Ian

Just wondered whether David, or Wang Liping, or any other senior person around them, has commented as to whether this book is an accurate record of Wang Liping's training? Apologies if this has been covered before - I tend not to read all of threads over a certain length, as it's often an indication that things have got more personal than factual.

Beautifully expressed, as ever. And I agree, kinda. But I do believe, based on my experience of the last three years, that while we can't do nothing, it is possible to do less and less. The process is way fiddly, ime, in the sense that there are no instructions for it except negative ones. But it can happen, if you spend enough time waiting, that you get better at it. V slowly, in my case. Thus the point of spiritual practice, if there is one, is that during the practice time you at least do less harm than during the rest of the day, and maybe, eventually, some good. A continuum, not an either/or. It's kind of reassuring, after a while, to know that everything you're doing is wrong. Takes the pressure off.

I know that site. Just bought an elephant poo notebook for my niece from there. Small world. P.S. How much do you use and how often, if such patterns are established?

Easy one. Because the Catholic church offers no techniques, especially not any techniques which attempt to represent the non-verbal and hitherto unexperienced in words easily misinterpreted. Actually, hang on. Maybe they do. Maybe all that bollocks over the centuries was actually coded instructions for the initiate. This opens up a whole new line of thought. Incidentally, good luck in all you do. I don't know if it has been mentioned, in all the criticism of your navigating unaided, that it must have taken awesome willpower to keep going without a teacher or support network. More than I'd manage.

I agree that you can't make it happen. But, and this is important, you can stop it happening. What's more, you can stop doing the things that you do which stop it happening. Call that seeking, call it unnecessary. Fine. It is. But only once it becomes so. Until it is recognised as unnecessary, it is vital. And it requires a great deal of effort to get to a place of no effort. Because your effort has thousands of years of momentum, and needs interrupting with a different kind of effort. Unless you're very very lucky. And when you get to the place of no effort, that isn't it. You still have to wait. But at least you're meeting grace half way. If you just say, it's all fine, there's nothing to do, that's like hoping to win the lottery without buying a ticket.

See this thread My recommendation would still be Diana Richardson's book. Written from a female perspective.

By non-ordinary reality, I mean experiencing yourself as something other than an intelligence in a body, looking out from, or centered in, the area behind the eyes. This could be anything. I'm curious as to how many people came to spiritual practice because of such experience, hoping to control or understand it, and how many came to it in the hope of having such experience in the first place. And is there anyone for whom it's entirely irrelevant?

I'm not 100% on this, but I have the distinct impression that the more one clears out one's own gunk the more, rather than less, one becomes susceptible to external influences, simply because there is more space for them to get in, in one sense. I've heard stuff along such lines from Chia, and from people in the Gurdjieff tradition. Hopefully by the time such clearance has occured one is increasingly ready to process, or not be carried away by, whatever comes along. When you talk about thinking happy thoughts, I assume you're talking about a whole-body kind of thinking such as you use when manifesting. Which is something else again, I suppose. (disappears in puff of irrelevance)

My dear old thing, that's exactly the problem. You keep saying stuff, without context, without reference to your own or anyone's experience, without any mentions of any practices or circumstances. It should be reasonably evident, for example, in this thread, that I'm talking about what we experience and that that experience is variable, and that I'm not trying to suggest that there is any sort of concrete reality. So how exactly do you imagine it helps me, or anyone, for you to say "there is no reality". It's simply not useful. It's like repeated layers of polystyrene in the sandwich which is any given thread. We all have our practices and our lives, and our impression of truth, reality, and of whatever may or may not correspond to those words, well that changes and we try to express that for each other. But generally we contextualise it, attempt to make it relevant and useful. Maybe that's futile, but at least we're acknowledging each other's futlity. What you say isn't testable, that's exactly the trouble. It doesn't help. It gives me the impression that you are simply trying to promote, repeatedly, the wisdom of Paul Kren. If not, what the bloody hell are you trying to do?

That being the case, you make a surprising number of assertions.

You're not rude. You just desperately want people to know that you know something. And with me, at least, you're wasting your time. But don't let that stop you.

I think you'll find Hagar lives in Norway! ZW is an extremely accomplished chap, but I doubt even he can read a piece of A4 across the North Sea. And shouldn't you be the one making the effort? A master would likely want you to at least be bothered to turn up if you want his help. Or were you just kidding? So hard to tell the tone from type.

How much is it? I couldn't see a price anywhere. Incidentally, the site appeared to say 15 years rather than 50.

Just a quickie: it has just been noted in my place of work that "everyone's weird today" (Feb 6th) While we are a limited sample, there does seem to be a certain truth in it. I for one am in a highly peculiar frame of being, though that may date from yesterday or before. So, question is: is there any significance to the date? Any astrological/chinese astrological speedbumps in the highway of existence just now? Or does our little enclave just need to reduce coffee and get some fresh air?

I have a copy you can borrow if you like. PM me your address. Also, are you aware there's a class in it at Barry spendlove's place, not this weekend but next?

That's completely normal. Everyone's head is like that. You're just starting to notice it, is all.

We haven't by any chance just had another one, have we? Or something similar? I had a sense of things shifting Sunday night (8th April) and being really a bit wrong all yesterday. Still quite weird now, but as if it's "broken" now. Or is it just me this time?

I know Michael Winn did a lot of Kriya Yoga and rated it highly, Taoist stuff only just winning out for him. I'm sure, Michael being Michael, there's a long article out there somewhere about why what he does is better....

Do you mean this chap: "Grandmaster Gou Kong Jie"? Cos he's in England just now.

Any suggestions?

In my terms, just more effort than needed. Which will always be the case, must be noticed to be dropped, and is therefore necessary anyway. The only weapon your trash has is to get you involved! Sometimes one is tempted to get one's vibration back to "normal" by stuffing one's face. What happens if you don't give in to the hunger? I've heard Liu Ming, Sean's teacher, suggest that alchemy was something to use if your sitting hit a wall, but not really otherwise, unless you were trying to earn a few pennies by helping the village with their dry well or barren cattle. My teacher says that alchemy will happen of its own accord eventually if you keep meditating.

I don't do alchemy, so please ignore this. What I do know is that there are incredibly strong forces lurking within. And that alchemy is an acceleration in the first place. So in one sense, by practicing alchemy, you are forcing, by definition. The only question then would be whether you are forcing more than you're happy with, or just more than your resistance is happy with. Sounds like maybe. My own practice involves doing the wrong thing all the time, and gradually trying to move to an ever lesser degree of wrongness. So if I suggest that you may be doing something "a bit wrong" please don't imagine that I think you should change anything. As I said, please ignore this.

Thank you. I like this. Was chatting with friends lately and they were talking about their lists of celebrities etc. whom they wouldn't mind shagging. And I had to confess to having no such list and a preference for real people. It felt a bit like I was refusing to play the game, after all they knew it was just foolery and meant nothing, but I couldn't join in as I simply can't muster any preferences from, well, images.

Yes. I think we are talking about two altogether different levels of practice. My teacher says the same sort of stuff about sexual cultivation, i.e nobody's ready and you'll end up running a fantasy number if you try. What I'm talking about, which I imagine is different, is a very basic attitude, that if there's the two of you and you're going to be having sex anyway, there is great benefit to be had by the endeavour to make it relaxed and embodied and present, rather than excited and mental and orgasm-oriented, exactly as one might, in some forms of meditation, endeavor to be aware of sensation rather than thought or emotion. That's all. I think such an endeavour can have a deepening and even purifying value. But perhaps this is so basic as to go without saying. I'm sure by cultivation you mean something much more high level. Can you tell us anything more about your teacher(s)?

But I might never penetrate your gnomic depths and I want to insult you now! It simply isn't fair. You could keep on and on claiming we haven't understood you and then the chance would never come. What if we understood you ages ago and you're just faking? Can't we do some insulting on credit, just in case you're actually just as shallow as the rest of us?