freeform

Please be careful. Death is common in 'experimenters'...

TCM will help heal the outward manifestation - but the root will remain, I'm afraid. TCM is not cultivation.

If what's coming up is affecting you emotionally - then there's something missing in your training. The correct way to process this stuff is to set up a way for it to come up and be purged without effort or attachment.

The vast majority will preach what they know - and be certain about it... don't fall for it. They'll lead you round in circles.

Very few understand how mindfulness really works... Blind leading the blind. Which is why I say find an excellent teacher... or at least a senior student to an excellent teacher. The connection has to lead to a 'live transmission' - Buddhist centres (or Daoist centres... or Hindu ones) rarely have anything real going on. (please excuse the bluntness - I just dislike seeing people's precious time and effort being wasted)

It's not that Daoism is not about 'mind'. It's just the vehicle to working on the mind is through Qi. Qi is the quintessentially Daoist principle... For the Daoists everything has Qi - ignorance is a type of Qi, mindfulness is a type of Qi. Every state of consciousness and every physical manifestation of anything has an underlying 'energetic' substance to it. The Daoists think that working with these substances is the correct way to cultivate. Much of what one may think of as psychological or spiritual is addressed indirectly through Qi... Many of the Daoist lineages have very indepth meditative systems of practice. But they don't stop at the experience of states of consciousness... they take the substance at the seat of this state and work with it through alchemical methods to produce permanent transformation.

Yes... In Thailand and Burma I saw the normal 'falling asleep during 'meditation', then scrolling through facebook' type monks... but I also saw dedicated, vital and exceptionally skillful monks. The monastery is a microcosm of the outer world - you get all sorts of people... the vast majority are not interested in real cultivation... it's always the small minority who are. Listen to the vast majority and you'll be as lost as they are. I keep seeing discussions about the merits of different traditions, and it feels as though the tradition and the people practicing it are treated as two distinct things. One's entry into a tradition is through teachers... not through books or ideas or various theories. If cultivation is your calling, look for the exceptional cultivators, not the nice sounding tradition. The tradition is very much secondary to the teacher.

Not my training method - so my understanding is only theoretical... But the conditions for Yang to arise must be set. So in the more ‘religious’ approaches, one empties themselves (of self) through an act of devotion... but the heartmind is certainly awake - it’s just fully absorbed into an externalised representation of the Divine... Which creates this Yin -Yang tension... Yin on the inside, yang on the outside... and on occasion the Divine fills the space left behind by the lack of self - which results in what devotional paths would call rapture. If the conditions for yang to arise have not been set, then the result is nihilism, depression, sluggishness or just a kind of vacuousness. The ‘dead behind the eyes’ thing.

Yup. Uncontrived virtues are key for the Daoists. However it’s also true that when you get accepted into traditional Daoist lineages, there are certain rules you agree to abide by. Kindness is often one of them. ——— The nihilistic attitude comes about through incorrect meditative practice - which is very common. Seeking emptiness is the problematic part. The heart-mind works on a Yin - Yang principle... Emptiness is often created by generating Yin - basically dulling the mind into a death-like state. This does produce stillness - and has some benefit if you’re super anxious and stressed for instance... but it’s a kind of sedation - like self administered anaesthetic. Daoists seek to find stillness at the very point when yin and yang are perfectly balanced... it’s like balancing an egg on it’s sharp end... difficult, but possible. This sort of stillness is the doorway to that which is beyond yin and yang - the primordial light of Shen. Its like a pregnant stillness... on the verge of giving birth to the 10,000 things... but brought to stillness you get the opportunity to return to that which births. ——— The problem with Buddhism (in the west in particular) - there’s sooo much theory... so many texts, so much discussion - all the emphasis is on a rational sort of understanding. The Daoist emphasis is on practice. Do the thing to find the answer. There’s much more nuanced understanding of practice itself (not just insights about the nature of things). Daoism is small - and not all of it has been dumbed down for the masses. But getting access to the non dumbed down stuff is pretty hard...

It's like when parents say "eat your broccoli or your teeth will fall out"... or "stop pulling that face or it'll stay like that forever"... Which - if you think about it are pretty morose! And that's how religions seemed to go about teaching their precepts to us uneducated 'peasants'. So do I Much more nuanced - and empowering.

I agree with @ilumairen and @liminal_luke There's nothing wrong with lust or craving in itself. Yes people will do crazy things sometimes to get what they crave, or over attach to the addictive feeling that craving brings - but most don't! It's true that lust gets in the way of spiritual practice but so does agitation, anxiety, boredom and any number of other things. That doesn't mean it's bad or good - it's just one aspect of life.

I agree with @skyblue for the vast majority of our time on earth we did not feel like ‘individuals’... our identity was strongly tied to our tribe... saying ‘me’ meant my tribe... Many cultures don’t even have individual names for their children... names are usually more like ‘first son, second son’ etc... individual names is a pretty modern trend ‘My, individual survival’ was completely meaningless for the hundreds of thousands of years of our race. There is no survival without others. (And that’s true now too) Similarly - even until recently not having children to care for you when you’re old, meant you’ll die pretty young. scientific facts are devoid of context - and can be made meaningless pretty easily... let me do that for you now: it’s a scientific fact that you can survive for years without eating. Tens of thousands of coma patients are doing that right this minute.

Domestication At its base - it's simply an urge caused by some of the oldest parts of us. Along the likes of hunger... But, being humans, we also add all sorts of other issues into the mix... just as with hunger - there are many people with all sorts of food issues - with sex and lust there are all sorts of other issues. The basic survival issues - food/nourishment, dominance hierarchy, sex... kinda follows the unfolding of childhood development...

Lust is just a mental-emotional extension of our base drive to procreate.

Oh my you guys make some tasty sounding stuff! I’m on very simple meals at the moment (leading up to retreat). So last night was roasted and boiled buckwheat, sprinkled with black sesame seeds and seaweed flakes, black beans, a few walnuts, leftover roast sweet potato and carrot and some freshly steamed black kale. No salt, no herbs, no oil - but feels very nourishing when eaten with a degree of mindfulness.

@Sebastian ah ok - I misunderstood. He included this principle in some other exercise set. It’s a general internal mechanic used for getting upright from a front bend in a few different qigong sets I’ve learned.

oh and if your jing jin are awake (as I’m sure yours are)... when you reach standing let the tissues on the front of the torso take over and stretch you to create the back bend... (though this is a different approach to this form than what we’ve discussed - using YJJ principles, not the Huang - you’re probably beyond this stage I imagine)

Oh he teaches this form? That’s great - I bet he can offer way more insight on it than I can. I’m just going by mechanics that are familiar to me from similar forms. Yes indeed. I know it doesn’t make logical sense, but it works when you try If he teaches this form differently - I would definitely defer to his principles!

I imagine it’s probably touching on some area of stagnation in @Toni’s lower back. The first move is also very good for the whole spine actually. When bending forward use your mind to move each individual vertebra one by one from the bottom up. Take a lot longer than he does it. Then speed it up as you get used to getting your mind in the spine like that. On the way up, get your mind into the front facing part of the spine - (like on the inside of the torso) - and again unfurl the spine vertebra by vertebra from the bottom up - but on the front of the spine... (don’t just lift yourself up.) again do it very slowly for some time, getting quite exact (but gentle) and unwavering with your awareness in the front facing portion of your spine. That’ll do some good for your back Get ready to get rather hot too

Intelligence. Begins similarly to others, just rather than focusing on spiritual aspects at the Shen stage, they focus on generating intelligence. In normal qigong you generally fuel your nature and your intelligence anyway... If you’re more interested in spirituality, then you must bring your nature to balance/stillness and fuel that part of you that connects to your original spirit instead. Quite a bit harder to do

Yup - from my understanding this is when Qi starts to fill the Jing Jin and the Huang (various layers of soft tissues). Then the form doing itself is one layer of the meaning of Yi leads the Qi... And as you say this drops away - because you actually need to Song deeper past that stage - it's like you release a layer deeper and 'hang' off that movement more - and a whole new layer of discomfort and growing pain opens up Then the lines rebuild again and again you'll feel the same floaty sense of the body moving you... and again you song a layer deeper... and on and on It's the same process with neigong/qigong. Sounds like you're doing great!

the Comprehensive Guide is best in my opinion. He also has an online training and an in person school (which is obviously not functional at the moment)

Bone marrow cleansing is extremely advanced to be honest. Not a great starting point. That’s a better starting point for sure. I recommend Damo Mitchell, his methods are very similar to ones from my traditional school and I’m friends with people getting great results from his trainings. But do have a search around the forum - there are many other recommendations

For me it was very physical... like being swollen from the inside out. No spinning, rotation, magnetism or anything like that - just physical tissues blown up like a balloon. I had to check to see if I wasn’t actually swelling. Also there’s a distinct feeling of ‘wetness’ - like you peed yourself - but all through your body 😅 Now I don’t really feel it at all - except when I catch a cold or get jet lag - then I feel the absence of it.

Sadly anapanasati is taught so badly by many teachers