erdweir

what's even funnier is watching people on this forum suck up to these obvious frauds in spite of their transparent lack of substance.

I think it's more sad actually, that this is the kind of thing we have to watch out for, but i agree with you, i prefer it to the naive new age gullibility. and yes people, there are teachers out there who are legitimate, who's claims can be demonstrated, who arent getting arrested, for whatever reason. teachers with authentic lineage transmissions that wont charge you thousands of dollars for seminars. take a look around.

This is of course a very sly way of answering the charge. how unpretentious, so simple sounding. Its exactly the sort of thing you would expect someone to say who had no lineage. The deeper issue here is that there have been allot of accusations of fraud, some of which settled out of court, like the one with the indian pranic healer who claimed that chia plagarized large sections of his material line by line. some claim he left the country under less than ideal circumstances, having some legal tax issues. Every real taoist teacher i have met has no respect for Chia. they regard him mainly as an entrepreneur, not a master. he is held to be very irresponsible in publishing his books, which are dangerous if taken as meaningful instruction. everyone i respect in the field says the same thing. the practices are real, his method of teaching them is not. it all needs to be done under the strict supervision of a qualified teacher. all of the people i have knows who took one of his seminars say he has very powerful energy, but no spiritual substance. he's a businessman, in other words. all of the healing tao,universal tao instructors i have coma across strike me as new age flakes who are totally delusional. my impression of them is that that are victims of chia's teachings. and are spaced out and out of touch, ungrounded, and unable to teach anything real. other problems with him, include, from my point of view, the fact revealed by Michael Winn on his forum that Chia had never done the Kan and Li practices in his books. one of Chia's students retorted to me in a discussion of this that Chia needed to build the darkness retreat before this was possible, and now Chia has done the meditations. but Chia's Kan and Li books were published years before any of this happened. How can he publish untested advanced Nei Dan practices with any sort of clear conscience, and tell people they can become immortal through something he has never tried? Michael Winn say he had to receive Kan and Li instructions from heavenly Immortals who visited him, becuase Chia is unable to instruct him. this all sounds pretty bad. last year Michael Winn boasted in one of his e-mails that Chia had impregnated a 24 year old vietnamese girl, while chia is in his 60's. This is trumpeted as being proof of his vitality and thus accomplishment as a taoist master. to me, it seems more of a testament to what a sleazebag he is. now we hear similar reports here from sparkle (since removed) that Yudelove can do it like a 20 year old. That's great, but how does this pertain to the Tao? sure, you need vitality to cultivate the tao. granted, but do you need to boast of you prowess? cultivating life is and cultivating essence go had in hand. i dont see the essence part of it in Chia's camp. I dont see the stillness, lack of ego concerns, etc. I see old men getting young girls pregnant. Now we have Yudelove, and these weird stories. I dont know which is worse, that he pulled a sword at a stripclub, or that he is a mercenary with an uzi in his trunk. either way, it's not that kind of Tao I am interested in. What I want to know, and what I think people buying Chia's books, Winn's videos, attending the seminars, etc should know, is what kind of Taoism is this exactly? is there a lineage from white cloud, where he learned Kan and Li, or did someone ust tell him how to do it and he started doing it long decades later? And if Yudelove is a "warrior" taoist, why dont his books reflect this? if someone wants mantak chia, crowley and casteneda, i guess Yudelove fits the bill, and maybe there is nothing wrong with that. But i have found that every person i respect and trust in these matters just rolls their eyes at the mention of these crowley, casteneda and chia, and that is very compatible with my gut reaction too. now plenty of people here dont agree with me, i know that already. But if I am going to pay a teacher and buy books, i want to know where the knowledge is coming from. these people dont seem to tell a very convincing story about what they are doing, so that's all i need to know.

I was attempting to relate my comments to the ones posted above by fizix and others, which were directed toward Yudelove's (self?) proclaimed master status.

I think Mantak Chia told Yudelove he was a master. That's what is related in Chia's introduction to Yudelove's book. I dont know who, if anybody told Mantak Chia he was a grand master either. I dont know what exactly Yudelove would be a master of. I tried to get him to elucidate this, and he told me he was more of a warrior than an enlightenment seeker. But then his books are all about Neidan and Chi Kung, mostly derived from Chia's system as far as I can tell but restructured and re-organized with additional material from other sources. What exactly that all means I am not sure. But at least he has someone else telling him he is a master, so he's not quite a "self-proclaimed" master in that sense. As far as Mantak Chia goes, he says he studied with a taoist hermit named "white cloud", as well as several other taoist masters i have never heard named. I think he stopped learning from "white cloud" when he was 18 or so supposedly. I have never heard who this white cloud really was, of what lineage, what generation of the lineage he was holding, etc. I have also never read anywhere that Mantak Chia, or Yudelove and Winn either, was a lineage holder in any taoist sect. So I am unclear on what that situation is. Maybe Yudelove can fill us in. I just realized that Yudelove and Sparkle have withdrawn a number of their comments above, that's kind of too bad. It's a shame we could not figure a way of talking to them in a less confrontational way. I got caught in that position on another thread, but managed to de-escalate. maybe some others would care to do the same. It's obvious that Yudelove is a controversial figure. I dont get him myself. allot of that he says sound kind of silly to me, but we are not going to get to the truth of things by being jerks to him. take it from someone who has made the mistake already.

not a bad quote for casteneda, considering he has one of the worst reputations as a fraud and manipulative creep. that's another thing i havent read much in the last 20 years, but i guess i liked it for a while in my teens, the same time i was reading crowley. but anyway, the black magician metaphor resonates with my non conformity. i guess i dont have much of a problem with authority anymore, since you rarely find it anywhere. On second thought, fear your captors? we have no captors, no masters. i remember once someone asked me if i thought we should be emancipated. "emancipated from what ?" i responded...

I dont drink, but thanks anyway hey look, i dont care about the ninjas and mercenaries and all of that stuff. I guess i dont know how to take your statements, they seem a bit to far out for me, so i am just going to let you have the benefit of the doubt and go my own way. thanks for revealing a bit about yourself though, i appreciate the effort. I cant say i am compelled to meet with you. unlike some others here, i am not really into the kind of taoism you are practicing. I mean, you say you are more of a "warrior path" kind of taoist. Yes, I know about taoists practicing martial arts. I think that will not be a revelation to allot of people here. I like martial arts too, but i am more interested in spiritual growth, conquering the ego, etc. I also have little love for Crowley anymore, although i did go in for that stuff as a teenager. that was a couple of decades ago for reference. I find his antics quite repulsive now. I guess that's another reason why we wont be having a drink.. But Cheers! enjoy!

check out this thread for some perspective on yudelove: http://www.thetaobums.com/index.php?/topic/12865-mantak-chia/page__hl__mantak%20chia things got a little out of control, but there it all is for better or worse.

sounds like you made a good choice. if you want some advice, i will tell you what i wished i knew when i started with taoist practices. I had all kinds of issues doing the meditations and exercises laid out in certain pop-taoist books. my opinion is that kind of thing is to be avoided. it's true that it got me started, but i dont recommend it to others 1: dont go to the local store and find an internal alchemy of dummies book and blow your head off with it. you can hurt yourself doing that. you have to lay a good foundation first, start out slow and easy. 2: do get whatever books you can find in from the taoist canon, and read them. read them more than once. you will find that there are different schools of taoism and buddhism or whatever. i suggest (in english) the translations of thomas cleary and eva wong. cleary's translations are more of the northern taoist school and ch'an buddhism, eva wong has more southern school texts. the northern school is more mind based, like orthodox buddhism. the southern school is more about body energetics and alchemy, like tantra. they both have their strengths and weaknesses, and are not mutually exclusive. 3: find a good teacher. quality of instruction is more important than what art they teach. go visit all the teachers in you area until you find one who knows what they are doing. in my experience, most teachers are full of it. you just have to trust your intuition. if somethings feels wrong, it probably is. you will know it when you find it if you know how to listen to yourself. 4: If you cant find a good teacher, and need to explore on your own, limit yourself to the mind practices and dont try to mess with your energy too much. mind training is allot less dangerous to do on your own. some qigong might be relatively safe, but taoist internal alchemy is serious shit and i have had some harrowing experiences tinkering with it. if you look at the pages on this site for a while, you will see people coming here with all kinds of chi gone wild crises. educate yourself before you jump in to the deep end of the pool. good luck, and welcome

If you read Nan Huai-Chin's work, he talks about it that way. He claims to be versed in Taoism and Zen, but indicates that Zen holds the apex for him.

I was under the impression that emptiness in the Taoist tradition is often just a phase, a place you need to get to in order to see the Tao, not a final goal. The stillness and emptiness are required foundations that allow you to travel to the upper reaches of the mind. I think this maybe be true in Buddhism as well, although i know less of it than Taoism. This is the impression I have gotten from reading some taoist and ch'an classics, anyway.

Thanks for sharing, Mr Yudelove Hey sorry for shooting my mouth off, I try not to do that, but I'm obviously still working on it. Apologies. Lets try to put things on a better foot. I think I speak for a number of people here in saying that we are interested in your story. I would look forward to future posts by you that would share more of what you went through. I think it would have some value to us all as practitioners of the daoist arts and as people too. You could post an article by yourself, or maybe in your next book?

Hey Leon, There are lots of detox programs out there on the internet, you can buy kits from places like Blessed Herbs or the Pure Body Institute. William Bodri recommends the Pure Body institute one, there is info on his website about detoxing: meditationexpert.com. They contain herbs like dandelion for the liver (which makes your gall bladder release bile, flushing the liver) or nettles for the kidneys, plus the inevitable psylium husk to scour out the colon. I havent tried all of those programs, but I have taken some cleansing supplements, and fasted as well. i did the "master cleanser" which was pretty brutal I have to say. He tells you to do salt water flushes, which is (i think) crazy. But fasting did do something good for me i think. Taoist fasting practices include Bigo, but i dont know much about it. Other choices include a raw food diet, and there are these liver cleanse diets out there that have you avoid all processed foods. some have claimed to have beaten off cancer with this. You could also look at the book Healing With Whole Foods which is often in the local library. It gives a TCM based diet perspective. The authors of this book say a raw food diet is too cold or yin, but I have known people who have used it to beat cancer so you have to make you own choice i guess. Taking a herbal cleansing program with an at least partially raw diet that contains minimal processed foods and some fresh pressed veggie juice is what I would recommend. I am looking into doing that pretty soon. Detoxing can make you feel pretty weird and spaced out, so be careful driving! I have heard from people who have done lots of exercise while fasting, and I have done it too. It's tough, and you feel pretty bad sometimes, but if you keep going it works itself out.