deci belle

Very popular in Hawaiian culture as well. It's even the logo of a surfer flip-flop company. I have a hook sticker on my car~ Eeeeee!

"Grafting" (sexual) vitality for refining energy through concentration exercises was developed through magic practices in parts of Asia and other parts of the subcontinent, then developed in the southern sect of Complete Reality taoism for the purpose of aiding elderly practitioners. Energy still has to be refined into spirit and steps beyond by clarification of mind in order to interrupt conditioned consciousness. You have no need for this type of practice at your age. Forget it. Just get on with the real deal and refine mind. Sounds fun though, don't it!!! haha!

Yes, zeb. Do open that MCO!

The aim is diffused brilliance Not employed for affirmation But entrusted to the potential~ This is called using clarity effectively. Establishing inward discipline afterwards deflecting externals, Advancing when celestial energy is insufficient and withdrawing when mundanity arises; adapting impersonally in accord with the situation. This describes the principle of the firing process. The firing process of spiritual alchemy Is simply complete awareness Of ordinary affairs Without knowing feelings and opinions. The foundation is sincere openness Which is without bias or inclination: Nothing inside coming out Nothing outside going in. Firmly advancing the fire is Difficulty: following the heart's desire without stepping over the line. Flexibly withdrawing the fire is Innocence: freeing potential by being unminding in all situations. The function of true freedom Is what frees the other over and over again. This describes yin convergence. The reality whereby origin and completion are affected is the true intent of the human body which has no location. Because it contains the impulse of life within it, it is called the center. I call it the aim of the true teacher.

Not entirely, Marblehead— hang on! Hi, goldisheavy~ What you are referring to is something other than the center, because there is discerning of this and that. I don't doubt your experience, however— what's there to be wrong? Awareness itself has no content. Purity has nothing to compare. This is the objectivity of one's own teacher, that's all. Seeing this is knowing the teacher. This is a thread about recognizing the inner teacher. Please don't go off on a tangent about seeing phenomena and enlightenment in terms of understanding interpenetration. I only mentioned purity as an example for the basis of objectivity. Informer, whatever is learned with the unenlightened mind is worthless, in terms of objectivity. You can deny it, but that won't change the fact. If you awaken to accurate clarity, perception is true learning. True learning is learning spiritual neutralization of killing energy at the right time in ordinary affairs unbeknownst to anyone. It's not a matter of words. Not a person is the essence of awareness, so it's not that it's inside as opposed to outside. Not a person isn't another thing. Awakening to the center, one finds that mind and self, others, purity as opposed to impurity simply isn't applicable. You don't see the teacher because you yourself haven't seen what it is your mind and body are employing to sense self and others. You are still developing inner discipline and warding off externals. That's great! But though it is right before you, you can't avail yourself of it due to the desire to surpass others and thoughts of your own ability. Ego and possessiveness are obstacles on the way. Stop talking about inside and outside— and bothering about threatening threads about brainwashing others. Be as if a dunce. It's not a matter of indifference— it's activating attention without dwelling on anything. Issues of right and wrong are another universe and of no concern to you— ditto for politics. Burning monks are neither to be pitied nor esteemed. Worldly affairs are to be dismissed. The way has no such discernment. You see the way by ceasing conditioned consciousness. If you can't forget conditioned existence, how are you going to unite with the tao in reality? The light itself is the teacher. Going along with the light is ordinary consciousness. When you still yourself and turn the light of your eyes and ears around and follow it in reverse, the monkey-mind is left behind and you realize the meaning of the ancient saying, "Return is the movement of the Way" (chapter 40, Tao Te Ching). The difference between the mind of tao and the human mind is a hairsbreadth. By turning the light around, you will realize that the teacher is the basic mind, which has no identity, is not a person and has no characteristics. The reason it cannot ever be mistaken for yourself is that there are no words. Enlightenment and phenomena are both empty. After awakening, one starts all over and learns from the teacher to secretly harmonize sameness within difference in everyday ordinary situations. The path to enlightenment is a finite endeavor. The path of realization of enlightening being is the process of spiritual (nonpsychological) weakening and harmonization of the light in endless transformations performed in secret. When you take over creation, there are no words; so nobody knows you. Experience itself isn't the light. The light is what's alive. The light is the teacher. Not everyone has to have certain kinds of experience to use one's own teacher. Most of us don't have that natural affinity, though. Anyone can turn the light around, but actually following the light in reverse to its source is unequivocal in terms of seeing the teacher without reference to self. Relying on oneself is essential. The teacher is just code for impersonal awareness. Though I mention it, I'm not discussing harmonizing sameness and difference— I'm only talking about the point of this thread, which is one's own inner teacher; nonpsychological objectivity.❤

Return is the movement of the way. We follow the way to learn its subtleties. Imitating the movement of the way, we reverse the light of consciousness to follow it back to its source. The source of the light is the foundation of nonorigination. Discovering nonorigination, the causelessness on the brink of nothing deliberate has never acted. Once created, the movement of its way is return. What cannot yield has its weakness So life and death are equal. I'd just written something in reference to chapter 40, so I put a part of it here!❤

Informer said: Could you please describe under what circumstances you know the center other than what has no location?

it's just that what isn't reflecting doesn't dwell so when certainty is deliberate there is bound to be confusion. It is not a person who realizes. Only then do you see the teacher.

I'd be the first to project, but it sounds like a beautiful longing! Do you write poetry?❤

The way is not even one, much less two. Not coming or going the teacher is sameness without beginning. After a long time, you enact this. In your state you are neither one nor the same. Sameness is practiced after realization, when you know we're all phantoms. Nothing knowing is what's not separate. What are you learning from yourself? Less? Or more? Tao is loosing every day. What are you loosing? What happens when nothing itself is gone, gone, beyond gone, gone beyond? Now who determines? The teacher is the true intent of the immaterial human body, which has no location. One finds this in the center of one's self. It is not a person. Your independence is noteworthy, Informer, but it is still in the relative. True autonomy is when no one else knows. Right now everyone knows.

Is not oneself. The teacher is found in oneself. Yet it is not oneself, inasmuch as the source of awareness is you, but you are not it.

Hi Adam, do be careful. Three years isn't very long. Have you opened up the basic active and passive channels, yet? I'm glad Rainbow Vein said that~ because I wanted to address that first and foremost! When you say meditation, it seems you really mean energetics, yes? If you just want to excel at induction practices and ignore clarifying your mind, please be very very careful. Illnesses from unskillful induction practices are extremely dangerous— especially so because the illness generated is often untreatable. Don't mistake me for one of the shaman/compassionist buddhist whatever doctrine people. There is no reason you should not eventually attain what you seek: ie, training as such. But balancing the energetics work with real nonpsychological stillness practice is something you might consider as a healthy way to help you solidify your accomplishment of staying off medication without risking possible mistakes regarding energy work. Traditional taoist and buddhist teachers would insist on years (many) of study in terms of intellectual clarification and contemplation of the classics before taking up even mind-only meditation practices. Energy work is at least as dangerous without expert supervision. I myself studied for ten years, experiencing spontaneous episodes of non-ordinary energy and awareness events before even beginning study of the alchemic classics. I didn't even practice the waterwheel exercises until 15 years of study, shortly after I had experienced spontaneous clarification of mind. That was twenty years ago. Please don't be in a hurry. You are still a beginner. Many have been permanently damaged through their own actions regarding energy work. I myself am waiting for a teacher to learn about further studies. I have now been waiting for the past five years. Cherish your health. Consider taking up wide-ranging contemplative studies of the eastern classics, while your approach matures!❤

hahahaha!! Funny you two!!❤

(Responding to Romie's original post) The energies are the same, but the balances are different. The person is responsible for approaching energy in the body in an impersonalized, mature fashion. The energy is not a person-identifiable possession. Nobody "owns" the air they breath. It's not about them. Exercises utilizing chi are really about getting outside of yourself (psycho-emotional matrix). Other than opening up and familiarizing oneself with the active and passive channels, everything else is "extra credit". Others may not agree, but the fact is, once the channels are open and practice has evolved, the microcosmic orbit is self-sustaining. It is a mistake, imo, to over-emphasize induction practices. Once the body is sufficiently disciplined to move and store chi effectively, it is the mentality that needs to be refined (stilled). It might be that people who have sexual issues are just habituated to sexual issues. Other than effectively addressing the male/female body intricacies, sex, in terms of practice, is immaterial. If sexual identity is still a weak point (or even a strong point) in one's personality, one is simply not ready to evolve far. There may be reasons for that, some "necessary", others frivolous at best. Regardless, they must be addressed and resolved, eventually— but that's why we're here. Claims that taoist practices are gender-emphasized may have a library-deficiency situation as that is a new one, to me. The volume titled "Immortal Sisters" has female-specific practices, if this is an issue. At any rate, the individual's unique differences are to be de-emphasized as a matter of practice, as these "issues" only serve to prop up an ego that doesn't need that kind of re-enforcement, quite frankly. Self-refinement is specifically aimed at eliminating the needs, fears and cravings of reflective personality while strengthening the essential health of the ego-function. Depending how you are plumbed and wired is significant. Each individual is responsible for finding their own unique way to work with, and ultimately, transcend, the levels of energy one is capable of refining. With all due respect, perhaps the friend could invest more personal sincerity and less personality, or less talk and more action? Self-refinement isn't easy. It's not a "program" as much as it is an attitude towards living with openness and sincerity, so to be fluid in responding to the authentic requirements of practice~ as opposed to the habitual reifications of the intellectual/emotional organism.❤

Why don't you start with yours, Little1?

Who knows the spoils of war are lost in celebration. Seal the vessel tightly.❤

❤!

Wonderful insight, manitou! Awareness itself is consciousness. The living awareness is used sensually. So not in sense, but by our living awareness is consciousness itself recognized, yes! Just not creating illusion out of this very same living awareness employed in sense perception is itself enlightened perception. Just directly knowing perceiving, without entertaining illusions. We are light, and we are indeed connected. The idea of separation is an illusion, isn't it!❤

Nice. I really liked this one. Thank you!

This was posted on another thread in response to a comment Marblehead made. It is a crystalization of Complete Reality practice so I have included it here. Finding the voice that waits to guide us… it's silent, but it's loud and clear when we cut the world off without cutting the world out. The world is all there is. The world is the whole of created energy. Appropriating this energy is what spiritual alchemy prescribes: working with the refined immaterial medicines. But transformation doesn't need the world— just its potential. For me, this is enabled by not being afraid to miss out on anything— so the killing energy of created yin/yang cycles can then benefit. You know energy can't be destroyed; only changed. When you can see potential without habitually dealing with its nefarious forms, you can then steal it. That's changing it. YOU change it. That's taking over creation. That's the taoist term. Really, all this accomplishes besides saving us relentless wear and tear, is that it seals one who can arrive here at a point, a pivot— whereby the polluted energy of everyday ordinary situations is somehow neutralized as oneself. One's immaterial body actually transforms it spiritually. The body knows what to do. The body is not the self. The body is the other. You set it up as the guest, and the inner self becomes the host. You aren't doing it. It's like a state of grace. You can't help it along. You just trust your own open sincerity. Mostly you hold back. Occasionally, you let go, trusting: because it's time— not for a reason. All this alchemy stuff is the result of a kind of will. It has nothing to do with reason at all. Cultivation is a matter of weeding out the compulsion to act. The habit of compulsively acting. Action as a result of true stillness is spontaneous action. Compulsive action is kinetic action. Karmic action. Created action. Selfish action. Confined action. Reified action. Ignorant action. Thoughts are acts. Giving the world the slip without letting on is enlightening activity. Stepping over eternity, you leave the world and follow your own teacher. But when you see eternity, you recognize the glint of impersonal depth ~call it everything hitting and missing reflective personality~ and just let it go without renunciation or wondering what might become. It's your teacher waiting on the rise. This is what I know from my own experience, but here is a corroboration by Chan master Hongren (c.602~675). It is in the opening statement of his "Treatise on the Supreme Vehicle". "The basic essence of cultivating enlightenment should be discerned: it is the inherently complete and pure mind, in which there is no false discrimination, and body and mind are fundamentally pure, unborn, and undying. This is the basic teacher; this is better than invoking the Buddhas of the ten directions." What is corroborated is the mind which has no mind for speculative capitalizing on self-generated illusion. One's own mind reverts to the state of selfless wisdom, which is the teacher within one's self.