Sloppy Zhang

Yeah, it kind of is. But from what I see it, some methods delve deep inside for this connection, and some people build it up by accumulating energy and stuff. Are they really going to the same place, or are they cultivating different things? Or maybe I'm just looking at it wrong

What do you mean by working backwards?

You know the best teacher is direct experience, so how about you guys teach me some psychic powers so I can experience this for myself?

This is all very well and totally reasonable and understandable... if your end goal is liberation or whatever. What if your goal is to get psychic abilities in the first place? Call me immature and stupid, but I think psychic powers would be awesome to have, and it's one of the goals that I hope to attain in my life. Yes, I am attached to getting them. Yes, I can do "bad" things with them. But I can be just as attached to my favorite foods, and I can do just as many "bad" things with a plastic fork. So when people say things like, "you must strive for liberation, and sometimes psychic powers awaken, sometimes not", that's all good and well. But when people say, "oh, here is how you can get psychic powers," but then turn around and say, "it will get in your way", well, you are assuming (sometimes incorrectly) that their end goal is the same as yours. Yes, it would be nice to attain liberation and end suffering and all that, and in the long-long run I hope to get that. But first I want to attain psychic powers and play with those a bit (yes, I said "want", and yes, I know that I would be putting myself at risk to get bad karma).

There are some pretty good tai chi threads over on bullshido. They basically focus on tai chi players who enter sanshou competitions, and they look at video clips of tai chi techniques being applied in competition. You might have to search far back, but as far as the reputable people on bullshido go (the people who are rational and look at video evidence rather than just hating, yes, they exist on bullshido), they have all pretty much come to the consensus that yes, IMA's work, if you train properly.

Awesome So I am assuming that in these "dark magics", the premise of getting the powers is the same? They just aren't as good minded about having them? Some people/traditions say things along the lines that, you can only get them if you are "good", or that, by the process of getting them, you realize how you should be "good". I was wondering about your thoughts on that?

Err, actually that was a pretty good idea about the process..... it's certainly more helpful than what other people seem to say as: 1) reach stillness 2) ??? 3) YOU ARE PSYCHIC! It's not that I don't believe it's possible. It's just that, when you say you can become psychic, which is quite easily verifiable, well, I personally expect to see it. If you don't want to have to prove yourself, and if you don't want to at least make an attempt at explaining it, then don't even make the claims. This as well is reasonable.

Sounds similar to some other stuff I'm doing. Everyone says their stuff can awaken psychic abilities, but nobody quite says how.... Or is it just this?

Care to explain what it is/how you do it, for those who don't know?

This too was my initial reaction. Or at least, I've pursued qigong with all of these goals in mind.

No, the way that Frantzis organized his books is that the exercises presented were as low energy as possible. Pretty much, the energy you work with is very subtle. It's all about relaxing, cultivating a deep sense of feeling, and learning to work with a little tiny bit of energy without overloading the system. Plus he didn't want people screwing themselves up. As creation has said, higher level energy practices are taught later. But once you have a good ability to relax and to feel, you can see problems happening much further down the road. If you start moving more energy around and you feel it stagnate a mile away, you're in much better shape than the person who doesn't feel it until its almost at their doorstep. Which is why I still maintain that it's good to get a feel for the stuff Frantzis teaches, even if it's just out of the book. The stuff you'll feel will probably feel minimal compared to other systems. But its benefits aren't about accumulating energy, it's in feeling energy. When you make the jump to either later qigong techniques, or to Bardon's system, which involves good amounts of accumulating and working with energy, you'll be able to feel them more easily. Bardon says not to accumulate too much energy at a time, for example, he suggests you start doing 7 breaths and then work your way up, one breath each day, until you get to 20 or so. That is to avoid putting too much pressure on the system. If you have a good feel for your own body, you'll know what's too much, and you'll know sooner. Well I think even Frantzis in some of his books says things like, "using the light of your awareness to melt the ice" and things like that. Another analogy that I liked a little bit better was thinking of clenching your first as a metaphor for a blockage that you feel. "Ice to water" is like relaxing the fingers, you still have a fist, but it is loose and devoid of its tension, then "water to gas" is fully opening your hand. That gets rid of the whole "fire vs. water" analogy and gets right to the point: removing tension. It's also closer to stuff that people actually FEEL on a day to day basis, relaxing as opposed to.... melting ice. Not too many people take time out of their day to watch ice melt and try to make their body do the same thing Well for the purposes of not straying too far, I definitely suggest Bardon's system. There are a lot of people here: http://vsociety.net/ that practice Bardon's system, the user Prophecy is one who (so I hear) has made it up to the latter steps of Bardon's system, and he just got back from a little forum hiatus, so you might want to check out some of his old posts on the subject, and contact him if you have any questions.

The "soul mirrors" are you reflecting on yourself. Basically you take account of all your actions through the day, and find where your weaknesses are. So if you're at a check out line and it's taking forever and you start to get irritable and someone asks you a question and you snap at them, well write that down, categorize that into an element. You do that for a couple of weeks until you get all your negative traits down. That's your black mirror. Then do that for a couple weeks for your good traits. That's your white mirror. Now you know what elements are out of balance, and you can work to rectify them with subsequent steps I dunno, probably one of the latter steps, I don't refer to the exercises by abbreviations, but by step numbers and it's too early to figure them out..... ANYWAY, my thoughts: (disclaimer: all my opinions from experience) I recently put my Bardon training on hold. I practice the meditating/dissolving methods of B.K. Frantzis (found in his book "Opening the Energy Gates of Your Body"). It started to feel to me that the stuff I was doing with Bardon was "muddying the waters" that I had begun to still with Frantzis' methods. On top of that, I've had much more success in a shorter amount of time than with Bardon's. I personally feel like the relaxing and dissolving is the more foundational techniques to what Bardon teaches, which is heavy on the visualization. Well not really "visualize" as in "pretend", he really wants you to cultivate all 5 senses, but as you will realize once you really start to learn to relax, that can create tension. In general, the concept of Hermetics started to get to me. Everything was fit into a structure. When you encountered something, you are supposed to figure out what element it is, so you know how to deal with it. I really didn't like that. You are adding extra thought structures to stuff you already have and that you are trying to deal with.... it's like trying to put out a fire by dumping a bunch of wood on it, you can do it, but you might make the problem worse ESPECIALLY if your problem is too much mental clutter in the first place! You can also think of it as scaffolding in construction of a building: to make a good building, you have to build OTHER stuff, then when you have the building you take it down. So initially you establish certain patterns where later you can depart from them but........ I dunno, if I'm trying to get rid of stuff, adding more stuff to the mix didn't seem to be helping much. Throughout Bardon's exercises I found that in concentrating I'd get pretty tense at spots, and that actually hinders your practice I think, because it starts limiting you in what you can do. Bardon (and other commentators), talk about building energy and stuff, and how once you feel "full" of energy you shouldn't accumulate anymore. Well, first of all, I haven't encountered too many moments of relaxing "too much", and when I did, it just involved me going to sleep, not hurting myself with too much energy. And second, once you learn to relax, you can accumulate MORE energy because you are being more efficient in terms of space. And if you do encounter problems, you'll know how to dissolve/release so you won't hurt yourself, no to mention you'll feel discomfort long before any actual harm. If I hadn't practiced recognizing tension in my body, I never would have realized it. So much is reliant upon you being able to really feel your body (and later on, your mind/thoughts), and being able to relax it at will. I'm actually kind of surprised such an important thing was NOT included in Bardon's IIH. One example is the thought control in step 1, where Bardon says things like, if you have an unwanted thought, force it from the mind, don't think the thought, etc etc. Same with later on changing behavior, though he says it'd be easier to transmute the thought/behavior, there's a lot said about fighting it...... and I've found accepting it + dissolving to be much MUCH easier in getting rid of bad habits. In terms of clearing blockages, I prefer Frantzis' system. I read ahead on some steps, and here's one example of Bardon's balancing methods: The body is divided into elemental areas, so head is fire element, chest is wind element, abdomen is water element, and then genitals on down to feet is earth element. You accumulate the elements in each of those areas, and meditate there for a while, all balanced out. Any blockages, or any stray elements in your body (too much fire in the chest, for instance), get attracted to their own element, so after a while everything gets "sorted", and then you release the elements back to the universe, and you're more balanced to begin with. Well...... that's accumulating a lot of energy to pretty forcibly "move" some blockages. It might work for some people. It might work for small stuff. But big blockages? Adding more energy to an unbalanced system? Safer to just focus on getting rid of the blockages BEFORE adding energy to the system. Some say there's a safety measure in that if you really did well on the mirrors exercise, and started to balance, you won't do that to yourself. That is true..... IF you did it RIGHT. It is VERY easy to fool yourself into thinking you've accomplished, very, VERY easy. ESPECIALLY because you are doing it with your "head", thinking about it. With dissolving stuff, in my experience, it's hard to fool yourself that way, because it's all about FEELING. Did you feel a blockage get release? It's not "I think I did", it's "did you?" You'll know when it happens. No visualizing, KNOWING. In that sense, it's a little bit more reliable. And again, since pretty much all of what Frantzis teaches in the books for the beginning stages is relaxation and dissolving, you're really less likely to hurt yourself. Also, the energy I felt when doing later steps of the IIH (step 2 and 3), felt very..... coarse? Not coarse, but it was definitely a big, sticky, (suffocating?) energy. Maybe with more practice I'd have gotten better at feeling it and discerning it from other stuff, but I've found simple breathing that Frantzis teaches (breathing with full belly and back, focus on the dan tien), to be much easier, and the qi sensations I started to feel to be of a much much cleaner, smoother variety than the energy I encountered with Bardon's system. Maybe the energy was the same, but I just wasn't used to feeling it two different ways, maybe it was different. But I won't know till I get better in one, so I'm going to focus on Frantzis' stuff for now. So, before you start the IIH, really, get Frantzis' stuff. "Opening the Energy Gates of Your Body", and then maybe get "Relaxing Into Your Being" and "The Great Stillness". But energy gates should be first to get, and REALLY practice it. I cannot tell you how beneficial it is to really know your body, to know where there's tension in your body or your thoughts.... very helpful. It makes me wonder about people who strain through Bardon's system, wondering at how their astral body is so weak, when really they just don't know how tense they've gotten.... not that everyone is like that, but it's much easier to get that way in Bardon's than it is with other stuff, IMHO. When you get good at recognizing and getting rid of tension, then do other stuff.

This.

So one of the areas that seems to be a very big deal in western magic/occultism seems to be intention, or willpower, or whatever name you want to use. I've usually found it coupled with visualizations or stuff, usually to get a response. For example, in Franz Bardon's system you can apply intention to the air you breathe, the food you eat, water you drink, and "vital energy" that you can absorb through your body (it's kinda like qi I guess). This intention that you put into it lets it fulfill a purpose, usually for healing or self betterment. If you put the intention of being more aware into the air, for example, as you breathe you can, over time, become aware. Even in other western occult systems, intention/willpower seems to be very important to enact change, within yourself or in the external world. On the other hand, I don't see as much focus on intention in some more eastern methods. There is the saying that "qi follows yi (intent)". But in terms of affecting change, in the western occultism sense, there doesn't seem to be as much emphasis. Then again, maybe I am just missing out on something What thoughts do you guys have on "intent" when it comes to cultivation/practice/affecting change? Is it under emphasized or over emphasized in your practice? Or just the right amount?

How do you mean?

I think these are good questions. Especially the first one. I think it ties a little bit with the whole "oneness" thread that's also going on. Especially because certain traditions have very real aspects to them, such as demons or hell, involve exorcism rituals and things.... but still say things like it's all "illusory" and things like that. So anyone that can answer.... please do

As they say. The tao that can be explained isn't the true tao. When you find the Buddha, kill the Buddha. Or something like that.

Good questions..... Togetherness.... separateness..... Aren't those both still dualities made by the human mind to understand an unknowable concept that transcends both?

Again, great way of putting it More directly to the OP, when telling others stuff that worked for you- it depends. If you take something like cultivation, some people don't know where to begin. It's fine if you tell them about a technique, and maybe one or two ways it helped you. But you don't have to make a huge list and recite it to them. If they ask about it, then it's even less of a big deal. People like to hear stories about stuff that works (or better yet, see it in action). It inspires them, gives them a general sense of where the practice is headed, and they'll know that they won't be wasting their time if they try it out themselves. It can be egotistical if you start talking about your experience when it is NOT required, i.e. they don't ask, or you are trying to "one up" them. It all comes down to be aware of what you are doing and why you are doing it at all times.

I like maps too, the only thing you have to be careful about is people tricking themselves into thinking they are doing something when they are not. If people say, "do this and you will feel a tingle in your hand, that means you are gathering chi!" Then people go and say, "well I kind of felt something.... yeah, he said I would feel a tingle..... and that kinda felt like a tingle..... okay, I have chi powers now!" Or on the other hand, "I don't feel a tingle, I must be doing something wrong, this chi stuff is stupid." But if you go and say every single thing that could possibly happen, well a skeptic would say, "wow, you just covered all the bases, now no matter WHAT happens you can claim chi is present. What baloney." As much as you can encourage people to be honest with themselves, you can't make them be honest with themselves, and it's rare that someone is always honest with themselves and.... well, you have to be honest with yourself to get anywhere.

Actually I saw this brief news snippet the other day about people who have out-of-body-near-death-experiences, and in certain hospital rooms with critical patients, they put various signs throughout the room in positions that can't be viewed from the patients point of view. If the patient were to "die", and then be revived, they plan on asking the patient what he/she saw. If that person really had an OBE when they "die", then they should be able to tell info about the room or the hospital that they would have no way of knowing. But I don't think this is so much a serious study as it is a little test. There are plenty of people who say they have OBE's, more than enough potential study subjects there but.......... The issue with applying the "scientific method" with death is... well.... morality. You'd have to have people die and come back every so often. Sure, it'd be under "controlled conditions" but.... I mean, you could ask for volunteers, but what are you going to tell them? "In this experiment I will kill you, but only for a while, I want to bring you back and ask you what you saw." Which again is why people who say they can astral project or have all kinds of OBE's really need to step up because they could really expand on what we consider humans capable of doing *hint hint* I partly agree and partly disagree. Everyone has their own view which helps them get through stuff, yes. But I don't think they are delusions. And I don't think they need to "set aside" their "delusions" to function in the real world. I try to take my "delusions" into the real world and actually get them to work in my day to day life! THAT is what people should be doing. Otherwise you're just one of those Sunday Christians that pick up their Bible to look all Holy, but as soon as they leave Church they drop all that Christian business because, y'know, in today's world that stuff just doesn't "work". Best to "get real". On the original subject- I read that whole paper that was posted in the OP and it sucked He pretty much repeated the same thing every 4 pages..... "westerners are carrying out colonialism every day" "they are explaining some other culture while ignoring the culture's own self image". I thought that the author would say, you know, a little bit about "real" Taoism, but he just said the same thing over and over and over........ Yes, westerners are bad, we ignore everything about everyone else and only use what's good for us...... now tell us something we DON'T know!

I think that both are needed. You can have all the instruction in the world, but if you don't have the juice to carry it out then it's pointless, so you need the foundational exercises. But if you have all the juice in the world but no idea with what to do with it, then you're not going to get anything done, so there needs to be some instruction. Plenty of people doing one or the other. Not a lot of people doing (or talking?) about doing both. Franz Bardon, in his works, mentions it a bit. A lot of ceremonial magicians carry out all kinds of rituals, but they don't have the power built up from the exercises to know what the rituals are channeling. So it just becomes a routine with no real effect (or maybe an undesired effect or maybe a minimal effect).

Actually, I think GIH's points were pretty logical. I mean, think of how we reason in general: we take what we know from our experiences and theorize on how they can be applied to other situations. In GIH's examples you can take dreaming, obviously the perception and provability of the phenomenon have issues, but they still exist, so it's not really that much of a jump to apply it to death. The problem is PROVABILITY. And for a lot of people, THAT'S the problem. Not the logic or reasoning behind the point.... but proving it. But there's a lot of stuff that we haven't really proven but that still goes on all the time so..... yeah.