Pietro

Cool, so what would happen if someone were to take away his stick? Would he fly off? In any case there is a series of organizations around the world that have bet some insane amount of money that no one can do anything that defies science (I don't remember what the terms of the bet really are right now, sorry). In any case if he can show that he is really flying he could win that money. And if you think that winning money is wrong they could after use them for charity, or for whatever else they want.

Good point, in bold are the parts that has effect as transformation. A second element is that to remain celibate you need to distinguish between reality and fantasy. This also transforms the mind. Thanks. I have a vague memory of a page in eternalspring where a description was done about sitting in stillness in the morning. It was, if I remember correctly, a page about some questions asked to some chinese taoists.

Some of you know about it, many of you are not touched by this, but I think there might be some of you who have learned something by Bruce teachings, even though you might never had the occasion to go and study with him directly. Now Bruce is reaching 60 (which is also the absolute minimum at which you are allowed to be called a master in China). 60 is a big thing in China, as it represents the completion of a cycle. (A natural lifetime being 120, two cycles). So if you have been touched by his teachings, if you feel like sharing something, if you don't know of other ways to do it, well, for the 60th birthday his students have set up a website, http://bruces60thbday.wordpress.com/, where you are also able to write messages. If you feel like writing something you can. I think the website was mainly aimed to his students around the globe, but since quite some people have been touched by his teachings, through his books, and in other indirect ways. I think it would give him a sense of how his work is spreading.

Naa, it's just that the baguazhang instructor's training was coming up so they pushed more in that direction. The Youtube channel is a new addiction, and it hasn't been around long enough to represent everything that he teaches. Cheers, Pietro

Hi Keith, thanks for the link. As I said before, I am not sure those are the same channels. They seem much deeper. Maybe even part of the central channel. And you can't open up the central channel with acupuncture or acupressure. But it might be that I am wrong, and either the channels are the same and I did not recognise them, or they are not the same ,but having done taoist arts for a couple of decades, helped open up the acupuncture channels which then in turn helped to open up the deeper ones. In fact this sounds quite a realistic possibility. I am just a bit concerned that people might try to open up the the superficial channels, and then consciously send the orgasm energy through with unpredictable results.

Yep, I'm with you on the difference, and have some limited mastery of working with orgasm without triggering ejaculation. But that becomes increasingly difficult as greater lengths of time pass without ejaculation. So it seems I need a better way to work with the energy and transmute it without a build up of sensitivity. Ok, so opening one's channels appears important for the flow of energy, thus, riding the wave, which allows orgasm without ejaculation. Gotcha. That's part of it, but it's not all. It will not help you, for example, when you are alone for long stretch of times. I cannot guide you farther than this because, I myself am learning this part too. But you could/should look at the exercises of Dao Zhen from http://www.eternalspringtours.com/ . Now they have sold the website, so you might need to go to the internet archive to pull back the previous version. Or there was a thread about it in my personal section. Also you should look at that crazy guy of drew hempel. They both have one thing in common: long sitting with your legs crosslegged or in some sort of lotus, and concentrating in the LDD. I later asked Bruce why concentrating in the LDD was effective to sedate sexual excitments. He just dismissed the case with: "oh, that's just because the energy goes where you are concentrated, and you are pulling the energy from your sexual organs in your LDD". Dao Zhen exercise will also teach you how to sit in the middle of the night, when you have morning wood. The key is to be able to sit cross legged for the whole night if necessary while being concentrated in the LDD. Normally you collapse before the morning. ;-) Yeah, I've experienced the full body orgasm a number or times, but have flowed through into ejaculation also. For a time, I wondered if this would be just as good in terms of building the nervous system and opening consciousness as celibacy. But my experiments lead me to believe that it was not. Ejaculation was death, as RJ used to say. Hmm, I am not sure. I come with my girlfriend. And I have no problems with that. Also Bruce speaks about a different way of coming where you don't shatter your energetic system. I have no experience about it, or if I have I haven't recognised it as such. Part of the problem in all this is that it is somehow difficult to say to someone, please be present while we are having sex because I need to understand if I am doing this exercise correctly. At least in our western society we don't use to. That's one of the keys you need. I think Bruce can provide you with this ability. But I will not say that you cannot learn this somwhere else. Does that mean conscious direction of the energy? In the past I have experimented with consciously directing the sexual energy up the spine to the crown which resulted in profound energetic orgasm as great as any meditation samadhi or drug high. Good stuff! hmmm, sorry but I am not convinced. I am in no way taking away something from your peak experiences. I just think/feel this is a different thing and if you refer to those experiences as guidelines you might not reach it. As I have explained above we are here dealing with deeper channels. It's not so much bringing the energy up or down this or that channel. Please try to do it, with the laughing and crying, and all that, before asking more questions on this . You need to have more experience under your belt. It's not hard once it happens. You are very welcome. Pietro Interesting. But your take was more on the way people acted, more than on the content. Do you feel there are also diametrically opposed views on the content? How would you summarise them? wow artform! the super O society, ...the description. And I thought I was weird!

Thank you everybody. Let me try to answer some of the questions that were raised: Good question. The truth is that I don't know. The channels that I use are the ones that go from the heart to the hands, going through all five fingers at the same time. I suspect that those are deeper than the normal meridians. And in some sense the central channel might be involved. The idea to run it in circles is not exactly what I aim here, because you don't want to refine it, but diffuse it. But it's an interesting experiment and I might try it out at some point. Also a lot of those channels are more like channels of the mind inside the body. When I say that with your mind you contact a blockage, I don't mean that you feel a phisical or energetic blockage, but more that your mind goes into a place where it is not free and formless anymore. Sorry, words fail me.

Hello Adam, first of all I want to thank you for having answered rain so well. I don't think I could have said it better. You keep on speaking about control of the orgasm. It's not about control. It's about opening. Orgasm and ejaculation are two different things. But one tend to bring on the other. When does this happen? Consider the channels in your body, the ones that reach your arms and legs. Those channels are the ones being used by laughter, and by crying. If you laugh, if you laugh a lot (not if you pretend to laugh, but because you are authentically amused), you can feel the laugh as a wave travel through your channels. Have you noticed how people who are more closed are more ticklish? Try to tickle a girl, then seduce her and tickle her afterward. If she is truly open the tickling will only bring you closer. The more a person is open the less she is ticklish. Similarly, the more a person is open the less she will cry. Not because she will feel less saddness, but the pain will travel through the body, and then go. The same is true with joy, if you are crying of happiness. This is, IMO, the meaning of the phrase: men don't cry. If you have reached the point where your channels are open enough, you usually are able to let those emotions flow through you faster than your eyes get wet. And from this point of view, it is very useful to cry and laugh, as if you do it while being conscious, you can ride the wave in your channels, and open them. How does this relates to the orgasm? The orgasm also is a wave. There are two main way in which people have an orgasm. SOme people contract their whole body, until the energy only flows in a small part. Then they speed it up over there and they come. This is the small orgasm. Then there is another one. This is not so much done, but happens. And it happens through a person. This is like a wave, that starts in one place (often in two places, but let's not get too technical) and then spread. The Taoist phrase here is "you haven't come unless you have come with your left foot big toe." This is what I would call the whole body orgasm. I am surprised that a person that has done all the training you have done haven't had experience of this yet. Honestly, it is not that difficult. So this energy spreads along the channels. It helps open them. But when the channels are blocked, that's when you ejaculate. reread this phrase: when the channels are blocked, that's when you ejaculate. The problem is that often the fear of ejaculation will itself give you the contraction that is needed to transform orgasm into an ejaculatory urge. And it is in this that I found the teachings of Bruce being particularly helpful. In particular how to do inner dissolving, and how to relax while keeping the attention (how much I wish I was able to do this better!) stable. This ability to relax and the ability to do inner dissolving are the ones you will need at this stage. And here comes the next level of complexity, if you are still with me. Because in the body there are many channels. And no one has all of them open. So there is a bit of an ability to let the energy flow through the open channels, to avoid ejaculating. But there is also another step after this. Because when you are in lululand, with energy of the orgasm raging through your body, being produced, by the contraction in her body, flowing through your channels into emptiness, that is when your mind becomes really able to guide this energy. If with one though you contact a blockage, say something bothers you, or excites you, then energy of the orgasm goes there. You then have the space of few milliseconds to dissolve the blockage, and relax. Either of them will be enough. But if you fail to do it, you will fall, and laugh, and laugh and laugh. Because you just fell down from heaven. And this explains why my girlfriend always asks me why do I always laugh when I come. When you have mastered this you also have mastered how to use sex to dissolve blockages, and how, if you do it correctly, you will not come. Unfortunately there is no single open system, that I know off, that explains it all.

No, this is dishonest, and urespectful of this whole masculity quest. The kind of inner urge that makes a man look for sustainability of his chi is a deep internal urge. When you are in touch with your internal urge you don't care what society does or does not with your image about it. As long as they don't get in the way (makes it illegal or similar). Social conditioning can in fact help by permitting to people to try out new things, and discover that some things are in fact possible. But social conditioning will never push a man enough through the inner work necessary to make his sexuality consistent with his spirituality. Some men and some women like to climb. Social mass consumption can push a person toward trying some climbing, and even taking it up as a hobby. But those people are not the climbers who can climb freestyle under a rock roof: Reaching the point of having the freedom to come only when you want is on the same level of achievement as being able to climb the top grades. The ones where the climbing can go on for days. Failing to see this can only come from ignorance of the difficulties involved, or ignorance of the grace that can be reached.

Hi. Most people over here come after a long quest through multiple schools and several teachers. This is why we took the name of Tao Bum, as of people who follow the Tao but mostly don't identify with this or that school. The HT is incomplete, and as such is dangerous and potentially unhealthy. But it is also a very direct way to learn some basic stuff about your jing, chi and possibly your shen. It is enough? For most people, no. Don't confuse what a woman will say she wants, from what she really wants. In statistics women lack sex more than men. The pupils of women expands as much (if not more) than men's when looking at sexually charged images. And Chick newspaper sell more when they speak about sex. And they know it. Just go to any newsagent, look at the titles in the cover of the women's newspapers, and you will find a lot off articles advertised on sex, tips, orgasms, and similar. Hi Craig, welcome back. No self loathing in my posts. Just amusement at my gf comments. only in the measure in which it does not comes natural to you

Naah, a doctor did it on me when I was at the hospital. And then I learned how to do it. In some situations it can help. But honestly when I went into primal diet the execratory organs were the first to fix themselves.

having good proteins help. Thus eating raw meat. Also you can try to push it inside with your fingers.

Dear Tyler, you are quite correct, the history of Taoism that we recover from inside Bruce tradition is slighty different than the history of taoism that the academic world has reached consensus (or semi-consensus). There are various points on which the two version of taoist history diverge. (The two versions being the history of taoism as it is passed on inside Bruce tradition, and the history of taoism as it is being told-recovered by modern academic analysis). The first point is where did the Tao Te Ching come from. According to modern analysis, the tao te ching was a book generated by a series of teachers who passed it on, until it got frozen into modern day tao te ching. The freezing process took about 100 years, and we do find several versions of the tao te ching buried away in tombs, and the earliest version are slightly different, and then eventually they reach the final version. Another analysis says that the tao te ching was produced by a single philosopher, Lao Tzu. Note that, if I remember correctly this was the version that the Chinese intelligenzia (read the confucianists in power) gave to the first missionaries with a not so hidden agenda of separating the practices that could be seen around from the old philosopher. The we have the religious taoist who deify Lao Tzu. And then the Buddhist version for which Lao Tzu is a bodhisatva. And now let's look at Bruce version: Lao Tzu existed, it was part of a meditative tradition. He was the chief librarian, and had considerable power. He then left everything, and as a final act of compassion pretended he was forced to write his book (while he could have just shrudded off the student), and then left. we have a few things over here. The first element we have is that Lao Tzu is part of an existing tradition. And the tradition is said to be go back for thousands of years. Can you see the connection with the modern version, that out of an analysis of the text, and of the various versions reached the conclusion that the TTC was the common effort of various masters. If there was such a tradition, you have the natural container for those masters. If there is no such tradition it becomes hard to find out where do those masters come from. So here you have the first division between the academic history of taoism, and Bruce' tradition history of taoism. In the first case you do not have a tradition that is coexisting with Lao Tzu, in the other you do. Why is this important? Because Bruce claims to be coming from this very tradition. Is Bruce right? Interestingly we have another text around. And this text was not read by Bruce. This text is the Nei Yeh. Now the Nei Yeh have been translated by Harold Roth from Brown University. And Hal analysis was that the Nei Yeh was an ancient text from a taoist mystical tradition which probably predates the Tao Te Ching. Interestingly the Nei Yeh has interesting meditations inside about stillness, and emptyness. Think about those results, especially in relation to Bruce tradition. Interestingly if you read the nei yeh you find references, and meditations that are very similar to Bruce ones. Look at this, for example: Do you remember hearing Bruce speak about the mind within the mind? Well, for what I know (and I am quite sure about this) Bruce never read the Nei Yeh. Now this still does not tells us that it has come to us through the millenia directly. The Nei Yeh was buried inside some confucianists texts, and Liu have pretty surely read it. But still it is quite impressive. Also consider that many people seem to think that all the silent and meditative practices in taoism come from buddhism. While here you have a text, older than the tao te ching, with direct teachings about the mind. So if we agree that indeed there was a tradition from which the tao te ching came from, the question is now when did the fire tradition come from. Now, you are correct to point out that there was alchemy even before the arrival of buddhism. But my understanding is that the way to do it was different. In the water way you only do alchemy once you are a human being, that is once you have merged all your spirits into a single unit, and you are one thing. And you do this by dissolving everything which is not you, until all remains is you. At that point you do alchemy, because there isn't much more you can do. You have already dissolved all there was to dissolve. SO now you need to transform what has remained. This is a different process from those practitioners who start by transforming (think at the six healing sounds, for example, transform saddness into braveness, ...). Note, I just spoke with Alan, and he noted how TCM as presented in the Classic of Internal Medicine includes some alchemy. I do not know on the spot what he is refering to, so I just repeat it. SO the answer is that I do not know when exactly did the water tradition gave birth to the fire tradition. According to Bruce: "when the buddhist arrived ..., at that point to distinguish the new tradition to the old tradition they started calling one the water tradition and the other the fire tradition. And no, they were not fire and water as part of the 5 elements cycle. Just fire and water. It does not mean that there is a wood, an earth and a metal tradition out there". To be able to track how the buddhist have influenced taoism, I would have to know more about buddhism, which I do not at the moment. But do pay attention, because generally the term neo-taoism is kept for the tradition that appears when all three the tradition merged, not just taoism and buddhism. This is another little quirk on Burce history of taoism. When does neo-taoism starts. And finally the last really big incongruence is that according to everybody Bruce tradition should have been disappeared long time ago. If you speak with Hal Roth (I did, although I don't remember word by word what we said), they will probably tell you that yes there might have been a tradition out there at the times of lao Tzu, but that tradition surely must have died in the last 2000 years. And yet Bruce has not studied the ancient texts, and teaches their meditations, claims to be teaching from that tradition, and tells us an history of taoism which is a bit different, but that might contain some elements that we have not yet recovered. Like the fact that there was a tradition around Lao Tzu. I hope this helped. Pietro

Thanks, following your info I could find it: http://www.thetaobums.com/index.php?showto...amp;#entry64951 The links have moved around a bit. Now you can find them from: http://www.4shared.com/file/65234935/14317...o_Chi_Gung.html for the pdf and the torrent is available from here: www.btmon.com/Other/Unsorted/Qi_Gong_Course_Complete.rar.torrent.html It's the link 25 tits on the left, 5 bums down under. Regards, Pietro

procurator was thrown out for having said some racist comments. So he will not come back. Cheers, Pietro

maybe one day I am pretty sure the whole of Mantak Chia practices come from neo-taoist, or at least fire tradition sources. (You remember, as soon as the old taoism started mixing with buddhism we call this fire traditions, but only when they finally merged and incorporated also confucianist values they are fully recognised as neo-taoist)

I did read some, and I downloaded the Book, and read some of that too. But I seem to miss the connection between topological spaces and intuitionistic logic. Oh boy topological spaces, I have forgotten everything about them. Wasn't it that the opposite of an open was a closed? In this they seem to be more similar to Aristotelian logic. By the way there was a guy in the first half of the last century that made a big thing about Non-A, that is non aristotelian. But then his book seemed to be quite too up in the air, to be really useful. And his thread of science was shot down by a subsequent book on fake science, and similar. I don't remember the details, but I could find them out if necessary. I downloaded both the book from this guy and the book that shot him down, and I have to say it was probably right to shot him down :-) I am paving my way, myself. But one thing I can tell you, there are not two universes. If something is true according to one POV it must be true according to the other also. If not something about one of the two POV is delusional. Also it was really useful to remember that: science only deals with what can be measured. If it cannot be measured (either because we have not yet done it, or we have not yet found a way to do it, or it is just impossible), then it is not under the domain of science. But this does not makes it false. The earth was round even before we found ways to measure it as such. The fight is not between scientists and meditators, but between scientists and meditators on the one side and ignorance on the other. good night

Hello Sheng Zhen, finally I read this thread. Can you tell me more about this (in particular about the part in bold). Where did you found it described, who teaches it, what are the effects, which practitioners do we have around here doing this, and so on. You know, Tien Shen Qi Gung is pretty generic. I would be surprised if there was only one school with that name. Regards, Pietro

Michael, the problem is in the operation. 1+1=2 But 1 sex 1=3 And this is how you get the fibonacci series: 1 1 2 3 5 8 13 21 34 55 where each number is equal to the sum of the two preceeding numbers and which actually follows pretty close the rabbit population. Or the human one.

Hello snowmonki I don't know much about the xin. Bruce gave a workshop in Ulm about it last year. It was a m a z i n g !! I have maybe done 10 or 15 workshops with him so far, and abour 3 or 4 are just way way better then the rest. This was one of those. We did not enter into what the various practices do to the nervous system, so I don't know much about it. It was more about how to access it. I think you are quite correct about how the visualization is used less in the water method, although we do use it. But we use it in a different way. For example you review parts of a form by visualizing yourself doing it. But it's not just visualization, as you are supposed to also run the energy in the channels while you are doing it. Tiring. Have you read the post I wrote in the other thread. I love how it got totally ignored. But it's important. Because this is where the two labels came from. After having discussed with Bruce over and over and over, and having discussed with Alan (who also happens to be a an academic professor in Archeology), over and over I reached the conclusion that this is what it boils down to. And it was confirmed. I then asked permission to write an article, and Alan agreed to review it, and Bruce agreed to read it after Alan has reviewed it the first time. And I never wrote a line! As long as we ground the difference between fire and water on the practices that are being done, and not on the historical process that led to the division (taoism versus neotaoism) we are bound to have an incredible amount of misery, discussion and misunderstanding. This because, although it might be not good to mix things up, people do mix things up all the time. And then they say that they are doing fire and water. And then they recover the concept of the kan and li, and stick it above it, just because it fits well. And since fire and water are also two elements, then there should be other 3 somwhere. But then, -"oh wait, why not other 6, after all they are also directions". But then "what about other 62? After all they are also hexagrams". The division is an historical division: taoism, versus neo-taoism. And of course the other problem is that people want to do taoism, not neo-taoism. Because neo-taoism sounds wrong. Sounds false. And people think you want to cheat them if you say that they are doing neo-taoism, and you are doing taoism. But hey, neotaoism has mixed in confucianism, and buddhism. Those are cool traditions to be mixed with. And then you have those people like Liu who were both a daoist and a neo daoist, and a confucianist and a buddhist! And we are not speaking about people who reached enlightenment and then each other tradition gave the ok. We are speaking about people who completed the course in one tradition, then completed again the course in the second and so on. And this mixes everything up. Oh well. Honestly keep it as taoist versus neotaoist. It's just simple enough without losing any fundamental complexity. /rant Pietro P.S. What do you think, shall we start a thread for the water people? Something like the one the kunlun people have done?

Inner dissolving is done sitting, but you need a good understanding of outer dissolving first. And that is done standing. Plus you clearly need to integrate different parts. This is done better standing. Regarding Portugal, yes is quite near to south america. Same planet at least ;-).

Now I see where the confusion was coming from. My address said that I was in Rome, Italy. That's why. No, I am no more in Rome. I am in Portugal. And this is why I mentioned that he is not that far from here. If/when I will have a car I might go and visit him. I also paid a visit to Mak Tin Si, and I wrote my experience in a post buried somwhere. But then there was a huge discussion over the point if Mak Tin Si was a legitimate Taoist priest or a person who has deluded himself into being a Taoist priest. I think the jury is still out. Or yet, each person of the jury seem to have took their own decision, and seem to be unwilling to change it. There just was no agreement over it. This whole discussion have been started with you saying, let's interact with a legitimate Taoist Priest. Now it is only fair that I ask if this person is truly legitimate. Especially after our recent discussions. The fact is that I do not understand nothing of Taoist Priests. Never been to China, never been to Hong Kong. So I was asking out more experienced brothers to give a feedback over this priest. Nice one about Barolo, it's starting to become the wine of choise among Taoists around here. Along with San Giovese (liked by RJ), and Champagne (liked by Bruce).

This is correct. Every school of Taoism always cultivates all the elements. But no one in this thread suggested otherwise. What we are discussing is the way to cultivate, not what we are cultivating. What you are presenting is really good. Can you tell us your school? It sounds like Quanzhen, is that correct? Best Regards, Pietro

????????????????! You must have felt truly offended by my post, to react like this.