goldisheavy

Probably, but how is that relevant? You are the captain of your ship, no?

You don't have to take everything you hear seriously.

Well, I'll do my best. From my POV, the practice of pacifying or of transmuting sexual energy is rooted in the view that the worldly life is not worth getting involved in. In more than one Daoist writing I got this impression very strongly, and to some extent I even share such view myself. So the view becomes that this world, together with your body, is a vehicle for spiritual practice. It has no other purpose. So it has no purpose for procreation. It has no purpose for pleasure. You get your pleasure from meditation and from ethereal and ineffable spiritual experiences. That's the general view and attitude. Now, if you truly, from the bottom of your heart, buy into this view, then maintaining celibacy or transmuting your sexual energy is not hard. Furthermore, if you have a high sexual drive, lowering it is easy using contemplation of undesirable quality of sex objects. Be aware, that this results in a stably lowered sexual drive such that if you ever want to get your drive back, you'll need to practice the same way you had to practice to lower it, namely by contemplation of attractive and enticing qualities of sex objects. So while it is reversible, it is not a joke to reverse it, so don't make any hasty or foolish decisions you will regret later. Be true to yourself and don't try to lie to yourself about who you are and what you want from life, even if who you are and what you want is changing, you have to be moment-by-moment honest to yourself. If you believe this world is an enjoyable place and that the purpose of the body is as much for joy and fun as it is for spiritual practice, I think that's a legitimate and valid view, however, celibacy is not a good practice for you and sexual transmutation is also not a good practice for you. You need to be sexual in this view. You have to enjoy girls, masturbation, porn and so on and basically be a little closer to what a normal human being is. Being a celibate hermit is not normal, it is rare and it's not suitable for everyone. For sexually active people there is a practice of Daoist dual cultivation. I believe you need a stable girlfriend or a wife for this practice. Other than that, I don't know any specifics about it. I just understand the principles behind such practice. So you need to do two things. First, decide what you want from life and who you are. Second, decide what kind of practice is compatible with your choice. It sounds to me like your specific practice is not meant for someone who will have a constant stream of "oops'es." In other words, there is a good chance it is not for you. If it so happens that some hermit comes down from a mountain and teaches you something, even though such teaching might be rare and precious and worth memorizing, it may not be a good teaching for you personally. You may want to pass it on to someone else who is meant to be a hermit and perhaps you can't benefit from it yourself. Really a good teacher will take interest in your personality and in your life and will not give you a practice you cannot keep up. So it sounds like your teacher is distant from you emotionally and to put it bluntly, "doesn't give a shit about you." So he/she just gave you a teaching regardless of whether or not you can realistically benefit from it. This might be the case if you purchased this teaching instead of receiving it under the auspices of transcendent spiritual friendship.

I don't think there is a universal agreement among the sages on this point. At the same time, it's true that I don't listen to all the sages equally. Perhaps I do write some of them off.

I read it and enjoyed it. Not much else to say.

Is this a different "Mak"? I assume you're referring to Mak Tin Si. Someone please correct me, but "Mak" is just an honorific prefix, right? If yes, there are probably many different "Maks" out there in the world. Also, those movements really look like sword movements done with bats.

I don't think about any kind of angels, fallen or non-fallen.

Words of wisdom with more than one meaning.

End goal of what? You are not specific. I think the end goal of OBE is to have fun. There is no other goal to my mind. Why is that? Because beings you meet while OBE can be as ignorant and as annoying as any other. There is no guarantee of wisdom while out of body. At the same time, a human being can be very very wise. So OBE is no guarantee of wisdom and humanity is no guarantee of foolishness. So what's left? Fun. While OBE you can visit other countries, other lands, other people, other solar systems and other realms of existence. It is psychic tourism with the same benefits and drawbacks as the normal tourism we know. Or perhaps you mean things like alchemy or enlightenment. Alchemy, most of the time, is a practice that's aimed at changing one's experience in a significant way. For example it can change how the body feels and it can change what you can do with the body (which is also an experience). Sometimes alchemy is a practice that's actually aimed at getting rich quick. The idea is to literally take some junk metal and to turn it into gold as a "get rich quick" scheme. Supposedly there have been some Daoists who could do that in the past, according to legends. Can you find proof of this kind of ability today? What are you yourself like? Are you a typical physicalist kind of guy? Then the answer is probably no, you cannot find any evidence of such things. And enlightenment is just easy. Enlightenment is the development of wisdom to an unusually rarified degree. What's the point of being wise? I hope that's self-explanatory. You can get all of the answers yourself by trying things, by using reason, and by being patient and attentive. Then write your own book and share what you've learned.

Seth, thanks for sharing your experience with us. I understand exactly what you mean when you say "that's what it felt like." I am familiar with happenings like that. I didn't expect any kind of experience sharing. I was thinking in more theoretical terms. I've had one OBE myself, and it didn't involve any kind of explicit Qi or Kundalini at all. I say "explicit" because I just focused on getting out of the body. I didn't care what the subtle energy does or doesn't do and at the time, I didn't really feel anything special in my spine or in any other significant region. Instead I felt like my bones rattled and there was a loud noise and then a sensation like "pop" and quiet. I actually assumed nothing happened. I opened my eyes only to find myself hovering about 1-2 feet over my body. I didn't even know I separated from my body, as I was projecting myself with eyes to begin with. My interpretation of all this information is that there is a lot of variance in personal experience. And instead of trying to hammer all experience into one system, we should respect the individual differences between experiences. We should respect the differences between traditions. And we should respect the differences between individuals. Most people crave objectivity. Because of this, there is a huge effort to try to systemize and shoe-horn every energy system into one system to justify and to validate the subtle energy as something truly objective. I believe this is a very wrong and destructive approach. First of all, I don't believe even cars on the street are objective. Never mind subtle energy. I believe our reality is best described as intersubjective. All of us have haggling power over what we want to consider real. That's the nature of intersubjectivity as I see it. So I think that some people will find it useful and true to their experience to use a phrase like "kundalini awakening." Other people will not find it useful. And I claim that there is a group of people who will be harmed by the idea of awakening, just like there is a group of Zen Buddhist who are seriously harmed by the idea that enlightenment must be sudden. These guys and gals are ever on the lookout for something sudden. This is the harm that's caused by the idea of suddenness. It causes people to try to anticipate it, and anticipating things like that is very wrong and can lead to delusions. So people who have already, in the past, experienced the suddenness, they need language like "awakening" to describe what happened to them. And that's cool. But because there are individual differences between people, if awakening is made a standard, this will seriously harm a lot of people. That's what my point is.

Dude, I was just agreeing with you there. You know there are two ways to agree? One way is to say "yes" and another way is to reaffirm and reiterate the position as a sign of agreement. I thought everyone knew that.

And by saying this you just contradicted the Wiki entry.

More: http://forums.vsociety.net/index.php?topic=15298.0 Dan Tien is said to be around Qi Hai

OK, so then awakening is not to be taken literally. That's first. Second, you'd be dead if you didn't have the energy of life. That's another reason not to take awakening literally. So awakening then is a symbolic act, like adopting a new spiritual name when you begin on the spiritual path. You can begin the path without changing your name, or you can change your name to celebrate a new beginning. But either way there is no substantial difference.

More evidence to consider: http://www.acupuncturecollege.org.uk/Chinese-Medicine/Glossary.html Yuan Qi: Active and dynamically employed Jing. Essence (Jing): A Substance stored in the Kidneys, responsible for birth, growth, reproduction and development. So Kidneys is not the sacrum bone.

Read about Kundalini here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kundalini "Kundalini (kuṇḍalinī, Sanskrit: कुण्डलिनी) literally means coiled. In yoga, a "corporeal energy"[1] - an unconscious, instinctive or libidinal force or Shakti, lies coiled at the base of the spine.[2][3][4] It is envisioned either as a goddess or else as a sleeping serpent, hence a number of English renderings of the term such as 'serpent power'. The kundalini resides in the sacrum bone in three and a half coils and has been described as a residual power of pure desire." So it's obviously not coiled in dantien and doesn't rise from there. Like I said, Kundalini is different. And listen to how it's described as residual power of pure desire. That's not the same thing as the description for yuan qi: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yu%C3%A1n_q%C3%AC I am not buying your stuff vortex.

Also look here: http://www.lieske.com/channels.htm Doesn't look to me like it's the same thing. Lower to upper dan tien is a different path from 1st to crown chakra. In any case, I subscribe to the Complete Reality interpretation (given your first link). All these energy phenomena are revealing the workings of the mind. They don't represent some kind of objective forces in the body. Thus, it is ultimately not important what flows where and what is awakened or not.

You do realize the story is changing as we speak? First it was from lower dan tien (which is 3 finger widths below the navel and in front of the spine rather than in the spine) to upper, and now it's from huiyin to baihui. I don't like this. Look at the picture presented here: http://www.workofthechariot.com/TextFiles/Trees-TaoistAlchemy.html Notice how it is significantly different? I have a feeling there is a concerted effort to make it look like the Chinese and Indian schools of thought are the same when in fact they aren't. Furthermore, I would say most of the original alchemists were not materialists and yet now every effort is made to connect subtle energy to physical organs, which to my mind is very wrong and it basically castrates the whole practice.

As if they are blind. They know what's going on and if they don't like it, they can change it. I don't dislike this practice enough to make official complaints. It's annoying to me personally, but if people accept it and if the owners accept it, so be it. I don't like it, so I said something. I think there is a difference between discussion and advertisement. Also, since this was posted by ToP-fan, who hardly contributes anything to the forum, it makes a big difference. Because as far as I am concerned, it's an account that exists solely to promote various commercial fluff. If someone like say ralis or taomeow made a recommendation (I am picking randomly here), I would feel different because ralis and/or taomeow contribute a lot and I am certain they are not here to peddle any kind of stuff. If someone who made a 100 posts since 2006 and who made 2 posts in the past two year posts an advert, my attitude is that it is pure and unadulterated commercial spam.

The problem is that anything can be described in these terms. So it makes no sense to talk specifically about Kundalini like this when any seemingly "new" phenomenon is awareness illuminating preciously-unconscious potential. Any. If both of these people participate in a consensual reality, this can happen, however, this has nothing to do with Kundalini. Someone who knows nothing whatsoever about Kundalini can achieve this kind of experience with another being. "Wattage" is a term that's applicable to a substantial and measurable energy, like electricity, which is believed to be substantial and objective. I wouldn't use "wattage" in the same sentence as awareness. Awareness is entirely transcendent. It's not an object to itself or to anything else. It doesn't get stronger or weaker and nor does it have a quality like "wattage.". It doesn't seem like the Buddhist teachings have affected you all that much with regard to Kundalini. No offense. By all means believe what you like (as long as you are non-violent).

This is pretty interesting and I appreciate your explanation and the link. Do you have a picture of the channel by any chance? If I understand correctly, the Kundalini awakens at the base of the body (roughly under the balls if you're a man), and moves up the spine. This seems very different from what you are describing (from lower to upper dan tian). In any case, it would be interesting to examine the explanation behind this energy, so I'll give your link a read.

You know what? If you are going to advertise a book, really you should buy an advert like every other business, and by buying an advert, you'd be supporting the site. Just my personal opinion. Maybe the current site owners don't care about this, but if I ran the site, I would. If you advertise a financial product, you make money from this site. And if you make money from this site you should share this money by paying for adverts. Secondly, I went to www.fellowshipspirit.org and found no easy reference to the book. The site is burdened with all kinds of information. It's all crammed together and it's not obvious at a glance where the book is. This is ridiculous even for an advertisement. Next time, post a link directly to the page that contains the book and the book alone. When I click the link, I expect to find the book there right at the top and center of the page, and no other irrelevant information. Only the book you advertise and nothing else. That's how it's done. Cheers.

First, that's is a rather weaselly answer. Shame on you. Second, can you personally guarantee that when the teacher is found, it will be a good teacher who will help instead of bringing further harm? There are a lot of cult personalities and outright ignorant teachers with great credentials. So I'd like to hear about your source of confidence in the statistically average teacher, which is what the person is likely to find. This issue is not serious. Great. Invite them here. Let them help. Or shut up.

I agree. They don't talk of prana awakening. So if Kundalini is something else, what is it? I am also interested. I've never heard of thrusting channels. Well, I'd like to get unconfused if it's possible. But I do wonder on what basis would such subtle energies be differentiated when they are perceived in the same way as hot sensations, cold sensations, light, electric prickling or tingling and so on. So if the perceptions are the same, what is different then? If the perceptions are not the same, I'd like to know how exactly. I agree with that. We should be decent to all people regardless of the status of their Kundalini. Thank you!

Via what else, besides mind, do you know? Your arse perhaps?