sean

Hi. My name is Sean. And I have an alcohol problem. Seriously though, alcohol messes up my practice big time. Mainly because I find it nearly physically impossible to just drink one or two beers. I have to push everything to the extreme, so I frequently go weeks without drinking at all but then suddenly lose a whole weekend partying it up. Which is Jing loss on a massive scale, because I believe Jing is not just lost through sperm and blood, but also through excess drinking, drug abuse, poor nutrition/sleep, and extremes of emotion.

At the end of last month, in the POE thread, I made this post here about my decision to create a Practice Handbook, and a routine inspired from Scott Sonnon's latest program. Well I asked Scott to help me design a program to accomplish some of my movement goals. Below are some examples of some of the movements/feats of strength I am interested in being able to perform: Well ... Scott ended up designing an awesome program for me. It's structured around perpetually cycling Jing (strength training), Chi (flexibility and flow), and Shen (rest and recovery) days. So now I want to pack some alchemy into this training routine. Which is where I was hoping to get some feedback from the members here. I want to stick with the Jing-Chi-Shen cycle. What I'm looking for is ideas on what practices you think would make sense to do on Jing days, which to do on Chi days, and which to do on Shen days. My brainstorm of possibilities so far looks like this: Jing: standing/rooting forms, ankle rotations, iron shirts, controlled breathwork/buteyko breathing, sungazing, more aggressive and/or detailed moving forms, dr. lin's stuff, gut, LTT and sexual work. Earth, Metal(Air). Spleen/Stomach and Lungs. Chi: most moving alchemical/meditative forms, tai chi, dance, magick, chanting, visualization, singing, heart centered work. Fire, Water. Hawww.... Chuuuu... Heart and Kidney. Shen: quiescent meditation, inner smile, spontaneous and "mindless" moving forms, hypnosis/binaural audio, mind-centered, but more importantly integrative, relaxing and releasing-centered play. Spirit (Triple Burner). Heeee.... Gestalt. Whaddy'all think? Anything to add/subtract/pointlessly make fun of? Sean.

Ahhhhh... I get it! Like Nightcrawler.

I'd love to hear you elaborate on what you mean by this. Thanks for the great tips Cameron! ... So I'm a few days into my this 3-day cycle style of training and I'm really digging it. I like the fact that a certain amount of balance is built in .. this lets me relax a lot and prevents overdoing/underdoing of the practices important to me. I'm keeping a daily log in the "Blog" section, which so far is completely boring but any interesting insights and I'll put them in my "Personal Practice Discussion" thread. Sean.

Nice one. I like this. Just FYI, Winn warns against this. Says it's very hard on your lung spirit and can actually cause real lung issues. Sean.

Finally got around to putting the Google ads back up. Please let me know how you feel about them. I would rather them not be there also. (Although sometimes useful useful things pop up on them). They do bring in a tiny little bit of money to help defray hosting costs and to also to help me rationalize the sometimes exorbitant amounts of time I spent tweaking the forum to the detriment of my time for paid freelance opportunities

Excellent point Yoda. Not sure why I did that. I guess I was thinking since sungazing is external-alchemy and feels so raw and difficult to digest, that it fit more into Jing, whereas Moongazing would be more something for a Chi day. Obviously the divisions are subjective, but I think I like yours better. And thanks a lot for your breakdown of jing/chi/shen based practices ... very helpful.

Good point GrandTrinity. Which reminds me. "Shen" based practices are ok on any day.

Very lucid feedback RedKooga. I appreciate you sharing your perspective here, which I know from talking with you is from direct experience. Now just for the sake of playing devil's advocate for a moment, because I do believe, on a practical level, this obviously an extremely useful point, but my question is ... how is this process you describe any different from initiation into even the most benevolent of families or even societies? You must learn a language, speak it according to agreed upon rules that you don't understand until you learn it. You must dress and behave and even think within certain guidelines, eat drink certain foods, avoid smoking certain plants. Thoughts? Interesting. Because one of the reasons I am most attracted to magick is that it feels like the closest thing to an actual spiritual science I've yet found. And most magickians I speak with have IMO an incredibly broad perspective on spirituality, and perhaps more importantly (for my temperament) an ability to detach themselves from literal belief that I find lacking in nearly every other manifestation of spiritual seeking. But you speak from experience with magick much deeper and much more socially connected than my own, and I take your opinion seriously. It makes me realize that Magick is no different that anything else; it too is based upon a set of beliefs. And maybe even more insidious in the long run because initiation in western ceremonial magick seems to frequently start out as a massive deconstruction of belief. The above contemplations are coming at an interesting time right now, because in the past few days I've discovered a few key beliefs I've held for probably well over a decade (if not longer) that were so powerful and yet so buried and wordless I took them for granted as The Truth. And now in this moment as a result of thinking through this post, I am realizing another one of my long-held powerful beliefs; the belief that all beliefs are at least partially wrong and (important limiting part coming) that therefore I have transcended the need for beliefs and am completely free from them. Which is really far from the truth. Because at this stage of my journey, beliefs, even strong ones, are important and necessary. I realize the value in the first part of my old belief. That "all beliefs are at least partially wrong". And I'm cool with that. But it's time to step forward now ... choose what I believe is right to believe and have the courage to be wrong ... the guts to fuck up a lot and keep learning and revising. (Sorry if this got Stuart Smalley-esque at the end. I'm having a positive thinking moment. ) Sean.

Thanks for the info Chris. I'll have to check out that book. I'm fascinated with this diagram. And like I said, I am just dumbfounded more occultists/taoists/new agers/etc. are not discussing the parallels it clearly has with the Qabalah.

Reminds me of the story in the back of "Be Here Now" by Ram Das. He travelled to India to turn on the spiritual seekers to LSD in the late 60's. He met his match one day when visiting this master who snatched a large entire batch of acid he had in his hand and swallowed it before he could be stopped. Ram Das said it was 100's of times the dosage of a normal trip (and I think most of us know how bad that'd mess you up). Anyway, he sat and meditated with Ram Das the whole evening and spoke to him completely coherently the entire time and was completely centered.

You can also order from the publisher: http://www.dagonproductions.com or from here: http://www.ravenoir.com/ Not sure if any of these will have cheaper shipping or not. Honestly the material coming out of Mantak Chia's stream is the best energetic/alchemical magick I've found. But as far as relating this approach to the spiritual/psychological approach, here are some good ones: Stealing the Fire from Heaven, Stephen Mace Initiation into Hermetics, Franz Bardon The Tao and the Tree of Life, Eric Yudelove I can lend you any of these if you are interested. Sean.

You know, I think we've all wondered that at least once.

It's cool man, I respect your honesty. I think this guy is definitely a little insane and he'd likely be the first to say so. But you have to admit, his imagery is pretty fascinating. Perhaps he has gone off the deep end a bit with the importance he estimates his work having. I've been bugging him to explain how he works with these images. Like I said, he claims to have a fairly complex way of meditating on them and that the reason he has trouble explaining it simply is that the meditations presuppose a deep familiarity with the mathematics behind the images. Sounds really interesting voice. I'll look forward to that. And thanks for the tip on the "Rave I Ching" .. I'll be sure to look into that because I still tend to look at things Qabalistically from my early studies in magick and it's helpful to see correlations between it and the Taoist system. Have you ever seen this? I've been doing research on this glyph's origin on and off for a few months now, ever since I saw it featured in an article in Tai Chi magazine. It is so unbelievably close to the structure of the Qabalah, I can't believe there is so little information on how such similiar glyphs arose in such distinct cultures. Really the only mention of a correlation I've found on the net is in a book called A Diagram of the Anthropocosmos but unfortunately (for me) it's in Russian and I don't think it's been translated into English. Sean.

I agree, I love Alex Grey's art.

I wish man. I work full time for a web design company, and also tend to juggle a few freelance projects on the side to make ends meet.

http://www.universal-tao.com/dark_room/

Are you aware of Mantak Chia's darkroom meditations Yoda?

Shit man, I'm sorry. I just noticed your post. Chat is working fine in Firefox on my end. Can you elaborate a little more on what goes wrong? Thanks, Sean.

My first spiritual experiences were in a "magickal" context so it's likely I am biased. But my opinion is that alchemy is actually a form of magick. Magick was defined by "Uncle Al" as the "the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in comformity with Will". This definition is very broad in that it can cover anything from growing tomatoes to opening your MCO. It's also very deep, for example notice the definition does not say "your will". It just says "Will" with a capital "W". Very significant in that the definition does not posit duality. Because at it's highest level it means aligning yourself with the "Supreme Will", or in other words, getting your ego out of the way so your actions become a pure expression of Reality. Something like that. [edit]Forgot to answer your second question about the book. Stephen Mace, the author, started out in a Western Ceremonial Magic framework (Thelema) and went on to work with much of the experimental magical of the 70s and 80s, including Mantak Chia's material which he respects and has apparently incorporated into his own work. This book builds some fascinating bridges between the energetic/alchemical approaches to magick and the spiritual and psychological models. If you're not familiar with these models, here is a good summary.