UTI

Cool, it will be fun to see where it develops and see when more vids are put up. Those weren't too interesting in themselves, apart from the "he lives!" effect.

Food's a big deal, and I'm constantly loking into mine. I have a hard time being inspired though, especially when it comes to raw foods and stuff that I really have no experience with. Got any good cookbook on your shelf that outlines a healthy diet, and has recipes?

What is your experience (if you have any) concerning arctic root/ginseng to raise jing production? I use Arctic root daily for my cultivation, and am contemplating switching to trying ginseng. But, good ginseng is hard to get by, and I hear it may also lead to increased production of estrogen. Arctic root is easier to get by, acts quicker, and it doesn't have to grow for 25 years on a mountaintop... Ginseng however is more traditional, and as I've understood it (I may very well be wrong) it promotes the conversion of jing to qi. Any ideas?

Can you say more, why are they not suitable for taking?

Thanks for the reply! I honestly don't know where I picked up that jing to qi thing either. I use Arctic root as a part of a formula, not just alone, and I have it as a cycle of three weeks on, one off. Maybe I should have mentioned it... I also eat gojis and liquorice root (or drink it as tea), and take gotu kola, noni and birch ash. How I use them varies a lot, but I eat more goji when I am too fiery, use the liquorice when I get stagnant, drink noni 1 in 3 months for detoxish purposes, birch ash and gotu kola daily for balancing body/mind. So what I want is something that doesn't cause too much heat, and increases jing->qi->shen. From your descriptions, though, it sounds like arctic root is a good choice. You say that it is limited to choose between those two, what other alternatives are there? The only others I know of that may be used in the context are perhaps ashwagandha and schizandra. I started using arctic root mostly because it was real hyped here in sweden 5-6 years ago, and thus easy to find and relatively cheap. I am definately open to better alternatives though, since I pretty much piece it together myself from gut feeling.

Personally I don't have the courage to round up the means and go on a seeking trip for a master, since this would involve 4 other people who have their own lives to live. I do my best on my own, I live according to taoist ideals, practice twice a day, follow a special diet, take herbs, and try to contemplate emptiness and tao as much of my waking time as possible. My taiji teacher is a layman of longmen taoism, and I'm just on the verge of feeling I can ask him more about it, and maybe get introduced to the practices. But I've only practiced under him for 6 months, and he's quite traditional-minded when it comes to this stuff. But on your journey, didn't you ever have obstacles, forks in the road where you later had to backtrack, hardships that had to be overcome to find a way to dedicate life to a taoist ideal?I feel it's quite easy to fall into the simple rewards of theoretical discussions, mudslinging, and the desire for knowledge without actual gain. I haven't read your books, but I have heard much about them. If I wasn't already on a longterm plan for my practices I would get it and start working with it, but reading it now would only disrupt my resolve, which is fragile enough as it is. However, thank you for making taoist practices more readily available to westerners!

Yes, it is very simple, but the way he shows it in the book I don't think it will do too much to your taiji proficiency... I'll know more after I talk to my teacher tomorrow.

I read the book, but didn't like it too much. can't pinpoint why, I think I just don't really like SAO. My taiji teacher is teaching me the taiji qigong sequence, i'm going to ask him to comment on the sequence in the book (especially the original illustrations), since he teaches it differently (stance and stuff is different).

If you have firefox there's an add-on called "parapera-kun". It will translate words with one or several characters, as well as idiomatic expressions, from chinese to english when you hold the cursor over them. It is slowly opening up a whole new world to me, which i previously felt unable to traverse

That's right, thanks for correcting me

Hey, I'm just now starting month four of that YiJinJing. The prescription for the herbs is in an appendix in the back, in chinese if i recall correctly. You can probably ask for it at a TCM clinic. The easiest way to not "damage your junk" (I assume you refer to your dick) is to not have any sexual activity at all. Or so they say. I'm not so clever, I continue to have sex, but without ejaculation, which most people will tell you does more damage than good... Also, I don't use the herbs he writes about, I use gotu kola, arcting root and goji berries. If you're going to use the prescribed herbs, it could also be a good idea to go to frequent checkups at the same clinic, and have them know what you're up to. They can probably help you keep balanced. It's easy to get waaaay too yang with this stuff, and you will notice when that happens. It's good, because it's such a concrete guide to practice. Just remember to be disciplined about it, it really shows if you miss a day of practice, or if you ejaculate. You need to harness and build the jing well, or you wont feel the qi build up in the tissue/dantian. At least that's what I've got from the first three months, still a long way to go. I've just started feeling the qi build in the dantien, which is a really interesting feeling methinks. Tell me if you start, it would be really nice to have a correspondence with someone else doing the same practice, most people are probably scared away due to the demanding practice schedule.

I'll check him out, thanks!

Sorry, that was said in a humorous manner. One of the effects is that the muslce fibres are successively lengthened, making the muscle tougher and more showy when contracted. When relaxed, however, it is a bit more round, soft, and big than before. Since I wont go around contracting my stomach every time I'm not wearing a shirt, your thought is correct.

My source for the YiJinJing training is the book "Qigong; the secret of youth" by Yang Jwing-Ming. It is based on a couple of old pamphlets, commentaries and texts, and differs from the vids etc one can find of YiJinJing which consist of a qigong form. Striking the body comes after a while, to make the qi penetrate the fascia beneath and around the muscle tissue. I am studying to become a TCM doctor, so my main goals are perfect health and an ability to treat patients with that "little extra" in the needling. However, my main drive mentally is to experience reality truly, through emptiness and communication without the senses. I've experienced it a lot of times, but it is never balanced. I figure I need to "return" myself to a state, physically, mentally, and energetically, that I was when I was born to achieve that.

Hadn't read that thread about mo-pai before (yes, had a period of obsession a while back), was amusing seeing something new about it until it derailed into a poop-slinging contest. Strange how discussions about that stuff always does. Should be a preetty obvious sign to take a step back, really, when something only attracts insults and secrecy. I wonder what subconscious door it is that makes it so attractive... is it the stories of star-wars-like powers, or the whole "you can't have it" thing? Or that people keep popping up saying "I'm level this, I'm level that", like cultivation is some sort of RPG? I could mess myself up all over thinking about this stuff... Back into emptiness, away from the madness.

I gave a four, under the assumption that I would be interested in the content and teacher available to me.

I have made myself the same idea, except twice a day with no say of how long, just as long as I feel like that time. Also, I already started, 3 weeks ago. Nevertheless I am in, all in the spirit of keeping up. Don't particularly have a style, just looking for the emptiness.

Never liked castenada, tried the psychotropic enlightenment for a while, but found it's just a front for sensory attachment, quite like eating full-grain cookies and watching Michael Moore movies. In a lucid state it's all up to you how you want to percieve the message, you just gotta let go and communicate with it. I believe all information comes through the subconscious, just like water passes through the bottom of a well before reaching the surface. Doesn't matter where it comes from, but it needs an entrypoint, and the ego-states likely sort that shit away like last weeks's underwear. You're right, though, it's pointless argumenting which is what. On a tangent, recent dream-related research is implicating that the use of dreams is to attach emotion and emphasis to knowledge, since we seemingly don't gain any such attachment to what we learn while we are awake. Dreams then repeat what we've learned during the day in a symbolical manner, often exaggerating the incident, and create an emotional inclination for the set of knowledge aqcuired. Don't remember the name of the researcher/project, but it seemed like interesting stuff.

Happens to me too, in the half-dreaming state. I got rid of the "reading difficulties" by focusing all my lucid dreaming, which would otherwise be spent flying, on reading books. To me it's only a matter of "letting go" and allowing the information to seep through. The book is just a form, an illusion, it's really just subconscious knowledge trying to break through, so if you stop focusing on the form and just let it in you'll soon be able to read it. That is, if your mind works like mine. Another method would be to give the information another form, eg. a familiar person, and have a discussion with it. As a side note, my mom would see pages written in hebrew every time she closed her eyes, a new page every time she blinked. It made it very hard to fall asleep, she said.

I was sitting reading through the introduction of "clear light of bliss", and stumbled upon an experience they described, where the winds enter the ten doors and accumulate at the top of the head, creating a drop of white, pure bliss which then falls down the central channel, and creates a state of natural emptiness. It was somewhat familiar to me, so I dug through a box of meditation journals, and found the following exerpts; This experience was the culmen of a meditation I did twice a day for around two months. At the point this is written, the meditation would put me in a state like that described in the beginning of the entry for around two hours -Calm, fullness, and seeing everything as surrounded by light, and as see-through as glass. The meditation I was doing consisted of visualizing a bright golden sphere appearing before me, and then breathing it in through a number of specific points on the body, into cavities, bones, or organs. I'm not sure why I started doing this, I think it was mostly inspirational. Anyways, I suddenly recalled the bliss/emptiness, because I've started doing emptiness meditation again. Around the described experience I stopped doing meditation, not sure why. I think it sort of faltered because I wasn't able to recreate that culmen of the "drops", I became too focused around the experience and had to stop doing it, perhaps hoping I would pick it up again in the future. Which I probably will, now that I need the emptiness again (three kids and a two room apartment means I need to fill the store-house with all the harmony I got). I can probably get better results this time, since I wont be doing it on the 50-minute subway ride to work. Btw, totally awkward to become all jerky and blissfull on the subway at 9pm) I'm posting it here because I figured there are lots of exciting individuals, and I was hoping someone could relate to my experience, maybe even know a system that points out the next step, or a way to conclude the experience. I've read about it in several places, mostly in relation to yoga or kalacakra tantra, but never anything telling what the use is (like natural emptiness and bliss has no use in it's own), or the next step. peace p.s. I can give fuller instructions for the meditation if anyone is interested, just can't be bothered to look up all the points right now.

As an epilogue; I started practicing this meditation again. At first once every couple of days, because it gave me such a hellish headache, then I stopped, because it caused me to have sex dreams every night (which eventually became tedious and bothersome). Now, however, I do it in combination with taking goji and gotu kola + meditating on emptiness twice a day, and the experience is purely beneficial. Way back when I first did it I was in a state of very hightened yin, which is why the raising effect on yang this meditation has didn't effect me as grossly. I am a far more balanced guy now, thence the herbs (for balancing yang and raising yin). The boddhicitta experience hasn't returned, but I can now actually sit down in full lotus, without pain, and go into emptiness to a much higher degree than before, which is enough reason for me to keep doing it! I am fairly certain that, if I keep practicing it every day, and continue to balance out the yang with yin and subliminating it into the mco and lower abdomen through circulation and emptiness meditation, I will keep having benefits from it. Also, I realized I have a book about Kalacakra tantra, which explains boddhicitta very thuroughly, from a restricted library... I can't recall fully how this book landed in my hands, but I'll just send a thank-you to manjusri and keep enjoying it

the kidney stores the primordial qi (true water/fire) and Jing, and is the root of the body's qi. Without healthy kidneys, no growth. Also, without good kidneys no refining the kan and li of the body, nor storing of the jing, both quite essential factors in cultivation. I'm just in the upstart of my education, so I don't know much about that diagnosis, but it could be a number of things depending on other symptoms. A TCM doctor will likely check your tongue, pulse, generally look you over to see what kind of person you are. Social anxiety could be any number of yin/yang deficiency/excess. It's good to go to a tcm doctor though, here in Sweden the psychological aspect is completely overlooked, people have just barely accepted that tcm is a good way of treating disease, but don't really consider psychological problems a "disease" in the same way -so they don't often look for a cure. Seriously, the "this is just the way it is" attitude is really belated. And very Swedish.

Thanks for the explanations, it sounds very familiar to me, I just haven't put names on it.

Thank you Trunk, that was very informative! I hadn't made the connection between that and "turning the light around". It gave me some ideas for how I may continue, once I reattain the level of practice I was at when I left off. I just need to navigate a bit through knowledge about winds, drops, and channels in the tantric tradition, and I'm sure I can complement my work! Btw, do you have any good book/website to recommend for somesuch? What quality is that? I am very interested in knowing more. Also, what neidan/alchemy practice do you follow? Does it have a name? Interesting that you relate the sphere to the golden pill. What I try to visualize is basically a pure, intelligent, universal energy which vibrates at a completely harmonious and altruistic light. Is the idea of "shen" the universal energy that erases the boundary of micro- and macrocosm? I have never really grasped the idea of shen... but I had the idea of the golden elixir pill in mind when I did the meditation the first time.