Creation

findley, Who said the secret smile was supposed to lead to enlightenment? How can you bash a meditation for not doing something it never claimed to do? Learning to manipulate your psychological states is an incredibly useful thing. It helps maintain psychological health. Do you similarly bash all the qigong in the world that helps people stay physically healthy? As far as enlightenment goes, one can go deeper and stay longer in meditation if ones physical body and aura are healthy and strong. So people who are serious about meditation do baduanjin, taiji, etc. The very same goes for having a healthy emotional state. Thus people practice the secret smile. It will not get you enlightenment, but it is a helpful tool on the path. Furthermore, don't take this personally, but please consider the ramifications of your words before you post. You took a thread whose purpose was to freely distribute a practice that a very experienced cultivator thinks highly of, a thread that had nothing but good vibes, and you injected foul, thoughtless drivel into it. Have you considered that people will find this thread on google years from now? What's more, if I was a high level cultivator thinking I had something to offer the forum and saw that kind of thing occurring, I would think twice about joining. Please try to keep this place as high-vibing as possible so it can be of maximal help to maximal people. -Tyler

Since someone brought up the issue of mental illness and meditation, here is a nice blast from the tao bums past: http://www.thetaobums.com/index.php?s=&amp...ost&p=68729 The author had a family history of mental illness and an abysmal childhood, so naturally developed mental illness herself (bipolar disorder, I believe), and then by messing with dangerous spiritual practices got herself into an even sicker mental state. Eventually, she used meditation and qigong to heal herself. Quite an inspiring read, if you have a bit of time to read it.

Breathing into the belly massages the organs, moves energy more effectively, and is the best way for a beginner to begin to work with the energies of the lower dan tien. Not breathing with the chest activates other movements of the torso that are beneficial. First the sides of the abdomen, then the back, and eventually the upper back moves back and forth with the breath also. Such three dimensional breathing helps release blockages and distribute energy far better than ordinary belly breathing. Someone mentioned Unwinding the Belly. That's on my to get list. My source for breathing is B.K. Frantzis: Relaxing Into Your Being, Opening The Energy Gates of Your Body, Taoist Breathing for Chi Gung and Meditation [my favorite of these four, 2 CD Set that goes with R.I.Y.B., ], Longevity Breathing [DVD]. Eventually, you want your whole body to powerfully breathe energy in and out. There are different paths to get to that point, I suppose. The Taoist way (as taught by Frantzis) always tries to match the body and energy as closely as possible. So the 3-D belly breathing is emphasized because the lower dan tien is like an energetic lung that breathes in from and out to the whole etheric body.

For what it's worth, here is the original thread: http://www.thetaobums.com/index.php?showtopic=7439

Hmmm... I modified the part you quoted because it was a bit too cavalier (it's been a while since I read up on this stuff, and have been doing so again because of this thread) but since you saw it before I edited it... My point was that "the breath of life" was not the same type of thing as "the Spirit of God", but actually in a lot of contexts the two Hebrew words are interchangeable. In Ecclesiastes we find "The spirit [ruach] returns to God who gave it", which certainly doesn't fit with ruach being the fundamental personhood (in contradistinction to neshamah being an impersonal force) because it conflicts with the Hebrew conception of Sheol, the underworld, where everyone went upon death to rest (i.e. not Heaven or Hell, but somewhere in between). The problem is that the Ancient Israelites were not at all clear about any of this stuff. Not that the Ancient Chinese were either...sophisticated theories of qi, shen, mind, etc. were not worked out until a while after the period when Ancient Israel flourished.

I would be more careful about identifying concepts based on their basic meanings and ignoring context. A culture can use a word with a particular meaning in a metaphorical way to mean something else, but these metaphors do not neccecarily carry over to the other languages along with the direct meaning. For example, the qi and prana. They mean the same thing in an everyday sense, and probably as far as medicine goes as well, but philosophically the Taoist conception of qi is much more broad than the Yogic conception of prana. I have investigated the Hebrew and Greek words relevant to the discussion. So in Greek it is pneuma for spiritus and psyche for anima. Yes, pneuma means breath but to say that is the same philosophically as qi is clearly wrong because many of the Greek associations with pneuma correspond to shen in Chinese. When you get into the Holy Spirit in particular, Jesus and Paul refer to the Holy Spirit as personal (of course, one can debate which texts were added later, are they interpreted correctly, etc. but I am trying to work from within standard Christian doctrine as much as possible) so identification with impersonal life force is a no-go. But this is what I had in mind when I made the remark about Shakti and the Holy Spirit, since Shakti is said to be an intelligent and transformative energy, not just ordinary life force. Anyway, the Hebrew is different. There are two Hebrew words that are be translated spirit: neshama and ruach. Neshama is the one that is related to breath (as in breath of life in Genesis 2:7), but every time the Spirit of God is mentioned in the OT it is a translation of Ruach Elohim. Now ruach is related to wind, so maybe they are not so different, but there are places in the OT (Job 32:8 for example) where they are both used. I don't think the Ancient Hebrews really had a comprehensive philosophy of all this though. Thanks for indulging my need to rant and try to sound smart . Yours, Tyler P.S. I would really appreciate an answer to my question in the college thread about good schools for genuine intellectual development if you are willing.

Dear curiouswanderer, As I understand it, nocturnal emissions will not go away except by intense cultivation. See this thread: http://www.thetaobums.com/Purifying-the-su...jing-t5395.html I completely agree with you about intent. If it was about energy for me I would just learn to have dry orgasms. But I want to be able to look at a women as sisters in the Tao, not sex objects, to keep natural attraction from becoming lust. The roots of this are quite deep for me and I don't think willpower alone will do it for me. It's really amazing that you did it that way. Even when I've done well and not masturbated, I have a wet dream and all the bad habits of the mind and body come right back up. So I think for me to use willpower would be repression and hence unhealthy. Maybe I will be able to after some spiritual breakthrough of clearing out the negative junk in my mind. Incidentally, this sentiment is precisely the origin of my screen name . I would like to point out that many creative people seem to be more sexually active and "liberated" (as moderns use the term...) for their time. The connection between sexuality and creativity is not limited to retention. (Besides, many spiritual paths do not require celibacy.) I remember when it came out a couple of years ago that Einstein had extramarital affairs (not to mention knocking up his girlfriend as a teenager, which was common knowledge among Einstein biographers) I thought "Now why does that not surprise me?" One of my intellectual heroes, Alexandre Grothendieck, wrote extensively about the connection (in French, which I unfortunately don't understand...) and he impregnated his landlady when he was around 20 and had a girlfriend half his age in his 40s. Quite a fascinating topic, none the less for being so deep and complicated.

Thank you for your reply. I did not mean to imply that our problems are even remotely similar by pointing out all the things we had in common. Indeed they are quite different. I wasn't even going to post in this thread (too personal) but I had to thank ZMD and Blasto. Best of luck to you in your life and cultivation. Namaste.

"We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ." (2 Corinthians 10:5) This just about screams "meditation" to me . "For in Him we live and move and exist" Acts 17:28 What is a way to become more conscious of this Immanence of God that if it wern't in the Bible many Christians would call Pantheistic? Meditation. "In the same way the Spirit also helps our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words." Romans 8:26 How can we become more in touch with these divine workings inside of us deeper than our minds? Meditation. One thing Western Christianity has inherited from Greek philosophy is the identification of the rational faculties with the "soul" or "spirit" (not to mention the confusion about soul and spirit in the first place). To borrow from another philosophical system to correct this, the soul is the subtle aspect of the material nature (mind, intelligence and false ego) which is still corrupt, and the spirit is the Atman, the truly divine part of a person. In the Eastern Orthodox tradition, there is a phrase "God became man so that man could become God". A Biblical reference is "Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not appeared as yet what we will be. We know that when He appears, we will be like Him, because we will see Him just as He is." (1 John 3:2) This purification to a divine state is a combination of man's pure efforts and God's grace, (which from the viewpoint of eternity are inseparable) is the sum total of Christian spirituality, IMHO. Here is some fun speculation. Feel free to take it with a grain of salt. Consider Daniel learning all the secret disciplines of the Babylonians. He no doubt astrology, alchemy, etc. like all the other wise men of Babylon. But the only thing the Bible records him refusing is their food. Also, consider Jesus going up to the mountains to "pray" during his ministry. Why does a divine person need to pray (in the usual sense, i.e. ask things of God)? I am convinced he was doing something more like mediation to purify himself of all the crap he accumulated from preaching to and helping large numbers of people. Paul's exhortation pray without ceasing has already been quoted. To do this one must move beyond discursive prayer ("God, please give me a new car", etc. or even "spiritual" things like "God give me wisdom"). There is a whole Christian tradition of Contemplation or Contemplative Prayer, which is more or less Christian meditation. About contemplative prayer: Historical things to look into: Desert fathers, Cloud of Unknowing, Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross. Modern authors to look into: Thomas Merton, Basil Pennington, Thomas Keating (These are mostly from the Western Tradition, a lot of good Eastern Orthodox stuff is available too) From a Jewish/OT perspective on meditation, try Aryeh Kaplan's Meditation and the Bible. Kaplan was both an Orthodox rabbi and Kabbalist. The book goes into how the OT prophets were meditators and that's how they received their visions. Incidentally, from the Taoist perspective mediation can be dangerous. The power generated can attract spirits, including evil ones, and it does "open you up" so if there is a strong evil spirit around and you are not very strong and awake it could come right in. (Of course, if you are meditating "right" this won't happen, but no one does that when they are first starting) But don't throw the baby out with the bathwater! There are things to do to protect yourself (try praying ) and don't meditate in places that feel negative to you. An opposite caution for Christian meditators is to attribute every little thing that happens in meditation to "God" or "The Holy Spirit". Chi / Kundalini energy is not the Holy Spirit (although the case could be made that the intelligent "Shakti" is related to the Holy Spirit, but whatever...), and most stuff that happens in the beginning is mental wind anyway.

Hi curiouswanderer, Welcome to The Tao Bums. I am surprised nobody has replied to your post because this is a very interesting and important topic IMHO. Of course, sexual energy is creative in nature because it creates life, so when it is sublimated it is natural that it would increase mental creativity. This is, of course, a weak argument, but I think it has been noticed by many spiritual adepts and highly creative/intelligent people. I have definitely noticed the connection (I modestly claim myself to be a creative/intelligent person ) I cannot report on the details of any of this, But here are some things to ponder. 1. There is a famous book called Think and Grow Rich where some guy researched highly successful men of his day (c. 1930 I think) and reported on things he thought contributed to their success. One of the things was "Transmutation of sexual energy" or something like that. Sorry I can't report more, I have not yet read the book. 2. In Taoist circles, it is understood that sex ordinarily depletes a man's energy level. Moreover, there is a special kind of energy called prenatal qi that you are born with a certain amount of and die when it runs out, and it is depleted by sex. Also they talk about "jing" or bodily essence whose most powerful manifestation is sperm. So there is talk of conserving jing, transmuting jing to qi, sublimating sexual energy to nourish the brain, etc. etc.. For those who are not celibate, one aspect is replenishing energy lost by techniques involving one's lover (so it doesn't apply to masturbating), the other is preventing the loss in the first place, which can apply to masturbation. Then there is the transmutation aspect. There is a lot of confusion about all this out there, and few if any people have a complete understanding of the process. It is very much related to kundalini and other esoteric spiritual phenomena. Of course, as at all times in human history, lack of complete understanding doesn't stop people from successfully doing it . 4. From a Western medical perspective, I heard something about the body devoting a huge amount of resources to producing sperm, so the less you loose your sperm the more resources you have for your body, and in particular, your brain. This covers the energy part of it (in the generic sense of the term) doesn't get into the sublimation part, which Western science can't do until it understands jing-qi-shen or Shiva-Shakti or whatever you want to call it. How long does it take to refill you ask? Two weeks is what I have heard in both Taoist and Western medical circles. It seems like you have lingering effects. Perhaps they are psychological in nature? I am curious, did you just quit masturbating cold turkey? What prompted you to start up again? I'm looking to quit myself... Feel free to switch to PMs if you think that more appropriate. Best wishes, Tyler

Fox, This topic is very important to me because I dropped out of college after my freshman year, due to being so utterly miserable at my school that it defied words, sinking deeper and deeper into depression. Not only do we share a name, an interest in Taoism, and a dislike of college, I also am 20, would be a junior if I hadn't dropped out, and have strong roots in Christianity. So it's a pleasure to make your acquaintance. The conventional replies get a degree of so you can get a better job, the importance of delayed gratification and self-discipline have been repeated to me endlessly and mean as little to me as they always have. So two posts here have made me very happy. Namely, Blasto, In the United States, the economic, medical, political, and educational systems are all so completely dysfunctional and their dysfunctions are all interlocked together. A conscientious young person looking at the prospect of entering into this system can not help but be repulsed. Of course, society will always have problems and one can't just run away and expect to make spiritual progress. But the sicker the system the more difficult it is to enter into it without detrimental effects, and it is important in such times to emphasize how there are people trying to live a different way. I am certainly guilty of feeling sorry for myself, but there must be a better way than following the conveyor belt like everyone else! At least for someone like me whose mental and emotional gongfu is insufficient to deal with the cesspool of modern education. So thanks. Zhuo Ming-Dao, I wanted to clap for joy upon reading your post. The whole time I was in university I was thinking "this is not an intellectual or educational environment. It is a drone factory" and accumulating ample evidence in favor of this point. And it was one of the most prestigious universities in the midwest. Now for people who don't really care about scholarship or intellectual development (which is most people, who are just putting in their time to get their degree to get their job) this isn't a problem, but for me it was heartbreaking. Intellectual development and scholarship have been the focus of my life since I was six or so, and I have always viewed school as an obstacle to this rather than an aid. By the time I got to college I couldn't take it anymore. I am looking for a good place to go to school where I can develop intellectually and have a good amount of freedom to pursue my interests of pure mathematics and spirituality. Any thoughts? Perhaps we could switch to PMs for this, since it is tangential. I imagine I come across to most people as whiny, self absorbed and unrealistic. I certainly have my share of growing up to do. I just hope these experiences of mine will help someone someday. My intuition tells me they will. -Tyler

I don't know what's being passed around via PM (feel free to fill me in, anyone), but for someone who wants an explanation of the mysterious pass, xabir posted the primary reference: "The nameless is the origin of Heaven and Earth The named is the mother of myriad things Thus, constantly free of desire One observes its wonders Constantly filled with desire One observes its manifestations These two emerge together but differ in name The unity is said to be the mystery Mystery of mysteries, the door to all wonders" The mysterious pass is the gateway between the congenital and acquired natures, or pre-heaven and post heaven states (the "two" described above). In other words, very very important. dao zhen's definition (from http://www.thetaobums.com/Taoist-Terminology-t6162.html): Mysterious Pass The mysterious pass is the seed, which buds to form Heaven and Earth. All things in the corporeal world rise from it. It is located both inside and outside the human body. However, people cannot find its location in the human body, and it is hopeless if people search for it outside the body. It serves as a bridge connecting the existence region and the nonexistence region. Some descriptions of experiencing the mysterious pass from Hu Xuezhi's site: From http://damo-qigong.net/step3.htm : My master replied, "To survey the emptiness of lower elixir field with an inward gaze while not to be lost in it is a correct method; meanwhile, to be lost in it is a false one. The psychical rays are screened and buried in oblivion always, for you don't know how to bring your mind-will to emptiness and let it remain still and motionless. Silently seeing the lower elixir field inwardly for a long time, with your mind-will settling upon the emptiness, gradually you will be conscious of the existence of pre-Heaven Qi in the region below the heart and above the kidney, in which region, as the chance matures, the Mysterious Pass will come on the scene. The emptiness without psychical rays coming from the Mysterious Pass is called dead emptiness; while that with psychic rays lively emptiness, in which we set about cultivating true self. " From http://damo-qigong.net/step8.htm : My master replied, " In fact, Mysterious Pass is Qi of great unification. you can perceive it by its rays. In general, you can gain the consciousness that it always hangs before your Yin Tang acupoint [third eye]. Even a minor error with previous steps will bring about no Mysterious Pass appearing. We all know the fact that human body contains Qi which, in its turn, contains the yin souls and yang souls and other. so if the Qi drifts away from the human body the man is dead. The emergence of Mysterious Pass represents a breakthrough having taken place in your long course of pursuing Tao. The psychical rays, pure and crystal-like, will become more and more bright, and will spread away when it is bright enough and could not be retrieved. Then the rays will appear again, still pure and like a full silver moon, floating before your Yin Tang acupoint. At this moment you ought to gaze upon these psychical rays with two eyes. Then in consequence, the Qi of great unification will gather together. The brighter the psychical rays become, the rounder this moon-shaped Mysterious Pass will change to be. At this time you must all at once gather these psychical rays for your own possession, otherwise it will scatter away and all your previous efforts will drain away." Anyone who wants to investigate this further should read their book Revealing the Tao Te Ching. Also, if I may say so, name calling and other forms of animosity do not help anyone achieve the Tao. Best, Tyler

Hi durkhrod. That is some pretty far out stuff. About mugols, is that pronounced like moogles? Because many of the Final Fantasy video games contain small, furry mamillian creatures that are very agile and intelligent called moogles. Their appearance varies from game to game, but at times are definitely rabbit-like. Pictures and info can be found here: http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Moogle Let me know if there is a resemblance. As with all fantasy role playing games, they borrow from myths, epics, etc. but to my knowledge moogles are unique to the FF franchise. That would be too weird...video game creatures invading the astral realms...

There are quite a few similarities between those two. But their lineages and practices seem quite a bit different. (EDIT: don't get me wrong, there are many interesting and unexpected similarities, but overall they seem pretty different) It would be fun to get them together and see where the conversation went. Then again, one of their similarities is the emphasis on "just do" and dislike of mental masturbation. BTW Gloria, I attended but don't feel the need to add anything to my previous review.

A big thank you to vortex for collecting all that info into one post. Especially the stuff from the personal practice discussions, which I do not have the patience to sift through.

A ray of sun descends on a cloudy day, a breath of crisp air refreshes a stuffy room. I rejoice that our brother dao zhen has paid us a visit. At the same time as my return from my post hiatus too. The praise of the praiseworthy is above all rewards. I'd love to hear what you are up to these days. Not studying with Teacher Hu anymore I take it? Yours, Tyler

Here is another who would love to hear about it. (I am a big fan of your posts btw ) Experiences, impressions, insights, syllabus, anything. Were they teaching Yin Xian Fa, or perhaps basic Lingbao Bifa or Golden Flower stuff if there were prerequisites? Also, what practices do you do that the prerequisites were waived? Pietro once said something cryptic about you being in a Water-Method lineage. This piqued my interest, but you didn't seem to be around for me to ask you about it at the time. (Sorry to the OP for the tangent...) Yours, Tyler Baguakid, Could you elaborate on your original post? Is there an upcoming WLP event? One that recently ended? What exactly were you asking?

I was just recently thinking "I would really like to attend one of Jenny Lamb's qigong seminars. I hope she continues to offer them." Here one is, and I am really happy about that... but naturally I probably won't be able to go. Maybe when my life is less of a mess... easterninternalartsinstitute is an enormous name to post under, by the way. It says a lot in more ways than one

Me too.

This is incredibly ironic because I started re-reading The Screwtape Letters last night. C.S. Lewis is one of my all time favorite authors. On a whim I flipped open my copy of The Complete C.S. Lewis Signature Classics to the end of letter 27 where Screwtape talks about the Divine viewpoint and agency in hearing and answering prayers, and preventing people from gaining wisdom from old books by convincing people that the way to approach them is the historical point of view: "You, being a spirit, will find it difficult to understand how he gets into this confusion. But you must remember that he takes Time for an ultimate reality. He supposes that the Enemy [God], like himself, sees some things as present, remembers others as past, and anticipates others as future; or even if he believes that the Enemy does not see things that way, yet, in his heart of hearts, he regards this as a peculiarity of the Enemy's mode of perception--he doesn't really think (though he would say he did) that things as the Enemy sees them are things as they are! If you tried to explain to him that men's prayers today are one of the innumerable coordinates with which the Enemy harmonises the weather of tomorrow, he would reply that then the Enemy always knew men were going to make those prayers and, if so, they did not pray freely but were predestined to do so. And he would add that the weather on a given day can be traced back through its causes to the original creation of matter itself--so that the whole thing, both on the human and on the material side, is given 'from the word go'. What he ought to say, of course, is obvious to us; that the problem of adapting the particular weather to the particular prayers is merely an appearance, at two points in his temporal mode of perception, of the total problem of adapting the whole spiritual universe to the whole corporeal universe; that creation in its entirety operates at every point of space and time, or rather that their kind of consciousness forces them to encounter the whole, self-consistent creative act as a series of successive events. Why that creative act leaves room for their free will is the problem of problems, the secret behind the Enemy's nonsense about 'Love'. How it does so is no problem at all; for the Enemy does not foresee the humans making their free contributions in a future, but sees them doing so in His unbounded Now. And obviously to watch a man doing something is not to make him do it" [Much of this will no doubt sound very familiar to a Taoist, even though Lewis expresses his Spiritual Philosophy in Theistic terms.] "It may be replied that some meddlesome human writers, notably Boethius, have let this secret out. But in the intellectual climate which we have at last succeeded in producing throughout Western Europe, you needn't bother about that. Only the learned read old books and we have now so dealt with the learned that they are of all men the least likely to acquire wisdom by doing so. We have done this by inculcating the Historical Point of View. The Historical Point of View, put briefly, means that when a learned man is presented with any statement in an ancient author, the one question he never asks is whether it is true. He asks who influenced the ancient writer, and how far the statement is consistent with what he said in other books, and what phase in the writer's development, or in the general history of thought, it illustrates, and how it affected later writers, an how often it has been misunderstood (specially by the leaned man's own colleagues) and what the general course of criticism on it has been for the last ten years, and what is the 'present state of the question'. To regard the ancient writer as a possible course of knowledge--to anticipate that what he said could possibly modify your thoughts or your behaviour--this would be rejected as unutterably simple-minded. And since we cannot deceive the whole human race all the time, it is most important thus to cut ever generation off from all others, for where learning makes a free commerce between the ages there is always the danger that the characteristic errors fo one may be corrected by the characteristic truths of another. But thanks be to Our Father [the Devil] and the Historical Point of View, great scholars are now as little nourished by the past as the most ignorant mechanic who holds that 'history is bunk', Your affectionate uncle SCREWTAPE" Upon reading this I immediately thought, "I have to read this whole thing again". And this is just after I finished reading his Surprised By Joy (one of my all time favorite books) a fifth time. Zhang: Remember that Lewis was writing to Englishmen in 1941. He wasn't exactly dealing with modern Bible-Belt fundamentalists. In fact, part of his point was that how to get at someone changes over time and place because of cultural circumstances. I have found that as Lewis was very intelligent, well read, and honest, if he says something that seems to be blatantly untrue, it is because the reader is missing something of his point or context.

I find your renting vs. owning analogy very apt. There are degrees, of course, and truly owning is not only very difficult to do but makes it very difficult to communicate with all the renters out there (almost everyone). A good first step is to be honest about what you are renting. "What I cannot create, I do not understand." -Written on Nobel Laureate Richard Feynman's blackboard at the time of his death. The above quote is very much related to my screen name, btw .

Is it not natural for a Tao pursuer to apply the principles of Tao to all aspects of life? So a Tao pursing soldier will apply Taoist principles to martial arts, a Tao pursuing householder to his intimacy with his wife, etc. These may later come to stand on there own without the root in Tao pursuance. But is this not merely because there are so few who truly desire to follow the Great Way? So the Tao pursuer can teach others the derived arts divorced from the root in hopes that others will derive some benefit, or choose to keep it hidden so that people do not get caught up in side paths. Both have happened throughout history, both have their time and place. It is unfortunate that these things are substituted for the Great Way or True Spirituality. Perhaps they do serve as a stepping stone. But most unfortunate is when the derived arts are divorced from the Great Way for too long and become muddled and corrupted (e.g. many sexual practices out there today calling themselves Taoism). These are no longer a even a stepping stone. I think that if you are a true Tao pursuer, even if you get caught up in some not-so-great stuff temporarily due to ignorance, Heaven will not fail to reward pure intentions.

sheng zhen. Does the qigonginstitutet.se stuff come from Prof. Wang, and if so, through David Verdesi? Do you know if the Zhineng Gong stuff is an adaptation of Prof. Wang's stuff, or is it a completely different lineage? In what way is the Zhineng Gong stuff simplified, and OTOH what is it about, say, Verdisi's stuff that makes it so much more powerful? Shenchi, All this stuff about opening and closing the joints and lengthening the soft tissues is bewildering to me, as I have no kinesthetic reference point for it. You sound like you have a great method to help people learn. If I am ever in Maryland I'd love to take a class . In the mean time, do you know of any simple exercises that I can try on my own to help me understand this stuff? Thanks -Tyler

The usual disclaimer: It is very likely that I have no idea what I am talking about. With that said: In Water tradition stuff, you learn to let go of all the crap you are holding. But you must also learn to act without accumulating more crap, or you will be taking x steps forward and y steps back, and y might be greater than x. Can you be acting in a way that does not produce tension 24/7, i.e. even when you are not consciously "meditating" or actively going inward and letting go of the stuff that is already there? This seems like an important thing to me. For example, internal martial artists learn to move and strike in completely relaxed way. Perhaps one can learn to do this with visualization as well? From this perspective, the two systems do not seem incompatible. The Bardon stuff you described is developing a skill. People have to develop skills all the time. And it usually creates mental tension to do so. I imagine that learning to read creates a huge amount of tension. Studying for tests creates mental tension. When one learns an unfamiliar martial art form or dance move, it is usually very tense at first. Learning to do these things without tension would be so very valuable. Having mental content is not the same as being attached to your mental content. Having an image in your mind does not mean you must be bound or defined by that image. Doing something does not mean that that something causes tension. But so often it does! It certainly does for me. But I fancy that through proper training one can separate these things, having the one without the other.

A thread on a similar topic: http://www.thetaobums.com/index.php?showtopic=5395 Pay attention to Dao Zhen. He knows his stuff.