Ian

Yes. My impression is that I have comparatively little connection to the rest of creation, but even so I find myself with a sort of "bone shudder" at even a verbal description of a third party hurting themselves. Incidentally, when you put your attention in your heart, for example, to what extent does your attention actually leave the castle behind your eyes?

I really like that. Not only makes sense, but resonates with my experience. I've often thought that one reason for sustained celibacy was simply that it would cause a build-up powerful enough to provide one's first sensation of energy, for those who haven't experienced energy in other ways.

I think you're talking about the same thing. To eat, i.e. absorb, i.e. become one with a greater field, does that not require you to drop much of what has caused you to be, or consider yourself, small and separate? And is that not a definition of ego? Sounds like a question of emphasis to me.

My take would be that the nausea is not part of the orbit as such, but is arising from a particular blockage or blockages in the abdomen or solar plexus, which is /are getting prodded as energy moves through or into it/them. I had loads of nausea in the first months of standing. I suggest just contain it and don't react. It'll go in time. Don't know about the bang. Liver energy is often explosive when finally released, I'm told. I wouldn't know, as I'm still clinging on to mine.

Don't know about Sussex, as such. Hagar's master, Zhixing Wang, teaches in London and Henley. He's the biz. Barry Spendlove lives in North Wales, but travels. He's lovely. And Sifu Yap comes to Oxford once or twice a year. Used to know more, but I've managed to narrow it down!

Yes, lots of animal stuff happens. Not to me yet. Am told this avoids future animal incarnations. Never sure if he's joking....

Thank you. This really resonates. I wouldn't put it exactly this way just now, but nonetheless, I recognise something very true in that. I have definitely been touch deficient at various stages. A few days after meeting my first girlfriend I started getting touch-echoes, replays in her absence of the sensation of being touched. It was freaky.

A Year of Standing. (At least I'm pretty sure it is. I don't remember when I started, but it was early Feb.) A year is starting to seem like a very short time, both compared to some of the reports of what others on this site have done, and compared to how long might be required before I start to practice usefully. But anyway, the facts, such as they are. I'm up to forty-five minutes. Ought to be an hour by now, but three-quarters seems like a long time at the moment. Two things changed when I was in Penang recently. One is the range of movements which occur: much more bending at the knee, crouching down and forwards, and more neck movements, like slow whiplash. I need to make sure there is a yard and a half clear space in front of me. The other is that I'd been getting involved with a lumpy area around my eyes, allowing it to lure me into all kinds of doing, trying to produce stuff which should just happen. And I've given that up now, as much as I can, and am now limiting my karma-creation to maintaining as continuous as possible an awareness of the pressure of my feet on the floor. Nothing else. So the chief challenge is to give as little power as possible to the part of me which wants to know how well I'm doing. (Goddam the school system!) Not to make that part important, no matter how much it confounds me. Not to value its conclusions, nor ideally even allow them to be made. Back to the feet. This means, effectively, being something other than I've always been. Denying fuel to the ongoing, habitual process of me. Like a sticker trying to peel itself off itself with gluey fingers it's not allowed to use. About the only positive summary I can make is that I haven't stopped.

I spent last Sunday in London with Dirk Oellibrandt, and he was talking about using darkness in his teaching. First the eyes play, then when that runs out you start hearing things, then gradually it cuts back to earth and metal, just breathing and sensing. All sounds so much more profound when he says it. He was talking about babies in the womb, just sensing the body, having no idea that they are doing so, because all of them is just sensing. "There is only one earth." One hint I'm finding useful towards "unplugging the monitor" is to realise that whatever it comes up with, any estimate of how you're doing, is completely and utterly valueless.

Yes yes yes. You cannot do it. Everything we do is wrong, hopefully to a decreasing degree, in one sense. Always wrong, in another. But if you keep trying for long enough you may give up trying. Stillness isn't still, necessarily. It's just what's there if you don't interfere. Could be anything. And the stuff you do while trying not to try not to try does have value, also. I am drawn to meditate with eyes open. But I keep being told it's an evasion (for me, given what I'm trying.) Still not sure. Sorry, random responses. One day I'll be bright enough to write a paragraph!

If you count a standing meditation where my body writhes about like a stringless puppet, then yes, every day without fail, for about a year.

Interesting point. While I was in Malaysia recently I asked my teacher about Wang Liping and his apparent powers. He said 1) that he had heard the name, but little else, that this one not one of those people who advertised themselves (=guarded approval) 2) that powers such as walking through walls are indeed possible, are not the most usual "siddhis" associated with advanced emptiness, and, crucially, can be achieved by rigorous practice of side disciplines not directly concerned with emptiness. (he's into emptiness, as you might gather, but describes it as, well, much less empty than you might think) And that was it. More than one usually gets out of him on that sort of topic. Hope is of interest.

Not a huge lot to say. I was way out of character, just in terms of obsessiveness / relentlessness and must do it now ness. I may yet escape consequences or not. What was also odd was that other people treated me way differently, some ultra sympathetic, some wary, but everyone noticing me in the street. It's easy with hindsight to imagine I recognise similar days in the past. But I could be kidding myself. Certainly nothing as powerful. I know several traditions mention that as you clear up a degree of personal stuff you become more open to the influence of external forces, but I wasn't aware of any great changes in me such as might allow same...

So that long personal inarticulate email to my girlfriend about important stuff might have been better timed.... Please please do. If it's going to be like this each time I could really use the warning... P.S. Quick edit: Question: do these days also entail feeling the impulse to do stuff you shouldn't? Cos I felt a great compulsion to change things, establish stuff etc etc

http://www.tardigrades.com

Ah! Are you talking about the thing that waves your feet from side to side to generate a wave of rising chi? I had one for a while. Got it for my father, cos he was too ill to do his own exercise, but it was too fierce for him. I used it myself for a while. Found it enjoyable, but definitely something that one could allow or obstruct, and the residual energy afterwards seemed somehow of a different order to that which came from more self-propelled activities. I sold it on after a couple fo months. If you're talking about something else, do tell us what it does.

Indeed. I think it does Buddhism a great disservice that people perceive it as something that always neglects the body. (Although clearly many of its schools do...) My teacher is a buddhist and his practices are all physical. I have a friend whose meditation causes him to spin like a top and /or howl like a beast, among other things.

Just occured to me to wonder if the biblical story about Christ turning water into "wine" was a description of something like that. Would kinda make sense. "Wine" might be the nearest word for a tasty liquid that wasn't a recognisable fruit juice and had an effect on the system. Just a thought.

Temple Grandin, she's called. Book called Animals in Translation.

The really freaky thing is that the researcher mentioned in the article: "Simon Baron-Cohen, a professor at Cambridge University's Autism Research Center." is the brother of Sacha Baron-Cohen, i.e. Borat.

How the universe works? Everyone has a different view. Very few of these views are based on direct experience. I wouldn't even go there if I were you - you'll just get more and more and more to think about. Controlling your mind is a different matter. There are techniques and you can test them. I suggest not trying to fight with thoughts. They will win. My technique of choice is to let the thoughts think and try to inhabit the sensation of the body. Whatever method you choose, be patient with it and relax as much as possible, that's what I'd say. Maybe let go of your old teacher to make room for a new one.

If you want to use affirmations, I'd suggest doing them after some physical practice which might have cleared some space in the body, and seeing if you can get the words to vibrate through your cells. Also, and this may be old news, use the present tense about anything good. Don't put it in the future or that's where it'll stay.

Are you still using both sizes, or did you settle on one as preferable?

Later edit: just to make clear: I am not practiced enough to be entitled to these opinions, but I trust the teacher whence they came. My two cents: Nirvana is a decision. You decide you can't be doing with it all any more. To make such a decision requires insight into how things are, which in turn requires practice. I completely disagree with the post earlier saying good thoughts are more important than emptiness. There is no such thing as a good thought. Every thought is a thief. True, you can't stop them, but you can be ever less involved. The most compassionate thing you can do for anyone is perceive them absolutely as they are. Pratyeka Buddha path is about our only hope, as it relies on direct experience and not on all this doctrine which we can't even begin to agree on. And, well, I heard tell it's Taoists and good-thinkers who get stuck for mahakappas in bliss realms where you can't cultivate and just fall flat when your time is up. Maybe just one cent there. Keep the change.