Sahaj Nath

i haven't read any of the other comments before writing this, but this is my experience. i have clients/students/friends who are very involved in AA, and i have personally been REALLY impressed with how the program has changed their lives. but these are people who have a good 10+ years under their belt. the 12 steps, when taken seriously, are transformative. n00bs are over-zealous about EVERYTHING that they're into, even qigong/meditation. i don't know anything about the history of AA, but i wouldn't confuse the issues of its founder with its present worth. i don't even know if the "paranoid delusional" thing is true, but it doesn't even matter, as it has NOTHING to do with the efficacy of the program. a few months ago i was invited to a dinner with a group of ladies, all of whom were in AA. i was the only guy there, and i was truly humbled by what i witnessed that night. one woman was from the Hollywood Hills, her parents were movie stars, her 20's were spent in the coke-binge decade of the 80's, and she was very spoiled/privileged, grew up believing that the world was here to entertain her (those were HER words, later that evening). another woman was from the inner city. she was really harsh. everything she said seemed to have a negative slant (i'm not stranger to this, as she and i were from the same hood). she hung out with gangmembers in her 20's, wound up addicted to crack and prostituting herself for years, and she was always in and out out jail. in most circumstances, the hollywood girl would have annoyed the hell out of the street woman with every word, and the street woman would have scared the hollywood girl and alienated herself from the group. but as they all began to talk, it was truly, truly humbling to see how they were able to relate to one another, to recognize how pain & suffering was universal, and how effortlessly they were able to create space for each other to express freely, without any tension between them. maybe you just had to be there, but i was left in awe. it was truly remarkable. they took their steps seriously. incredible amounts of honesty and vulnerability, and yet a tremendous amount of strength in that. i was so quiet that evening that at one point they apologized, assuming i was bored or something. i had to let them know what i was witnessing and how truly blown away i was. and i honestly don't know if my writing this out does it justice, but i was sitting at a table of people who were deeply spiritual and evolved, and they did it through AA. only one of the ladies were christian. the others were... i honestly don't remember what they were. but their level of openness, compassion, and authenticity was incredible to me. it works if you work it. straight up. it's like any system of practice that gets discussed in this forum. people get so hung up on the system itself that they seem to forget that the system is just a vehicle. if you don't take your driving seriously or never learn to drive well, then the vehicle doesn't much matter. the programs are important. the qualities you bring to the programs are even more important. and so a program that is designed for people who are broken is going to have a high failure rate if your ONLY measure of success is permanent sobriety. but AA goes WAY deeper than that. it helps people learn how to live, often for the first time in their lives. that can't be measured in days sober. many people who relapse STILL have changed lives and levels of self-awareness they would never have come to otherwise.

SO much truth here! i hope you will take this response as a question rather than a challenge. it's quite clear that you've been around the block and you know what you're talking about. i don't want to invalidate anything that you've stated because i know that there are some very real issues with this kind of thing. i've seen unethical exploitation take place. but at the same time, i just don't feel comfortable drawing lines and setting limits. it's totally necessary in the lay-world where there's an open-door policy and some people who really shouldn't even be there show up, but i've also seen these kinds of things turn TOTALLY sexual and frenzied, with strangers hooking up and going at it while others are dancing, screaming, and speaking in tongues, and it was amazing. i'm reminded of Oz House and Thelema Lodge, both of the OTO, not to mention a few wiccan celebrations. not open to the public, but certainly large groups of strangers who dare to let go COMPLETELY, and nothing is taboo. maybe the difference is that every occasion of this nature that i've witness/participated in was presided over by a Priestess, a Mother. i don't know. it was the women who were the most wild, and the men were largely passive once they paired up. i remember feeling wild and unbridled, and i remember locking eyes with a woman and immediately feeling submissive the moment she touched my face, completely taken in, as if my purpose on earth was to love and to please her in that moment. i felt almost like her pet. i was genuinely in love with her, albeit only for one night. anyways, that only happened once. other events i just stayed enraptured in the dance and the calling out, but still a lot of touchy-feeliness going on. some people really just have no business at events like that, or with teachers like that. but for others, it can be a truly beautiful thing to submit, to give ones personal authority over to another, or to the pure primordial spirit. i don't think there's such thing as a 'common sense, self protective' way to surrender. that's not surrender then. and there are many teachers whom NO ONE should surrender to. but at the end of the day, the seeker has to decide whom to submit to, or if to submit at all, as there are plenty of practices that don't require absolute vulnerability. but there are no real safeguards, and i honestly don't think there should be. i don't think you can transcend good & evil if there are. what are your thoughts on this, specifically? am i not appreciating the disparity of power between the unethical and the naive? or am i being naive myself? whatever it is, let me have it! all in love, ...

fair enough. just keep me posted. i hear that, and i can appreciate where you're coming from. i wasn't asking YOU to pay, but just for those professors to use a little bit of that research money to get my ass out there, that's all. and to be honest, i don't find MOST of the people in my "field" to be credible, so i understand that point as well. but even the ones who ARE credible might not meet your standards, as per your language in some of these comments. no energy workers can claim to have "THE CURE" for anything. there's no "ONE SET" of protocols that works for everyone. and we certainly can't tell anyone to stop with their conventional medicine and trust us completely. we can go to prison for that! well, truth be told, i've broken this law numerous times, but only with terminal patients that the doctors had already sent home to die. there's a difference between having cured cancer and having the cure for cancer. there's a big difference, and i think that needs to be made clear. i lose a lot of fights. and it hurts, because i fall in love with my patients, and i go out of my way to get invested in their healing process. but i also win some of those fights, too. and i couldn't continue to do what i do if i didn't get those victories. people show up with their own unique set of conditions, some of whom just need a boost to their spleen, pancreas, and/or kidneys, and they recover dramatically from as far out as stage-4 terminal. others need a lot more specialized attention and treatments for a much longer term, and they might only be at stage 2. with the addition of dietary changes, herbal tonics, and purified, alkaline water (which can just be a squirt of lemon in the water), then the results tend to be a lot more favorable. but you might be surprised at how reluctant even sick & dying people can be to change their lifestyle & habits. one of my old clients, whom i hadn't seen since March, just died recently. stage-4 metastatic lymphoma. 41 tumors in her body. she was TERRIFIED of dying so young (mid-20's), and even though the doctors had NO answers for her, she couldn't find it in herself to trust the holistic process. we had a small team of people working with her, FREE OF CHARGE, and she just wouldn't do her part. and guess what? she STILL got good results! before she abandoned our prescriptions entirely, her scans showed a 25-50% decrease in 40 of her 41 tumors. and the final tumor, the main one, had stopped growing & was showing signs of degeneration. and this was someone who WASN'T following all the recommendations! you'd think such results would inspire trust in the process, but it didn't. instead she went back to chemo & radiation. she abandoned the holistic process altogether. and now she's no longer with us. it's not just a matter of what kind of disease a person has, but ALSO, what kind of person has the disease. everything factors in. everything. not just isolated, material objects. losing her was heartbreaking, because i absolutely believe that she could have completely recovered. it was her mind, not her body, which was unwilling to heal. yeah, you won't hear that from me. you don't have to believe in water in order to get wet. your quality of mind does have some effect, but "belief" is not a requirement. but i'm not so sure that what i do as a healer qualifies as "oh-so-great" skills. you're not gonna see lightning bolts shooting out my eyes or anything. yeah, i know. i'm not a fan of frauds, either. and my standards are pretty damn high when people start talking parlor tricks, but that's not what i'm about. i'm not gonna levitate object or throw people across the room. and i don't know if i'll be able to mend a broken arm or cure an illness in just any random person, but i know that my ratio of positive effect is about 8 out of 10. so while i can't guarantee specific results, i have absolute confidence that i can demonstrate some impressive and statistically significant things, and i'm willing to put my name on the line to do it. i'm not the best. not even close. but i'm pretty damn good at what i do. good enough to show up.

i don't really advertise because i don't accept just anyone for training, but my door is always open to the sick. i actually like you bro, but this conversation is just getting irritating and tedious. so i'm over this. i don't expect anything. i'm just saying it's out there, in fairly plain sight, even if you don't see it on MSNBC or Fox News this evening. you don't see it because it hasn't been put right in your face, NOT because the information isn't out there. and i don't need anyone to cater to me; in fact, it is I whom am trying to cater to YOU here. but now i guess my offer is illegitimate because i'm a random stranger on the internet? you're here crying about proof, i'm offering to be examined, and you basically reject it, rather flippantly, saying the burden is on me. i have no burden in this. YOU either care to seek the truth of it or YOU don't. i guess it was the "royal treatment" comment that really irritated me. it was kind of a jerk thing to say, PLUS it was a weak deflection of my offer. but whatever. i'm not going anywhere. i'm right here. either get back to me on my offer, or don't. btw, motel 6 and chinese take-out will suit me fine; i don't need to be catered to.

Dude, what are you talking about? you say "where are they?" i say, "we are right here, DOING the work," as my life is now dedicated to it, and then you say "put up or shut up," to which i reply, "i'm putting up on a DAILY basis," and you just don't buy that. well, you don't have to. we are RIGHT HERE, hiding in plain sight, i guess. where the heck have you been looking? the Mayo Clinic has been busting their asses researching qi energy and its curative effects on cancer. there are over 1,500 CONCLUSIVE studies that have been documented now, so again, WHERE THE HECK ARE YOU LOOKING? i know this link has been posted in the past, but have you looked through the Qigong Institute's database? http://www.qigonginstitute.org/html/scientificbasis.php there's plenty of research to look up lots of different places. it was a Harvard study that verified the phenomenon of Tummo by studying a couple of tibetan monks. you can probably find that one on YOUTUBE. i mean, it's out there. lots of stuff is out there. you just seem to believe that, if it's really out there, then these things would become ubiquitous in the culture so everyone can benefit. but that's just not the reality. and i'll say this. straight-up. if you have professors at your school who have the funding to conduct a trial, and if they are willing to fly me out and accommodate me to participate in a few studies, i'll be there. so there. i've said it here in open forum. now, can YOU put up or shut up? cause i'm willing to be tested, kill viruses in petri dishes, affect stuff in other rooms, whatever. i won't submit under James Randy-style parameters, but i'm happy to participate in a mutual exploration of energy medicine. it's all been done already, but i'll do it again. and i'm not just saying this. PM me if you're serious.

good lookin' out! i wasn't around here when this first got posted.

you give this world too much credit. well, technically, everyone in this debate is. HIV/AIDS is not incurable, and it hasn't been incurable since the mid-90's. if you're looking for mainstream channels to confirm this, then that's just never going to happen. AIDS has been cured in S. America, Burma/Myanmar, Africa, and even right here in our 'new age' community, with Karuna Reiki, fasting, qigong, all kinds of stuff. it has been cured even by heating & filtering the blood. the threat is more profitable than the cure. siddhis have been documented. but if James Randy is your standard of legitimacy, then you'll never get it. he's not there to discover the truth; he's there to prove wrong, and to establish our bounds of reason for us. he's the intellectual goalie who says "thus far, but no further." it's like we live in a REAL Matrix, and so few people seem able to look beyond it. seeking magical powers MOST OFTEN is immature and irritating, and i say that as a teacher. 27-year-old BOYS, who still spend a good portion of their free time playing video games or watching TV, THOSE are the ones who most often come to me seeking powers. a lot of them are younger, but some are approaching 30. and they all have their noble sales pitch. unfortunately, none of them have the fundamental MATURITY necessary to understand, process, properly contextualize, and cultivate at a high enough level to be very effective. siddhis, as well as enlightenment, is simply not possible for the vast majority of the people seeking these things. not in this lifetime, anyway. but everyone is convinced that they can be that "special one," even if everything else in their life circumstances and personal decisions indicate that they are ridiculous. this is one of the reasons why i'll never have an open-door policy, at least not for the good stuff. some people just don't have it. nobody EVER wants to admit it, but it's true. it's not only true, but it's just about the most obvious thing in the world. it's kind of like how ALL young people honestly think that they will be wealthy some day, that aside from maybe the stoners at their school, everyone else can truly "make it" in some field, and we would just have an entire nation of wealthy, successful people? or the unspoken notion that EVERYONE can go to college, as if there were enough classroom seats for the entire country. people live their lives with a "checkers" mentality and think they're going to become chess masters. it just doesn't happen. it never has. and it won't. it's very PC to say everyone has the same potential, but they don't. a lot of people right here on the board have maybe read a few more books, but are not much further along (if any) than they were 3 years ago. yet they still think they have it. that they'll get there. it's a fantasy. and it's a fantasy that lot's of teachers/groups cash in on. i have cured cancer with my hands. i have mended a broken arm in 3 days, and no, it wasn't my own arm. and yesterday i dissolved a cyst in a woman's abdomen in under an hour. i can feel the presence and current state of a number of my students & friends (though not all of them) RIGHT NOW, even though they live far away and we haven't spoken in over a week. i can feel disturbances in people's bodies, sometimes just by being in the same room with them. there's more, but these are at least what i'm willing to admit to, if for no other reason than the fact that i know these things are probably also true for a few others on this board. these abilities aren't terribly remarkable. could i perform them under James Randy's set-up? i doubt it. not because i doubt my abilities, but because i KNOW that my abilities are real. and if mine are real, then so must be the abilities of many others who are more disciplined and skilled than i am. and if NO ONE has beaten the challenge yet, then i simply cannot trust the challenge. i don't know. this turned into a bit of a rant rather than a response. whatevers.

no, he's not grounded at all. and that's one of his main points, i think! especially when "grounded" is virtually synonymous with "under control." he gets manic, and he shouts from the rooftops that manic ecstasy is divine and to no be afraid to lose yourself. it's initially what put me off and kept me from listening to the CD's, but once i gave it a real shot, that's a big part of what made it so brilliant. TCM is an inappropriate measure of ecstatic awakening. the roots of their cultural expressions are VERY different, as are their goals, mainly because TCM makes assumptions about what healing should look like, and the ecstatic traditions do not. Keeney's not seeking a mellow equilibrium. none of the ecstatic traditions are. certainly not for everyone, but he's all about being "inappropriate" and unconventional, and boy, do a lot of people need that!

one of my favorite excerpts from the interview: "...and when someone says "unless you follow it MY way, and here's the protocol for how to be a shaman or how to be a healer," whew, somebody needs to stand up and say, "YOU DON'T GET IT!" because it is RADICALLY born IN THE MOMENT, with NO expectation of what its form will be. you surrender to being the hand, the instrument of the Gods, and they come down and they might do any kind of crazy thing with you. sometimes you may be still, sometimes you might make a noise, but there ain't no protocol!" i thought it was worth transcribing.

hmm... i don't think this is accurate. it's good to highlight this, but it's not accurate. a lot of times the movement DOES come first. the vigorous movement can be used to wake up the N\om. ecstatic movement generates energy, that energy ignites the N\om, THEN the N\om takes over and keeps the movement going. it may not always be necessary to move first, but it's quite alright to do so as a means of stoking the fire. i mean, that's how one gets swept up in the frenzy. when you're at a concert, you're not waiting for energy to touch you; you're eagerly diving into that energy, taking an active part in its generation. so it's not to say that you're completely wrong, but just that it's not all one or the other. followers of the Ratu Bagus Ashram in Indonesia shake for 6-8 hours a day. sometimes the energy takes them over completely, sometimes the energy fills them and the movement is virtually effortless, but it's not the same level of ekstasis. one of the beginners in the video shook for as long as a month without anything happening, but just kept at it until it broke through. it's kind of a messy process, and that's part of the beauty of it and why i'm always emphasizing that the internal arts are, first and foremost, AN ART. people CAN awaken the energy by the act of shaking & free-form movement. kundalini is alive in everyone, all the time, so it's totally possible. spontaneous methods of practice are just that, METHODS. shaking is a method. then, once the energy is awake and aroused, you let it shake you!

i would have been happy to reply to your inquiry in a PM rather than diverting the topic, as you put it. *sigh* do i see benefit? of course. i've never stated otherwise. do those practices form a complete system? to be honest, i don't even know what a question like that means when communicating with a stranger whose goals & history i know nothing about. for some people it's the greatest system they've ever come across. clearly i don't share that sentiment. i can say this: when determining whether or not a system is "complete," i cannot evaluate the system minus its people. i think such a proposition is absurd. when looking for "completeness," the details matter. not so much when one is just looking for "effectiveness." too often these things get confused. this is just how i roll in general. but i cannot give you a meaningful evaluation of a system that i do not practice. i can talk AROUND the system & discuss all the reasons why i don't go there & i can speculate, but that's not the same thing. i met Max for one weekend, and i met with him in private for an hour. that was in '07. it was enough for me to determine for myself, but that doesn't qualify me to analyse the system as a whole. how 'bout we start a new thread if we're gonna beat this kunlun thing to death again. or just PM me or ralis or scotty or whomever you wish with regard to personal questions.

thanks for that, brother. i never saw this back in December of '08, but it's much appreciated. i try to make everything count. indeed. i had stopped for a period when i was doing ridiculous amounts of seated meditation, but it has never really been out of the rotation. i tend to do a lot more of it in the spring & summer, but it's definitely a permanent part of my teaching strategy. it's just too effective not to be. hey, i may be highly critical of their approach, but i still get it. there's lots to love there. it's never gonna be how I roll, but i can appreciate the good in it. sounds like a blast! yeah, i'm down for that! i'll be in touch. oh, and i thought i had posted this podcast link before, but it must be in another thread. this is a GREAT interview with Keeney. a complete interview. http://www.futureprimitive.org/2008/05/shaking-up-bradford-keeney-phd/

no one is trying to make an example of you. i have my own students & practices to tend to and don't need to waste my time trying to be superior to you. i share with the hopes that what i say is of benefit to someone, even if not you. and if you DO let some of it in and find benefit, that's great. if you have taken offense to my tone, then i apologize, because that wasn't my intent. but i don't ever pretend to sugar-coat things, nor do pretend to be falsely modest. i don't go out of my way to be harsh, either. i'm just me. shooting as straight as i know how to. this is how i roll. you are welcome to PM me about anything you wish, but unless you have questions or points of clarification you want made, i have nothing else to share until you ask it.

hey Scotty, as a person who is committed to the "kunlun" methods of practice, i don't expect us to see eye-to-eye on this. i'm not going to pursue this matter beyond this one post. what you are stating here is actually a newer re-interpretation of the system. in 2007 the yi gong practices specifically were being labeled "Kunlun," supposedly from the Kunlun school, complete with a story about the temple, and being one of 4 people who are able to leave the temple and teach every 100 years, and everything. red phoenix was part of his new system, but was from Mao Shan, not Kunlun. the story morphed little by little over the next couple of years, and Kunlun got exchanged with Mao Shan in some instances, and eventually arrived at the current narrative. but his claim was that he had been trained in 3 Taoist traditions: Kunlun, Mao Shan, and Wudan. and the yi gong practices were from Kunlun. again, this is from the new current narrative, and this is NOT what he used to claim. this clip isn't even one of the oldest videos, but the references he makes to Kunlun even here are a lot more consistent with what i just stated above. http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=105089444 HIS words. it wasn't my intention to make a thing out of this, but we should at least be able to agree about SOME of this. fair enough. my advice wasn't intended to be gossipy, but you have a point. and until someone knows for themselves, that's all it really is. not interested in fighting with you either, brother, but neither am i averse to arguments being made and/or evaluated. but some things really aren't open to interpretation. they are either true or they are not. if things are taught differently now, then that's fine too, and i stand corrected about the current "core" of the system. but otherwise, i stand by what i said. EDIT: here's the other clip. much shorter. http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=105085386 after the movie intro, at 2:24: "In Kunlun, every 100 years, 4 people are allowed to leave the temple." the practices from that temple (which we now know isn't real) were supposed to be the core of his system. and THAT was why he named it all Kunlun. i'm not a liar, bro. things might be a little different now, but i didn't just make up what i stated.

you're disagreeing with a concept that i never put forth. i'll just clarify this, and then leave it alone. you don't seem to be very open, as you seem to believe you already "get" things which you clearly do not, the issue of "knowing yourself" being just one of them. your views about yourself, your goals, and your world, are all skewed by fears, traumas, shameful desires, and a whole host of other variables that no one likes to own or fully acknowledge about themselves. in psychology they call these things shadow material. Insight Meditation (Vipassana) IS, in fact, a psychological tool (among many other things) which can begin to unearth much of this material and allow you to see clearly and actually heal deep-seated areas of trauma, insecurity, fear, and the like. it's not a tool that anyone uses against you. it's a vehicle for profound self-awareness and clarity. and it could save you many years of chasing after objects or notions, only to discover in the end that they weren't what you had hoped them to be. if i might use an analogy, it's like people who are obsessed with material success. if they were to sit and really face themselves long enough and diligently enough, they might discover that what they were really chasing after was a notion of significance, or importance, both of which might be rooted in a deep insecurity that has been with them since the occurrence of some childhood event. if that root is never dealt with, then that person's "accomplishments" will never fulfill them. so that's more what i was getting at when i mentioned knowing yourself. without that fundamental self-awareness and self-honesty, and without the fundamental courage to face one's shadow material, you simply will not get very far in these practices. there are tons of people who train for decades and never progress past a very low-level mediocrity. and the deep-seated subtle stuff is not accessible through normal intellectual self-inquiry. you need to employ the proper tools to gain access to that data. hence, Vipassana. and one last thing: you never "wanted" to pay Verdesi for the training, but your own words state that you were willing to if he really had the goods. you were even willing to overlook morals. so now you have Spring Forest Qigong from a highly accomplished master who charges only a very modest sum for his program. i only pointed it out because you stated how much you REALLY LIKED the moral vows of the Mo Pai. so again i say to you that if morals is something that you truly value, then you should honor the teachings of Master Chunyi Lin by simply paying what he has asked. because the fact is you would work to come up with 10 times that much if he were making the same claims that Verdesi makes. i'm done. and i don't expect you to take too much stock of what i have written here, and that's okay. but there are always other readers who benefit from exchanges like these.

yes, you can be, and are, DEAD wrong. the core "kunlun" practice IS the Yi Gong practice of Mao Shan. it was renamed and repackaged with some other exercises, but no actual relation to Kunlun Shan. if you wish to discover, explore, and cultivate your OWN power, the Sifu Jenny Lamb's approach is going to be a superior choice to "Kunlun." but if you're just interested in acquiring cool powers as quickly as possible, then you're probably gonna find the "Kunlun" approach a lot more seductive, even though it would contradict your whole "depending on others for my power" thing. and... how old are you? you seem really young, and you're a little too eager to dive into a whole world of stuff that you don't seem to understand very well. it would benefit you to slow down and do some reading. Magus of Java is all well and good if it inspired you, but you need to do some real reading and become a little more knowledgeable & discerning in your pursuit. you'll never know what you REALLY want until you know yourself. Vipassana (Insight Meditation) with Spring Forest Qigong is a great place to start while you're studying and doing research. In fact, it's a great place to stay for a good while. BUT, you never answered my question about whether or not you actually paid for the SFQ program. if you were willing to waste thousands of dollars on Verdesi, you should at least demonstrate (to yourself) that YOU have the proper moral character to honor the work of Master Chunyi Lin by actually paying for his program. he doesn't make fairytale promises, but that doesn't mean he's not on the level; it just means he's a decent human being.

you seem willing to spare no expense to achieve the "highest level" you can. Chunyi Lin is a very highly developed master with high-standing moral character. but did you purchase those SFQ programs you downloaded, or is that pirated material? people like Verdesi charge that much because people like you chase after it. i can promise you one thing: you're not going to get your fairytale ending. but maybe you need to spend massive amounts of money to learn that for yourself. i'll just leave it at that.

i've read this post over and over again, and i still don't understand the point. are you talking about taking revenge without accruing a karmic debt? plus: really? that's the problem with revenge? so if you solve that little issue, you are free to take all the revenge you want? again, i just don't get it. it's still revenge. *shrugs* without knowing exactly what you're getting at, let me take a shot in the dark: the very word revenge necessarily implies a quality of attachment. the scenarios that you listed above are used to make mental modifications in order to justify the vengeful actions. the problem is that the justification ITSELF ensures that the hatred/revenge/motivating force is NEVER let go. that's kind of its job- to make the revenge okay in the psyche of the actor. the modification operates like a continuous program running in the background of the individual's character. if you could truly take the action AND let go of the hatred/motivating force/WHATEVER, then the justification for the action would become null and void. maybe some true sociopaths can carry out this level of value-free vengeance, but otherwise it just is what it is. such behavior is very much on the lower rungs of the ladder of cognitive moral development. we all have the capacity for it, but we are also capable of transcending such motivations. but what's the point anyway? ... okay, i just read your latter post fully: no. it didn't. and i explained why above. your "emotional cleaning of house" doesn't fly because each act of vengeance further entrenches your "outlook on violence." it reinforces and strengthens that character trait, oftentimes to perverse proportions, like the notion of being a sort of vigilante super-hero. the batman comment only further underscores the point.

there is a LOT of truth here. studying on one's own is NOT for everybody. you've really gotta know yourself and be honest about your ability, or you do yourself a disservice. there tends to be two extremes: there are folks who believe that everyone needs a teacher for EVERYTHING, even pulling down the heavens! and then there are folks who believe that NO ONE needs a teacher for ANYTHING, not even for access to a specific lineage. but i tend towards the later, when in actually it's better to err on the side of the former. fact of the matter is that these skills do not come naturally for MOST people. and without sufficient maturity & recognition of one's own limitations, it's far too easy to imagine oneself as gifted or "special" when in fact one is in need of in-person guidance. everyone can benefit from in-person foundational training. someone with experience needs to observe your body, and while they make corrections, if you ARE talented, you'll quickly acquire an intuitive sense of what correct form and movement feels like, and you can take that with you into your independent study. but at the end of the day, raw talent can never be a substitute for strong discipline. i haven't ordered the videos recommended by tummoessence yet, but i've seen him move in-person and he's pretty much the only person in the area that i would trust to teach me about refined body mechanics. seriously. we have Grandmaster Bing Yeyoung here in sacramento, and i would still prefer tummoessence with regard to my practice. the man knows his stuff in this area.

no prob. it's one of the 10 best instructional videos i own, and i own more than 100. btw, if someone can properly post the youtube link, i would be grateful.

yeah, i posted the link just above my amazon review. i'll post it again in a hyperlink: Tai Chi Connections and just for the record, i think i'm starting to develop a man-crush on sloppy zhang. it's crazy to me how aligned so many of our views and theories tend to be. EDIT: Youtube Intro

never abandon the 'natural flow' sensibility as sloppy zhang described. that's the heart and soul of my movement practices, and believe it to be the crucible of what sets me apart from other teachers who have decades more experience. it simply cannot be emphasized enough. that having been said, there is only ONE video that i would recommend. it only goes through the first 17 movements of the yang form, but the way that it's broken down & the flow of the teacher is just amazing, if you ask me. if you already know that you're naturally talented with this kind of art, then everything you need to know, and by that i mean all the tweaks & adjustments which might not be immediately intuitive, is in this video. I even ended up calling him to praise him directly for such a great video. http://www.amazon.com/Tai-Chi-Connections-YMAA-Taijiquan/dp/B000JSDMNA/ref=cm_cr_pr_pb_i my amazon review: ********************* John Loupos has to be one of the best tai chi masters in the country. seriously. read my other reviews. i don't pull punches when it comes to criticism. but this video is truly one of the best instructional DVD's out there. his explanations and corrections are better than any in-person instructor i've ever met. his movements are flawless, and yet not too rigid. he's very thorough and clear as he breaks down the first 17 movements of the yang long form. i only wish that he would make a video of the ENTIRE long form. i have no doubt that it would be the best on the market. people really need to find out about this guy. i'm a qigong instructor in california, and i'm thinking of traveling to the east coast to study with him for a while. he's that good! *******************

i'm a new arrival to the Hard Light sangha, and i'm in no way a representative of Mark, but i definitely want to weigh in on that (embarrassing excuse for an) article. more humorous than disturbing, if you ask me. but of course, you didn't ask me. --i only chose that quote because it's one of the tamer lines in the piece. too easy to pick out the really ridiculous ones. but it's amazing how the author could know Muktananda's most intimate motivations. i mean seriously. could that piece have been written in a more bitter/biased manner? just taking it at face-value, the article discredits itself, IMO. it's embarrassing with how biased an unsupported the claims & conjectures are. the whole thing. that's not to say that there isn't any controversy to be examined, but that the author has such an obvious axe to grind that they substituted libelous accusations & tactical phrasings for actual information & research. it reads like the college undergrad equivalent of "he's a bad, bad man who will eat your kids." it wouldn't matter much to me if there actually was substance behind the claims, to be honest. but i happen to be in the amoralist camp, which seems to be in the minority around here. morality is always relative, subjective, selective. it's the small mind that thinks from the base of the mountain it can evaluate the motives and perspectives of those at the top. just like it's the small mind that chases after the 'shakti fix,' as the article puts it. but the real wisdom is there, just the same. that they choose the "new, better, more amazing, spiritual energy stuff" and can't necessarily even see the sublime and subtle wisdom is the folly of the seekers. but it's perfectly fair to not trust such teachers or the lineages in which such teachers thrived. i say be afraid. be very afraid. it's a dangerous path. it truly is. unless, that is, you can resonate with that teacher's frequency of wisdom, and not just the buzz from their energy. which is a question of both maturity and cognition. i made a post about this kind of thing in the Shaktipat thread and even took the position of assuming that all the nefarious claims about Muktananda were true: let me state out-right that i don't believe all the claims to be true, but at the same time i don't even consider the controversy to be all that relevant. and please feel free to crucify me here if my stance disgusts any of you. i couldn't receive Max (kunlun) as my teacher. not even close. but Mark i can receive. very effortlessly. and Mark's lineage i can receive. so clearly that it becomes invisible all over again! but many others cannot, i'm sure. who are just getting their fix, or who gave it a shot and didn't "get" anything out of it. and who are feeble enough to be victimized by their own foolishness. they are just lucky that it's Mark that they found, and not some other, more dubious character. i walk my path as a lion, not a lamb. and the Siddha lineage suits me just fine. for whatever it's worth.

it's really not that great of an article, but i'm glad you guys can appreciate it. i wrote it over a 3-hour period, and had the teas arrived at my doorstep earlier, i would have written a MUCH better article. i actually apologized to Mikaelz when i submitted it, but the deadline didn't leave me with much elbow room. stylistic flaws aside, the information is accurate, so that's what really matters, i guess.