personally I don't have any strict procedure... Sometimes I make it sometimes not... sometimes I even make it before going to sleep in it! Whatever meaning our minds associate with it, is not really real - so why not play with it? especially if you're used to consistently doing one and not the other... a dog's bed is wherever it does 3 or four turns and lies down

Chris, If he doesn't stop selling them, then you just release the videos yourself! You could sell em or you could just make them freely available - either way, it would solve the 'problem' rather elegantly...

I don't think it's unnatural for modern humans, but it won't 'give' you anything. 'Logical' thoughts generally lack any spiritual nutrition - they often trap and poison - however when thoughts lose value/significance/meaning for you, they become thoroughly entertaining!

Drew, So you transform lower emotions eventually into light - you shoot this light out to receptive females and your full-lotus posture allows you to suck up their lower emotions... So it's a cyclical thing... What's next for you, or is this it? Do you just keep sucking in emotion, transforming it to light shooting it out and sucking emotion back in again? like a wonderfully eccentric O at a D machine. Have you tried discovering the light that already underlies the lower emotions? What's next?

I like Scott Sonnon's Intuflow

Thanks Darin, I've found that to get down to the core of the belly one must pass through the dimension of emotions... Emotions - in terms of bandwidth - have a far greater capacity than the mind and intellect. The problem is that initially emotions are tied to specific mind-patterns, we think of events 'causing emotion'. I've found that there really is no cause and effect relationship between emotions and external or even internal 'events'. Below the emotions are subtler 'signals' or what I sometimes call 'pulls' - it's the bodily sensation that precedes a full blown emotion. Because your practices are directed by the intellect, I have a suspicion that your mind hasn't 'let go' quite yet - so it's like you shine your mental awareness down onto emotions, down onto the fomless, but you're still firmly rooted in the mind... This is all complete conjecture, of course! If I was you I would try a completely formless style - something along the lines of Kunlun or the Balinese shaking dude - or anything else with no theoretical framework, just constant letting go. I'm certain there will be a small part of you that will find the lack of a roadmap very disconcerting, but you can make a promise to it that if after sustained, sincere practice it still wants that control, then it can have it. You mentioned the 'will' - what's your understanding of that?

Darin, How about emotions? What did you discover about your emotions?

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There is the awareness in your belly - which is ever-present and infinite, it's incapable of being anything other than everything! so it's infinite and is incapable of any finiteness, any individuality or separateness... Then there is the mind wich is capable of finitness but incapable of grasping anything even approximating the infinite (to the mind, the belly-awareness seems like a frightening void (death?)) Then there is the heart - it's in between the infinite and finite and allows the mind and the belly to play together. The heart is like an intermediary, helping the two parties from drastically different backgrounds communicate together. To use the microcosmic orbit as a functional 'metaphor' - all awareness starts in the belly level of awareness then starts moving up the back, progressively gaining form and individuality and finiteness, reaches the heart and is expressed through sensations (that's how the heart talks) and eventually reaches the mind where it becomes an abstract idea or thought... This idea eventually dies by going down the front - progressively losing its individuality and finiteness and distinct 'separateness' - it then joins in the heart where it takes on the guise of sensation and eventually returns back down to the belly-awareness where it becomes infinite again - then the cycle starts up again... Most adults now only have awareness at the mind level - they only notice the thoughts and then attach to them like 'truth'... so rather than letting the thought die and move down the front, the mind holds on to that thought as 'the truth' - eventually (through early childhood) creating an inter-connected, rather complex, illusory structure of 'truths' that we call the ego... The ego then stops us perceiving the level of the heart and the level of the belly, because that would destroy its (illusionary) precious kingdom constructed out of golden nuggets of 'truth'...

<mgd>>>Does conflict arise when balance is lacking in a relationship?<<<> It seems to me that there can never be an imbalance - imbalance is only ever percieved by the ego-mind. Steve's post above does such a wonderful job of explaining the nature of relationship. We have the mind, the heart and the belly - they're like completely different dimensions always co-existing. Most people's awareness is stuck in the mind - the mind is the dimension of the ego - very limited, very finite, very over-worked and always seems to be in control. It's the part of us that perceives an illusory imbalance and then promises to be able to fix it (that's how it maintains control). Both cultivation and relationship are about discovering more of the heart and more of the belly... The heart is to do with all sensations, emotions, feelings etc. - the belly is to do with everything - but not anything in specific. Steve, in the post above, explains how we tend to relate on the level of the mind - but whether we notice it or not, we always communicate on the heart and belly level too. We can use relationship as a mirror to cultivate a deeper relationship with these far bigger parts of ourselves... There is this other topic on 'transmission' - if we start to open up, people around us open up too. Both cultivation and relationship are opportunities for 'discovery' - 'Discovery' is noticing what IS... The mind's game is making what IS somehow better - it happens automatically way before you ever notice... don't try to stop playing the game (this is more mind-game playing) but become aware of what's happening - watch your reactions in relationships - don't take things too seriously, soon you'll find yourself not buying into the mind's games, and there will be more room freed up for the heart and belly to come through... by the way this is not advice just for you, but for me and everyone else too... (here's just an example of a game we play with emotions - ever felt really angry with someone you love? I mean angry to the level of hating them?... Have you also ever felt real profound love for the same person at another time? - the thing both this hate and love are the same - they're always there at the same time, it's just the mind conceals one side and reveals the other...) Thanks for taking this deeper, mgd!

We tend to look for magic and mystery, missing the magic and mystery that's already right here. We try to explain the magic and the mystery even though this attempt always results in the loss of both the magic and the mystery.

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Anything that can have light bounce off it can 'see'... We think of seeing as the function of the 'eyes' - but it could be fun to discover what it's like when we think of seeing as the function of 'light'. For me, the body 'sees' very differently to how the eyes do... I would say the body 'senses light' rather than 'sees'. There was some Russian research into cells creating and receiving photons (light) - I know, it's very un-thorough of me to not give any kind of decent reference, but I remember reading it somewhere... The point is that every cell (whether it's proven by science or not) can sense light in its own kind of way - for me the liver 'sees' in a very different way from how the bones do. So when I say 'notice' this, what I mean is invite your awareness to expand to include what's happening there already.

The answer to your question - as any decent answer to any decent question always is - is paradoxical. The important distinction that you might find useful is the direction of 'effort' - there is effort to get a result or there is effort to find out what's there. I call the second type 'discovery'. So you can direct your energy downwards 'to connect to the earth' or you direct your energy downwards to discover what happens... Another word for 'discovery' is 'play'. Playing and discovering is this in-between state - so is curiosity... it's all 'directing to discover what's there' rather than 'directing to get a specific result'. Feelings-wise it's very close to 'fun' - not the over-excited hyperactive thing that we sometimes call 'fun' - but that light-hearted, curious fun that we sometimes had as children. What you call 'away with the fairies' sounds pretty yang to me - creating internal, mental landscapes is a yang activity - feeling that child-like sense of wonder, discovery, being curious and playful is both yin and yang, in just the right ratio. There is a technique you might try out (or you may have already tried it from what I remember) of using your peripheral vision - you expand your visual field where you lose your 'focus on something specific' and start receiving whatever is there already - might also notice that there is that curious feeling as you do it - what we tend to do when we are peripheral and curious is that something catches our attention and we contract our expanded focus onto that specific thing - and suddenly we lose the curiosity. So the trick is to keep that curiosity humming without ever satisfying it! I've actually adapted the peripheral vision thing and added to it a little. Ian - you mentioned that one of your past teachers used to teach this with auditory sensing. Basically once you've expanded your focus to the periphery and settled that, start to notice that not only your eyes can see, but so can your skin! So you expand your focus to include what your skin sees! Then notice that actually every cell in your body 'sees' - expand your focus to include that too. (and btw - that seat you're sitting on is you - so you could maybe expand your awareness to what it sees too? ) You can do the above with each of the senses - for me what develops is this kind of 'embodied sense of profound wonder' - often punctured by long moments of no-thought - in a way it's a bit like that sense of comfort that we get from the 'away with the fairies' thing but we're observing 'what is' instead of the fairies...

So the French one is looking quite attractive... I like that it's in a small village rather than in a city - had a look at it on google maps, looks pretty sweet. I also need the opportunity to practice my almost non-existent school-learned French! Problem is that I dont drive (I suspect that to US-based Bums that statement is as shocking as "I dont walk") Was also thinking of camping out nearby. Anyone know of the legality of this? Also does anyone have any contact details for the hosts of the workshop? I would probably fly to Geneva and get a cab down to the area from the airport... If anyone is driving down or organising accomodation or anything else please let us know here! Looking forward to meeting everyone!

Thanks for sharing Jeff. Death is part of a cycle. We tend to think of death as the end, but from another perspective it's just one aspect of a cycle - the flower starts growing, opens up all bright and beautiful then starts wilting, falls and dies, the organic matter from the decomposing leaves feeds the micro-organisms and other seeds in the ground - another flower starts growing... If you know about the microcosmic orbit - moving up the back is like the flower growing up - then the energy starts going down the front and you go back down into the formless, ready to come back up again. You may be opening the front channel - this is usually tied closely with emotions and death - let the emotion flow and don't disrespect it by trying to find a reason for it or reacting in some way - just stay present to it and allow it to flow how it does - you're opening up! Kunlun may very well have triggered this...

Agreed with Neimad Without a fully open myofacial network, supple connective tissue and full range of motion in all your muscles, heavy lifting will just add more tension and force into an already unbalanced and blocked up system, making it much harder to open up your meridians...