Sahaj Nath

i fear that i have already done this. because i can't get myself to practice the kunlun method. i see the messengers as the fruit of the message, and i don't see enlightenment, i don't feel enlightenment, and i don't trust all the messages. mantra is the yard stick of SIX YEARS of practice with these techniques. if this is any indication of what i stand to gain, i think i'm doing better on my own.

i'm glad you wrote that, trunk. this is probably more tactful than my temperament would have allowed. i think this is pretty much right-on. it just doesn't cut it for me (or a lot of others) when the intellectual depth is being compensated for by sensationalism and fluff. then it comes across to we folk who 'think too much' as deceitful when there are also statements like: "we are taught that if phenomena occur to just ignore them and not become attached in any way. They are just side effects." --i personally think this statement contradicts the vast majority of what you say around here. i might have turned out to be one of your strongest supporters if not for this discrepancy. it frustrates me because i honestly want to be supportive. but i cannot and WILL NOT accept contradictions and dubious claims supported by sketchy analysis and poetics. to dismiss me and people like me as scared or egotistical or otherwise 'unfit' because of our brains is just not genuine. it's a dodge. many of us have been on our path for years. we know how to let go. we also know how to think. "in the old days you would have just been given the practice and then left alone to figure it out for yourself." this just doesn't mean anything. this doesn't somehow turn everything you share, however questionable, into a precious gem. i imagine that since this technique was a guarded secret in the 'old days,' then the people who were left alone to figure it out were not likely novices, but well-seasoned cultivators. there are many martial and cultivation systems from kunlun-shan that predate this technique. Wild Goose Qigong just happens to be one of my favorites. and it's 1800 years old. 72 levels. i digress. authenticity trumps esoteric knowledge & senationalism. and... um.... you do police from time to time. you certainly did it to me.

you can pick one up at the local drug store. they're actually very common. women buy them far more regularly than men do. i almost paid $80 to have a professional do it because i was so uncomfortable with the idea. as far as impacting my meditation... i wouldn't even know where to begin. Lin Sifu could probably do a better job of explaining that one. what i can say is that by day 10 my energy body felt pretty liberated and expansive. i took to watching the movements of some of my students with my eyes closed. it was easier to move the energy around in their bodies from 7 feet away seated in half-lotus on a cushion, than it was to touch them or to project from just above their skin. i hardly wasted a single breath during that fast. every breath was both cleansing and nourishing. by day 17 my body just felt like a cumbersome formality. on juice days i mostly drank juice from the store, but it was still pretty fresh. apple hill is only 40 or so miles from sacramento, and there are no additives or preservatives in the juice that comes from there. apple-pomegranate juice is pretty amazing. during the last 4 days of the fast i had odwalla superfood. also, i would get fresh wheat grass juice from my next-door neighbor who grows it. one of my students lent me his juicer, but i never used it. feces from a decade ago remains lodged and packed into our intestines. most people's bodies are in a continuous state of mild poisoning because of this. it's surprising how powerful the body's natural healing ability is when not being sapped by the intestines. i read an article earlier this year about a reporter who went on a 5-day cleanse in thailand. fasting, fiber-rich juices, and enemas. one of the guys in the group said that on the 3rd or 4th day his bowels passed a marble he had swallowed when he was a child! it's insane the amount of *shit* our bodies can hold on to.

PLEASE tell me there's a punch-line at the end of this comment which you somehow failed to post! lol! look at office cubicle dwellers? i don't want to belong to that crowd, either. so guess what? I DON'T WORK IN A DAMN CUBICLE! anxiety, fear, and stress in the form of paperwork and office memos, in the context of a sedentary work environment IS death to the kidneys. AND the liver. AND the spleen. And the lungs. And the heart. And the intestines. and 5 sodas, 3 lattes, and a raspberry scone for the day's nutrient intake certainly doesn't help matters. so... water is just like soda ...and just like coffee... yeah, i can see that.

LoL! i think i like you already! welcome!

LoL! well, of course you do! it's the forbidden fruit that no one (not even myself) is divulging. not because it's a powerful secret, but because no good will come from it, as far as i'm concerned. if you're gonna go the Max route, then the kunlun practice is the one that matters. red phoenix is almost like the technique for people who don't have a lot of time for cultivation, but still want to enjoy some shitty side-effects.

my longest fast just this year. 25 days of water, juice, and tea. just water some days. just water and green tea most days. but on days when i had to go to work, i had some juice to help keep up my stamina. very cleansing, sort of like the cycle the body can be thrown into after a powerful transmission. after the second day the stomach doesn't even growl anymore. but if you're gonna go with just water, the cleanse can get pretty heavy. flu-like symptoms, headaches, eye soreness. really nasty breath and a filminess on the tongue. aches and pains where you didn't even know anything was wrong. there can be a few cycles of this. if it ever feels too severe, just throw some juice into the mix and that should help calm down some of the symptoms. once you get through the heavy cleanse days, your body can just buzz with energy. old scars may start to disappear and serious conditions can begin to reverse themselves. a lot of people do deep fasting for the healing benefit. if you're gonna cleanse, i think you should go ahead and cleanse out BOTH ENDS. i was really, really reluctant to use an enema, but once i got over myself, i was glad i did. 5 days isn't very long, so i don't think you have too many precautions to worry about. it would be good to read up on smooth and safe fasting, though.

yeah, gotta hand that one to you: that was pretty nice.

DAMNIT! i just can't keep my mouth shut on this one. there is NOTHING non-dual about magnetism. and there is NOTHING NON-QI about magnetism, either. the experiences contradict the theory all over the place. the theory should be abandoned. the heat, the electrical sensations, even mild kundalini experiences are being had very consistently by people practicing the kunlun method. magnetism is not a new experience for seasoned cultivators; it is the counterpart to electricity and cannot be separated. and BOTH are energy. BOTH are expressions of life force. BOTH are QI. non-duality is in the awareness, NOT in the substantive quality of the energy. to even TALK of the energy as some "thing" as to be separate from any other thing is -BY DEFINITION- dual. it's not the practice that i find irksome. i think a lot of people may get some good out of it. it's the dogma.

hey rain, i'm not sure what you're referencing with respect to the rites in egypt & greece to induce ego-death. the western esoteric tradition derived their practices from egypt, as did greece. the golden dawn, the hermetic brotherhood of luxor, the ordo templi orientis, and... i'll just say "others" (almost all hermetic traditions) go through the rites of first venturing into the deepest, basest levels of the psyche to secure allegiance at all levels for the performance of the Great Work. it's after that allegiance is secured that the worker then proceeds to *temporarily* sacrifice the ego without inner conflict. 'profound spiritual experience' was a bad choice of phrase on my part. but i think i already answered your other questions. perhaps you don't agree with my view (i'm not in total agreement with my view either), but i did express what can happen when one experiences extreme non-dual consciousness. and i'm not at all referring to a drug trip. it's something i experienced in isolation on the island of kauai. it can be devastatingly expansive, and without a solid ego structure to act as an effective ground and operate somewhat mechanically while the rest of you is blown into the great big everything, it could generate significant psychotic episodes. i would think that spirituality is a natural ability that could be further cultivated in everyone given the right circumstances timed right. --i think "timed right" is the point i'm trying to drive home here. i think children lack the psychological maturity to "suffer through" the metamorphosis and still manage to function appropriately in school or social activities. i think children tend to be more keen at listening to their bodies, but not as capable at metering or mitigating their response. i don't think i'm correct about this, actually. i just think it's a matter worth exploring. i think socialization can give us appropriate controls so as not to be completely dominated by 'monkey mind'. i think children are more expressly xin than yi, but i could could merely be judging them that way. i think yi is only cultivated effectively through discipline that requires a certain amount of maturity. and i think that premature radical experiences can impede that maturation process. this probably sounds more convoluted than i intend, but i'm in a bit of a rush at the moment. i'll revisit this later.

i wouldn't have seen my current inner conflict in this light without your words, Sifu. it's really so much simpler than i allow it to be most of the time. thank you. *bows*

lol!

shot out? i don't know what you're alluding to.

geeze, and i was going to bet on you making it for the month! xuesheng, very well-said, my friend. it was a little daunting reading it without paragraph breaks, though. many people will just move right past a big block like that. paragraph breaks serve a very functional purpose.

you could have gone to a library or copied a recipe from a book in a bookstore by now. i don't know; this reply of yours irritates me. i don't know about anyone else, but i'm not looking to do your homework for you, especially if the wealth of references that was just shared with you just sounds like "too much work."

not sure what you mean. please elaborate.

i'm really glad you wrote this. it's a perspective that i don't consider often enough. so thank you.

i think you're on to some good stuff here, oliver. but i think your perspective is WAY too rigid! particularly that last paragraph of yours. power-hungry people don't tend to be very good at surrender. and it's not at all uncommon for the spontaneous, cathartic expressions of the body to induce miraculous healings, both physically and psychologically. i don't know how far along you are in your practice, but the vast majority of the highest forms are formless and involve surrender and allowing the body to do as it will. water can be turbulent in places where there is resistance. i like your perspective; i just think it could benefit from being tempered with more openness. for whatever that's worth.

these types of discussions are always cumbersome because our different experiences have led us to different interpretations of concepts. we use a word, and we can each mean something different that, at best, all point in the same general direction. it's in the details where points of contention so often arise. debate and discussion are inherently egoic in principle. ego is perhaps even more of an illusive term than many others that get debated around here, which is part of the appeal of having a thread devoted to it. ego isn't a fixed object that we can objectively examine, yet it exists as an experiential fact for all (generally) functioning human beings. the sense of 'me-ness' is a good definition, i think. Lin Sifu, i think your interpretations are over-limiting, isolating ego structure to only a few low-grade expressions of mind. ego IS a view. a perspective. i say that view and perspective are necessary to function on this plain. it's like a sort of virtual hardware we use to effectively interface with our cultural operating system. (wow! that was REAL geeky!) the ego is what carries out the mission to chop wood and carry water, before AND after enlightenment. the self-identified ego is perhaps developmentally retarded, but a well developed ego can take care of the human suit and function appropriately in human affairs, even as earth-shattering transformations are taking place internally. your very vows, Sifu, are commitments of the ego to fulfill it's spiritual mandate. the spirit doesn't need vows. 'we' do. i hope you don't take offense to that statement; and whether you ultimately agree or not, i hope you consider it. the practice of high magick in the western esoteric tradition is largely a process of taming the ego. the magician evokes legions of demons from all of the infernal realms and binds them to a specific charge. the magician then has the demons swear allegiance to them in exchange for being properly honored and sharing in the bounty of divine union. this aspect of the western magickal formula was designed to embrace even the basest levels of the psyche, and to bring ALL levels in harmony for the performance of the Great Work. it is still widely practiced and misunderstood as evil or "black" magick. when we make the ego into an enemy, we're creating yet more conflict and hindering our evolutionary potential.

you first!

hey sean, welcome! i will very likely be your nemesis in this forum, which might be fun! there are many doorways to the infinite; this is true. in fact, i'd say that there are infinite doorways. because we're already there. i think implicit in such a concept as many doorways is the notion that "meticulous details" are unnecessary. but i'm always open to reconsidering what i think i know. one of the reasons i'm here is to engage other ways of knowing. i look forward to reading your views.

not claiming expertise or anything, but i have a couple of thoughts: it's not a sexualizing energy or anything. kundalini is probably a different matter, but my feeling about the energy cultivated through the kunlun method is that kids would be naturals, and that's probably a good thing. that's part of the challenge for us, isn't it? to get back to our natural, child-like state. BUT, then there's the issue with having a "liberated," out-of-control child who doesn't have a mature enough ego structure to function in balance with their spiritual aspect. i think a healthy ego structure is important, and any really powerful spiritual practice could potentially hinder the development of important socializing mechanisms in the psyche. still spiritually good, but maybe developmentally risky for a child, from a socialization perspective.

i know, right? WYG, have you seen the trailer? http://www.lamathunderbolt.com/index.htm

scholar warrior, by ming-dao, deng. there are food & herbal recipies for cultivation. not too shabby. worth checking out, i think.