Creation

I would be curious what you view as the yin aspect of lust. I have observed plenty of women with the "need to possess" the object of their desire, it just takes a different form than it does in men. Less "I will confine you to the house", more "I will berate you for even looking at another woman".

I had no sense of how this conversation would go - I think it went rather well.

He does teach the stand alone standing spine stretch, along with spinal waves, in week 22 or so of the Academy.

Sure, see my reply to dwai above.

Thomas the disciple of Christ, not Thomas Aquinas.

I see what you mean about the fear, I was being rather literal in saying the claim "she was persecuted" was not correct. A major part of Christian tradition has always been ideological conformity to official dogma, those who deviated were persecuted for sure. My point was this didn't preclude genuine mysticism from being a part of Christian tradition.

If you have enough interest in Christian history to drop those names, perhaps you will have enough interest to know neither of them was persecuted by the Church. Another point to understand about Christian mysticism is that the Christian Church split into an Eastern and Western branch, initially for linguistic reasons, but they eventually grew far enough apart to not consider themselves the same Church anymore. Among the major differences is that the Western branch decided to prioritize reason and philosophy, and the Eastern branch decided to prioritize inner mystical experience. All the various denominations that are common in Western Europe and the Americas today are descended from the Western branch.

I can't find it now, but Dominicus mentioned stories of monks' bodies disappearing fairly recently in the mountains of Eastern Europe, perhaps the Caucasus? I remember he said the other monks would say "The Lord took him."

I resonate with this a great deal. No specific practices you say? Was there any intention in the direction of your field taking on this quality? Damo teaches some auxiliary practices for the external energy field that I have neglected, which I would think develop this condensing with a slight outward pressure you mention.

A user named Dominicus had some experience with this path, and some high level masters of it:

In the Daoist material I am familiar with, actual lower dantian breathing is not an entry level technique - prerequisites must be in place. Among them, both the motion associated with breathing and the center of elastic tension in the body must be anchored in the lower abdomen. Now, these qualities can be in place even while the mind is paying attention to something else, for instance you per your question you could be attending to some aspect of the head and what sensations arise in connection with the breath at that location, while this anchoring in the lower abdomen persists. The other thing that seems relevant to say is that the entry level upper dantian techniques I'm aware of focus yintang (midbrow) rather than deep in the center of the head.

This is something that I feel I should speak to a little. I was initially frustrated at the lack of "spiritual" things in the Academy, especially coming from a Tibetan Buddhist background. It was all so physical and mechanical. Of the 38 weeks I have access to in the neigong module, weeks 15, 16, 17, 20, 21, 27, 29, and 31 are about seated development of mental qualities, as are Zoom classes 4 and 10 (of 10 so far). So about 1 in 5. freeform recently clarified that the Daoist path makes the energy body more dense, closer to the physical, in order to facilitate absorption of the awareness into the energy body. This is very much reflected in the whole feel of the energy signature of the practices, practitioners, and community, compared to other paths. I'm honestly still getting used to it.

Here's what I would do in your position. Start saving money now and set aside enough for 2 or 3 months of the Academy. Start a subscription when your spring term ends. Spend your summer break hitting the Academy material hard - there is an insane amount of material available from month 1 if you are motivated. Weekly lessons in all modules (nei gong, taiji, bagua), stand alone courses (qigong foundations, heavenly streams, four dragons), and recordings of over 10 live zoom classes. If you get through all of this, you will have plenty to practice while school is in session, when you might not have the ability to be keeping up with all the new practices from the weekly lessons anyway, so it's no real loss to cancel your subscription when school starts again.

Really just started it and getting the hang of how to put the stepping qualities from the straight line drills into the circle. But I'm enjoying it.

Chinese being a tonal language, wu can many things depending on tone. Five (eg wu xing), martial (eg wu jia), and not/non (eg wu wei) are the only ones I had heard in a cultivation context when freeform first mentioned this, so I looked into it and there is a meaning of wu that is something like aware/awareness.

I've been working with this course, and really enjoying it. I feel like my body wants this work as a complement to Damo's neigong. A few points of comparison with Damo's Taiji material, which I started but didn't stick with. The Bagua material is more active than the Taiji material, with it's stepping work. In Taiji jin comes from releasing the point of contact with the ground to send jin up from the feet, in Bagua you also release down from the crown. Year one of Taiji primarily teaches 37 form, with an emphasis on how to develop jin in each movement from the beginning, with another module on partner exercises for jin. Bagua year one teaches the neigong for circle walking and 8 palms, no martial/partner material whatsoever - there is discussion of jin but not applications. @Vajra Fist are you still in the Bagua program? How are you liking it? @Nam Sao Damo has advised to to the neigong module alongside Taiji, or even do neigong for a while before Taiji, not sure if you had seen that though.

Thank you, this hits several points I have wondered about.

My first exposure to non-dual teachings that caught my interest was an article that broke down the stages of non-dual awakening. Reading more of this person's writings, he emphasized that almost everyone in the non-duality milieu is the first or second stage of (in this article) seven. Apparently, every new stage a person gets to, there is a tendency to say "This is it! There is no way there's any realization deeper than this! This is what all the world's spiritual paths are pointing to!" Or, even if they acknowledge they are still suffering, there is very little guidance available on what to do next, how to deepen realization. What's more he referenced different axes of development, and explained how non-dual awakening was one way to develop your consciousness, but didn't necessarily develop you in other ways. To use Ken Wilber's phrase, waking up is not the same as growing up. In hindsight, these two together laid a foundation of discernment which allowed me to sidestep the kind of thing you describe. The number of non-dual teachers I've found that actually have the qualities I'm looking for (high stage of non-dual awakening while living effectively and morally in the mundane world) is very small indeed, and found through word of mouth talking to people who also have and appreciate the same qualities. So I count myself fortunate to have found the ones that I have. That's the main reason I maintain an interest in non-duality even while practicing Damo's stuff.

I haven't the vaguest clue about investment. Any advice on where to start?

Off topic, but this is something I and probably others here would like to hear you expand on: some general principles expounded by Western experts on skill, flow, and mastery and how these are incorporated into "classical methodology of gong".

Fascinating. Can this affect family members that are not direct descendents? Like, say, a niece or nephew?

If you feel like you lack a knowledge base, my advice is start general, move toward specific, and find sources that are designed to give quick overviews, such as Simple English Wikipedia (free), and the Very Short Introduction series (not free, but not expensive, and really high quality). Know nothing about history, but want to know about something specific? First read an overview of the study of history - of how we can know anything about history at all, and what are the major time periods and geographic centers that history centers on (ancient, modern, Western, Eastern, etc). Then find a major subfield of history that your topic falls under, and read an overview of that. For instance, if you are primarily interested in what is happening in America today, first read an overview of American History. Only then specialize to the specific topic you were initially interested in. This allows you to build a scaffolding to hang individual facts on, a way to see how things fit together. Without this, jumping straight into a book on a specialized topic, however good of a book it is, will mostly not be absorbed.

Does this include animals?

Buddhist meanings of terms used by Daoists is neither an invention of moderns nor Westerners, for instance I just came across this quote from the famous 12th century Korean Chan master Jinul: "Question: You have said that this twofold approach of sudden awakening/gradual cultivation is the track followed by thousands of saints. But if awakening is really sudden awakening, what need is there for gradual cultivation? And is cultivation means gradual cultivation, how can you speak of sudden awakening? We hope that you will expound further on these two ideas of sudden and gradual and resolve our remaining doubts. Chinul: First, let us take sudden awakening. When the ordinary man is deluded, he assumes that the four great elements are his body and the false thoughts are his mind. He does not know that his own nature is the true dharma-body; he does not know that his own numinous awareness is the true Buddha. He looks for the Buddha outside the mind. While he is thus wandering aimlessly, the entrance to the road might by chance be pointed out by a wise advisor. If in one thought he then follows back the light and sees his original nature, he will discover that the ground of this nature is innately free of defilement, and that he himself is originally endowed with the non-outflow wisdom-nature which is not a hair's breadth different from that of the Buddhas. Hence, it is called sudden awakening. Next, let us consider gradual cultivation. Although he has awakened to the fact that his original nature is no different from that of the Buddhas, the beginningless habit-energies are extremely difficult to remove suddenly and so he must continue to cultivate while relying on this awakening. Through this gradual permeation, his endeavors reach completion. He constantly nurtures the sacred embryo, and after a long time he becomes a saint. Hence it is called gradual cultivation. This process can be compared to the maturation of the child. From the day of its birth, a baby is endowed with all the sense organs just like everyone else, but its strength is not yet fully developed. It is only after many months and years that it will finally become an adult." [Chinul's Secrets on Cultivating the Mind, from Tracing Back the Radiance, translated by Robert E. Buswell]

I don't think either can be considered authoritative. From what I have heard, Cleary's Buddhist background informs his translations, in a way that sometimes misses the original meaning. About Xinggong, I came at Longmen Daoism from a Tibetan Buddhist background, where there the two goals are realize the nature of mind and integrate that realization into the body using various methods such as inner heat, which works with internal essences, and practices with visions of light which spontaneously arises from your true nature. So naturally, I assumed that this is what xing and ming cultivation refereed to in Daoism. But apparently, Daoists don't really talk about the nature of mind like Buddhists do. Ming is the work with internal essences, and xing is the work with the light of your original spirit.