Creation

The shaktipat is on the anniversary of Dr. Morris' passing and is in his honor. Samadhi has another meaning which is less commonly known in the west: a monument in honor of a master that has passed on (i.e. passed into maha-samadhi). My lesson from Doc: lighten up. Kunlun Enthusiast, They teach 4 simple but effective qigong movements in KAP these days, probably for the reasons given by the guy you quoted.

That was a joy to watch Michael. Waves and waves of qi. I wondered what kind of stuff you were doing when you had students practicing.

According to the Quanzhen classic "The Book of Balance and Harmony" things like Kan and Li, the five forces, mysterious pass, and elixir have different meanings based on what "vehicle" you are practicing. http://books.google.com/books?id=vGFs3yIMCFoC&pg=PA382 It seems to me that Z3N is talking about the Higher or Highest Vehicle and SereneBlue's question is more on the level of the Lower or Middle Vehicle.

Deida on youtube: Highly recommended. Watching him really shifts my energetic state.

EagleShen, Thanks for chiming in. Yes that is definitely the case here. I have a the equivalent of a thunderstorm in my emotional body pretty much constantly. And being naturally very intellectual I got in the habit of thinking in order to not feel emotional pain (in the way that others might use drinking) very early in life. So I'm in double trouble. Jane, Thanks for the detailed reply. In addition to anything else you want to say, could you please describe pulsing a bit? I've seen that word thrown around in Water Method stuff, but right now it is just a word to me.

Ah, thanks to dwai and Rainbow Vein for the progressive relaxation in corpse pose suggestion (just got done practicing). It is definitely a great practice, not to mention being a great stepping stone to standing/sitting and dissolving, especially if you incorporate focused breathing into it. I'll definitely be doing more of this in the future.

I've got my fingers crossed. And if we're lucky Jess O'Brien will show up too. He has been know to pop up in discussions of the Water Method at random times. Good! This is what I was looking for. No, I don't make a formal practice of deep relaxation, but you are not the first to recommend that to me so perhaps I should finally get started on that. How did deep relaxation help your alignment? Incidentally, what do you think the difference is between deep relaxation and dissolving? I ask because of what dwai said about corpse pose earlier. My thought was "that is a relaxation exercise, not dissolving per se" but I didn't feel qualified to say why. Maybe you could shed some light on the issue?

You know what makes me smile? This post.

Lama Tantrapa, Your show is a great service to cultivators. I have listened to and thoroughly enjoyed many episodes. Thank you.

Like dwai said, dissolving is HARD. It's not something you can just do. Having to try to figure out how to do it from a book or CD set seems about as futile as it gets. And yet, here I am trying to do it. So what I would like to see from this thread is that those who really understand dissolving would help out those who are clueless (like me). What stages did you go through, what helped you get to the next one, what insights do you wish you would have had when you were starting out, what insights have you gotten from seminars that were not in the books that you have found to be essential, what have you found from independent research, etc... What I mean by stages is this: Dissolving comes after learning to stand/sit, sink, scan the physical body, scan the energetic and emotional bodies, breathe, etc. (or at least a subset of that list, depending on what you are going for). Trying to jump straight to dissolving is wishful thinking. Here are some struggles I am having that prospective commentators can start with. 1. To even be able to be able to stand sit in a relaxed way and keep your awareness on your body, you need to have good posture. I have held my head and neck improperly my entire life and have a curved spine and asymmetric hips, so I can't really even sit in a relaxed way with "correct alignments" without straining and getting tense. What can I do about this? 2. It's so easy to jump ahead when you are not ready. For example, somehow I really did not understand that in Taoist Internal Breathing you are supposed to JUST feel your breath and not try to regulate it in any way except to make it connected, until you can REALLY feel it all the way down to your dan tien. So I spent a lot of time forcefully breathing with my belly and slowing down my breath (but I didn't know it was forceful because I was completely out of touch with myself) which, for the purposes of using the breath for dissolving is a waste of time. 3. Okay, seriously, how do you be "present"? What does that really mean? Let's not kid ourselves, we might think we know but we really don't (I am speaking to beginners like myself here). Just like we might think we are not straining but we really are. When I sit down to breathe I am not really present. My thoughts continually pull me off balance. Now, I know this is unavoidable in the beginning and I need to stick with it, be patient and keep practicing, but I would like to know if anyone has found anything that helped them REALLY be present, or accelerate the process of learning to be present, that was not in the books (or anything that was in the books that I might have missed). So, to those who have "been there": learning to have correct alignments, feeling/scanning the physical/energetic/emotional bodies, learning to breathe properly and use the breath as a tool for dissolving, really being present to what IS here and now when you sit down to dissolve, and whatever else you have found to be an important skill to have in dissolving. Any and every piece of advice you can give please do. Anyone who can comment on any of this even if you don't practice BKF's stuff, I would appreciate you input as well.

I enjoyed these stories very much. Thanks for posting.

Agreed. Thanks for posting.

Whoa there Dr. Dharma Defender, no need to get all inquisitorial now. The question is how many lifetimes have you been human, not how long has your soul existed. For the record, I don't really know anything about "souls", reincarnation, or linear time anyway. I just had some "feelings" and "intuitions" that are no doubt heavily filtered by my mind.

I remember when I was six years old I started having this constant haunting feeling that I was really old person trapped in a child's body. Incidentally, that was also when I first started hating school and manifesting symptoms of depression. Now I get the haunting (and thrilling) feeling that I'm all in this lifetime. So I'd better play my cards well, ya dig?

Tao Semko on "Five Phenomena necessary for permanent kundalini awakening" http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=387996249045&oid=28741864064 Unfortunately, I think you need to have a facebook account to view it. If you don't have one, you can get one for free, but if you don't want to do that just to watch a video, here are the five things: 1. Increased energy in the body, especially in the pelvic region (lower dan tien / kanda) 2. Having strong emotional energy flow through your system (any kind of emotion will do) 3. Something that draws energy into the central channel and upward 4. Persistent practice over some period of time 5. (In order to not get kundalini syndrome) A way to relieve tension / blockage and get energy circulating.

Mr. Yudelove, There is one question that I would like you to address before you leave these parts (if you haven't already). It was the question I had when I first came across your books. There seems to be a lot of overlap in your two "14 week" books, and yet there are differences in order, content and presentation. Would you please elaborate on if one is advisable to do first, and how that depends on the student's prior experience, and how it would benefit someone to go through the other having already gone through one? Thanks, Tyler

I listened to the Secrets of Qigong Masters interview with him because I heard he was a student of Waysun Liao, whose books I benefited from. Not what I expected... He said that when they do the full treatment they have to hold the patient down and put a gag in their mouth. It is really that excruciating. Once he has sucked all the stuff out of you, what does he do with it? He turns on the sink and protects it into the running water. His attitude is "If it works, who cares?" Hmmm...

This is one of those threads that I felt brought up a lot of stuff in me with and I couldn't quite figure out what I wanted to say. I relate to this VERY strongly. This describes my relationship to most every societal institution I have come in contact with, especially the education system. This feeling of being broken is what turned my peripheral interest in Taoist philosophy and energy work into a full-time pursuit. It really feels so unbelievably awful to be constantly feeling this way. The utter failure of 99 percent of the advice you are given (which indeed boils down to just do it) amplifies it. How to change when just do it fails? What I am looking into is AWARENESS. But I don't even really know what that means. I would love it if anyone else would share insights into this.

Golden. Thank you and good luck in your cultivation.

Wonderful!

Right, that's what I figured. There are two issues here: Did the Church ever modify the Bible, and Is the New Testament a complete fabrication (in particular, was the fabrication perpetrated at Nicea). I think the answer to the first is probably yes, and the answer to the second is probably no. Sure, secular scholars are always saying "They just made it all up" about religious texts, but I am skeptical of the skeptics

How about female lineage creators? Lady Wei Huacun and Lady Sun Buer come to mind. Female Taoist teachers that are well regarded around here include Jenny Lamb and Kathy Li.

For the life of me I cannot understand why people always say this. I'm told it was in The Da Vinci Code. I don't know if Dan Brown made it up himself or if he got it from someone else like the rest of that book... There is absolutely no historical record of the canon of scripture being discussed at the First Council of Nicea. I will grant that it represented a huge change in Christianity, and set the precedent form theological disputes being settled by imperial power, which would be very harmful to Christianity in the future. But it was all quite inevitable in a sense...

The Bible is so veiled. There is so much that I read and think "this is only a small piece of a much bigger picture". Especially books like Genesis, Daniel, Revelation, most of what Jesus said, and much of what Paul and John say in their epistles.