johndoe2012

Apparently the Sufis have the discipline of "Tazkiyya" to purify the shadow sides of the ego. http://www.mysticsaint.info/2010/05/blemishes-impurities-shadows-of-self.html I also find prostration to work pretty well in managing the ugly parts from taking control.

Baseball does not have heaven-earth integration so eventually will deplete your energy while eg gentle circle walking, tai chi etc will enhance. I think taomeow talks a bit about this in her posts.

Entities are quite real and should be flushed since they are sucking on your life force, read the stories at Jenny Lamb's webpage. Unfortunately the parts of the mind that attract such entities are normally unconscious so it is difficult to get rid of the attraction part. I guess the unconscious part is the non-virtuous part of us so chanting, energy work, stopping ignorance at the root level all help to clear up this. Shielding your energy body is also recommended, especially if you meditate in your bed.

Find something you resonate with. What Buddha or Lao Tzu did is purely speculation.

I haven't had that issue you face. My sittings are normally quite peaceful and are getting deeper. Sometimes I have a sitting where I get restless. I think it is quite normal, also happens when just following the breath. The 70% percent rule is probably a good idea to follow. The nervous system needs time to adapt. This has even happened during ZZ so I don't think it is what I'm doing. I'm not an angry guy either, at all actually. so it is not related to SM but is your body-mind-spirit response to the practise. Angriness is quite normal to purge.

cool, good info.

I heard a nice quote the other day: "Brain likes drama, the body likes movement.". Anyway, regarding Jenny and Yi Gong, I think she said somewhere on her webpage that Yi Gong will disappear with her as the last teacher of the lineage.

John, Could you expand on the difference between SM and Yi Gong? How is Yi Gong developing awareness? I thought it was mainly a "blockage remover"?

Karma = cause and effect. Example: he got into healing because of karma from past lives. Your example sounds like he got killed by sick Qi, not related to cause and effect. I guess that's one of the reasons some of the Taoist sects incorporated karma because Qi + karma are a more complete model of reality.

Twinner, Could you provide some sources on that? I know there are different schools in Buddhism, I think the easiest way to categorize them is whether "people return to the world" as an act of compassion (Mahayana) or "ascend and then don't return" (Theravada). Where you get the idea of the Taoist idea of compassion I would to know; I have never heard about that before. IMHO suffering is a concept from Buddhism and is said to end with Buddhist enlightenment.

It depends on context. What Ya Mu and C T are referring to are two different things in my opinion. First is [seemingly] sick qi causing the pain. Second is suffering caused by the ego - aversion to the pain. Both approaches are useful. First can lead to obsession with elimination of pain if one is unbalanced in one's own cultivation. Second can lead to coping strategies, might lead to transformation. It lead me to where I am today. Other times it seems kind of defeatist. Finding a balance is not easy My father suffers from multiple sclerosis. He has learned to cope with it. Would the quality of life be better if got cured? Yes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-intensity_interval_training I think generally you would want to have a good technique before doing high intensity interval training to avoid injury. You can do it with push-ups, pull-ups etc.

Moshe Feldenkrais in Body and Mature behaviour says more or less that because humans have a complex nervous system we are therefore complex - and that the world naturally becomes as we are. So simplicity and the idea that we should remove money either is a faulty idea or an idea that comes from the big Self where no desires exist.

http://earlyretirementextreme.com/ OK advice from that site, although his investment strategy is not revealed. I already follow that line of living although my savings rate is not 75% unfortunately

My suggestion is, take one of Ya Mu's workshop, start healing a few ailments. Then go to one person with a linear mind, maybe a scientist. Say you can heal other people with your powers. Most likely you'll be answered by a face "Are you f*cking kidding me?" I think if you approach this stuff like you do with science you end up with the same thing. People need to transform themselves, remove barriers and so on. You have already had scientific research from China pointing out the possibilities of healing with qi. And even if you told people "there are absolutely scientific studies of this" they would go on with their lives. I even had a discussion on the nature of the universe with some of my colleagues who had many years of study of natural science (physics, chemistry and so on) and it was only one out of maybe 10 who had an open mind to what we perceive may be not what is really going on. So a grand scale of introducing this stuff by governmental force is not likely. Better to act now and help others where you can.

My experience is that there is no placebo effect in medical qigong - that is the person self-heals - apparently. As humbleone says, it is difficult to fool a child. That it is more like a mechanical process - qi is sent from here to there, sick qi is pulled and so on. My questioning - not apparent from my post - is more like, even though we can see what is going on, the effect and so on, does not mean that there are no "behind the scenes" things going on. So a more contemplative nature of enquiry as in "just because I can see time moving on my watch and it feels like time is absolutely real" then it is fact so. My own experience with western medicine in daily life is that is quite limited. Very "let's just try this" from a apparent diagnosis and many times it fails and with bad side effects. The good thing about medical qigong is that there are no side effects other than good ones.

The placebo effect is interesting and could be investigated if it were really that easy. Maybe the placebo effect is just another effect of the "law" of attraction, that is collapsing the quantum mechanical equations of reality in real time. I wonder how people can dismiss the real reason behind the healing as in "so what" when this is a forum where reality is being investigated? If we stop asking questions then we quickly enter religious territory and suddenly find beliefs stuck inside our head without any valid reasoning behind. If we say so what, then we can just use the current system, you know aspirin cures headaches, so who cares?

I stand corrected. Thanks for the links, guys.

What is your source for this? Quoting Kenneth Folk - a person I would consider "enlightened". from http://dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/discussion/-/message_boards/message/97419 However, "enlightened" people know how to skilfully handle anger.

When I read what Daniel Ingram at dharmaoverground.org and Kenneth Folk at kennethfolkdharma.com write I sense a lot of compassion even for the Buddhist newbie. So maybe if you are still interested in Buddhism, head over there. Or if you are interested in the direct approach to the HeartMind then I think healing others (Ya Mu's stuff) is the most direct, since there is no "conceptual" mind involved.

People speak past each other and mix things things up because the self is very complex. Ken Wilber from "Spectrum of Consciousness": So both a daily practise of meditation and seeing a therapist might be a good idea. People talking about letting go are probably talking about a different stage of development. It seems to me that you are in contact with two aspects of the self: the higher self who wants to do meditation and transcend and the lower self where the "ugly" aspects of yourself resides. Integrating these is IMHO a project of a lifetime.

I guess there are cultural traits and then individual ones. And then different aspects of the individual such as the focused adult and the playful inner child. Suppressing the individual tendencies like they do in Asia is a bad idea. Authoritarianism, no thank you! Of course you need to have a main practise that you can develop some foundation in from which you can reach "the higher levels". In order to know why you dabble you need to be able to listen to your inner being and get a clear understanding on what is going on. This process in itself takes some time in my experience. Personally I have had different main practises and some minor ones over the years. I agree with dawei So it is kind of breaking down the wall of appearances that the different practises are really different.

Could you recommend books and websites that have techniques in awareness training? I'm not looking for noting techniques, they don't seem to work for me. Maybe more like "things to look for" and so, especially when I'm suddenly lost doing something and have become unaware. Is Dzogchen something to study in this regard? There were some books mentioned in the book thread.

Good stuff on the shadow found here on Ken Wilber's blog http://www.kenwilber.com/blog/show/51 The PDF "Integrating the shadow" can be found here http://files.meetup.com/91120/Integrating%20the%20Shadow%20-%20by%20Ken%20Wilber.pdf since the link is down on the blog. Basically the technique is to not say what you dislike about yourself, but dislike, despise, hate in others. Those are your projections from your shadow which you can then integrate in your being and thus can access a bigger part of yourself.