Maddie

What do you mean by that?

I thought that was a pretty darn good answer to this question. I'll go back to the 5 Skandhas again. (form, sensation, conception, volition, and consciousness). First something happens. Lets say a clown comes up to you at your cousins Bar mitzvah and kicks you in the shin. The clown and your shin are form. You see the clown with your eyes and feel your shin. This is sensation. The visual signal your eyes pick up is recognized as a clown due to previous experience with clowns. The sensation of getting kicked in your shin is recognized as pain. This is conception You then associate the clown that you saw with the pain that you feel. Now you realize the clown caused your pain. The pain feels bad, and since you recognize the clown as inducing the pain your assign the clown the distinction of being "evil". This is volition. Finally you are aware of this process and its outcome with in your mind. This is consciousness So it would be at the level of Volition that we assign the clown the judgment of being "evil". But this is still a matter of perception. Perhaps the clown saw a black widow spider on your socks and was trying to protect you. What you then just labeled as evil, the clown labeled as good or helpful. Thus one act, and two completely different judgments about what type of act it was.

Why do you think the ego likes notoriety? Why does it dislike the lack there of?

Whether they are cooperating I have no idea, BUT assuming they are I'd assume they could learn our language if they could figure out how to get here lol. Dophins are native to earth.

Yea considering the vast number of stars and star systems it seems harder NOT believe in aliens lol.

Haha that's great and appropriate. So I just woke up this morning and was looking around my room, and was thinking to myself "oh I like my room, its nice, why haven't I paid more attention to it before" lol. I agree being non-judgmental is the key. Actually I think that being non-judgmental both helped get me to this point, (welcoming what ever arises during meditation) and is helping me get through the disorientation now (just because I don't have it all figured out, its still ok).

Has anyone ever felt "weirded out" by success in meditation? I mean I've been meditating so much lately to change habitual patterns in my mind, and to try and work out karma, and it just dawned on me that its working and I felt so lost haha. I guess we can just get so used to our patterns going round and round and round for so very very long that we just think "that's how life just is", and then you finally do something to change it like study the dharma and meditate and then one day it hits you that your in a totally new place in your life and in your mind and its very disorienting. Has anyone else faced this?

So in a nutshell are you saying that Vipassana helps you to understand and apply the eight fold path, while Samatha can give you samadhi and powers?

The Zhi: Our Will. http://www.fivespirits.com/zhi.php http://yang-sheng.com/?p=35 The Zhi lives in our Kidneys and is related to the water element. It's emotion is fear, its virtues are wisdom and gentleness.Its function is to house our will and willpower. The kidneys also have the unique and important function of storing our pre-natal jing (essence) and are also capable of storing a large amount of qi, so much in fact that there is a saying in TCM that "the kidneys are always deficient". The kidneys also rule over the bones, and the bone "marrow". The concept of marrow is important in TCM in that it differs significantly from the concept of marrow in western medicine. Marrow in TCM not only includes what we commonly think of as bone marrow but also the spinal cord and brain. This is why we often see in old people who's kidney pre-natal jing is low that their kidneys are not able to nourish the marrow sufficiently anymore and thus become forgetful. The brain falls under the domain of the kidneys in TCM, Various aspects of brain function fall under all the various organs, but the physical substance of the brain itself is under the kidney's domain, as well as parasympathetic fight or flight reactions or anything else that involves the Adrenal glands, as they are classified as part of the kidney's in TCM. This also explains the kidney's relation to the emotion of fear. The lack of willpower is related to the kidney's as well. If you know what needs to be done, know how to do it, but lack the motivation (especially between the hours of 3pm-7pm) this indicates a kidney deficiency. Lack willpower? work on your kidneys. Stressed out because your never sure what next disaster life is going to bring your way (fight or flight)? work on your kidneys. Want to be more calm and gentle in life? work on your kidneys. Forgetful, or have a hard time remembering stuff? work on your kidneys. Want a pizza? call the pizza place lol, just seeing if your paying attention lol.

Hey I'm curious, so there are monks who practice excessively Samatha or Vipassana? What are the different effects on these monks who practice one type of meditation exclusively?

Makes a lot of sense actually. In my own case and it seems in the case of others who post on here about increased attractiveness arising from cultivation the common theme is that we do the jing-qi-shen converstion type practices. What I notice just about every time I meditate is that I feel a lot of energy moving into my upper dan tien area. The upper dan tien is the abode of shen. It's also after meditation and feeling a lot of energy movement in my head that I seem to notice the most dramatic instances of the attraction situations that I've been talking about lately. Also all the models of Taoism that I've studied say that for qi to convert to shen first the middle dan tien has to be full of qi. So this would suggest that if there is shen conversion taking place then there would be a significant amount of qi in the middle dan tien/heart area as well. From a more psychological point of view, I've found that cultivating shen allows insight into the ego. When one has made progress with their ego and thus feel more comfortable with themselves then naturally the people around them are able to pick up on this, and someone who is pretty comfortable with themselves is usually pretty comfortable for other people to be around as well. On the other hand its usually the people with the weak ego that act awkward and thus make other people feel uncomfortable with them. Oh yea lets not forget jing haha. When you cultivate jing it heals, strengthens, and nourishes your physical body. All those women at the party last night thought I was at least 10 years younger than I am haha, so I'm sure that does not hurt the cause either

how does one determine that?

That's a good question and one that I have been pondering as well. I know that I really enjoy listening to Ajahn Braham talk and its not just the content (which is excellent) but also just listing to him in and of itself is very nice too. He definitely has an appeal and a draw to him that makes him very likable IMO. The Dali Lama is also very well liked. Listening to Chunyi Lin also feels very good. I've noticed many of the talks by monks and nuns that I listen to online have a wonderful feel to them. It does seem to be uncanny the radical change in the way people relate to me as I continue to meditate. *last night's adventure did make me really see the wisdom in the precepts that monks have which in the past I thought were the kind of "kill joy" rules I had escaped from when I left the church lol.

What if I raise another question, is there evil in the world? As to how matter or form is experienced by consciousness it is through the 6 senses of sight, hearing, taste, smell, touch, and thought. Matter or form if the first of the 5 Skandhas and therefore the first delusion that we must see through clearly to progress to the next Skandha (which is sensation). If we identify ourselves as being our body then that is the delusion of form, thus the first barrier to the ego understanding itself.

So basically keep up the meditation and things keep happening. Last night was the first social gathering I'd been to for a while, and first one since my kundalini experience last week as well. So some students had a backyard party with lights in the trees and such and that was very pretty. But you know when something gets so over the top it freaks you out? lol. Well (I'm trying to think of how to put this) ... no matter where I went I found myself surrounded by females, and they were all talking to me eagerly and touching me when they talked a lot, and then as the night went on and they had had more to drink lol, they all started telling me how they loved me and I was the greatest and it was starting to get embarrassing and surreal, and they kept wanting to hug me over and over and one picked up her guitar and in front of the entire party dedicated a few songs to me and I got beet red and just wanted to turn invisible lol. But it was so weird. I mean I remember in the past when I actually wanted to meet a girl at a get together like that and tried I was invisible and now that I don't want to find a girl they everywhere... life can be so ironic haha. So having a bit of a sense of humor I decided to mess with them and told them about how I'd really been enjoying listening to Ajahn Brahm and how it made me want to become a monk, and then they all gasped and were like "noooooo!!!!" haha that was funny. But anyways you know when something is just so over the top its no longer fun or flattering but freaky? lol

This is something I have pondered as well. It seems that one of the major differences between Buddhist and Taoist cultivation is that Buddhism places most if not all its emphasis on cultivating the mind and the body is seen has having very little importance. Taoists on the other hand cultivate both body and mind. Brodi said that master Nan reached enlightenment so quickly at an early age that he had to spend several more years then cultivating his body. The mind in his case outpaced the body. Part of the explanation for the Buddhist outlook on the body, or lack of outlook on it is that the first of the five Skandha's is form. Form being one of the Skandha's is seen as a hindrance to enlightenment. This is precisely the problem that Bodhi Dharma ran into when you first came to Shaolin. The monks were sickly and in poor health, and his effort to find a solution to this was to come up with the qigong and kungfu that has made Shaolin so famous. This is also the primary reason that while my primary focus is Buddhism I continue to do certain Taoist practices. Meditation is a lot easier when your body is healthy lol. Buddhists do want to help people but their take on it is more along the lines of teaching them the dharma so that they can escape Samsara and thus no longer suffer. Alex Anatole the Russian Taoist master made a good point in his book "The Truth of Tao" when he said that if your weak and sickly this is going to be a distraction to meditation, while if your in good health and have no trouble sitting still for long periods of time then meditation will come much easier to you. (I paraphrase).

How was it that you got the feeling of the various parts of the inside of your brain in the first place. The only one time I can remember where I actually felt my brain was that instance a few weeks ago when I felt sensation radiate from my heart up the left side of my neck and into my head and then eventually inside to my brain, but even then while I was able to feel the left side of my brain I was unable to distinguish the various parts of it. How did you get to that point. As I was saying since I can't distinguish my pineal gland I could not tell you what was going on with that, but there have been times when I felt a lot of buzzing in my lower dan tien and it was at these times that I would also get a lot of that buttocks display behavior from females in public places as well. I was in the book store once a few years ago and I'm sitting there checking out some books and I notice my lower dan tien buzzing big time. During the time I was sitting there at least three females just happened to come at various times to the same section of book shelf which was right in front of my face and stop there to "check out books" while sticking their ass in my face. By the third female the buzzing had dissipated and then no more females did that lol. So how is it that you got to the point where you were able to feel your brain with enough sensitivity to distinguish the various parts of it?

Though its not Hun nor Po, I thought this article about the Yi would be interesting nevertheless. http://www.fivespirits.com/yi.php The Yi is our intellect and intention, and our earth element and resides in our Spleen. It's emotion is worry and over thinking. It's virtue is fairness, trust and openness. It's function is to apply the thoughts of our heart and the will of our kidneys into the real world. It takes a feeling, a desire, a want, a notion, and forms it into a mental/intellectual concept that can then be applied to the physical or conceptual world. Worry therefore arises when the Spleen gets stuck and can not preform this function and instead keeps going round and round trying to form a desire into a mental construct but is unable to do so. Difficulty in concentration can also arise if the Spleen is busy working on one mental task when we are trying to focus on another. Hesitation can arise when the Spleen has formed a mental construct but is having difficulty figuring out how to apply it to the real world.

I'm not sure how one "flexes" the pineal gland? but I'd like to know how. Since I don't know how to do that, a few years ago I had another trick that I don't use anymore because I realized it was manipulation. So a few years ago after my divorce I went dating crazy. Having done energy healing through my hands I did know how to project qi that way. So what I'd do on a date is if it got to a "make out session" but if the girl still seemed reluctant to go "all the way" I'd place my hand on her sacrum. Then I'd super charge her sacral chakra with qi. Then all of a sudden she'd suddenly be in the mood haha. Then (as I was still doing Chia's method at this time, which is probably why I was so sex crazy in the first place) I'd do the power lock and big draw and circulate my yang qi through her MCO and that would give her orgasms in each chakra as it passed through them, and then draw in her yin jing on run it through my MCO which would also feel very good for me. The draw back to this method though was the next day I would feel a lot of her emotional issues and have do deal with them. But anyways how do you flex the pineal gland?

I'm curious. I assume that now you are focusing more on storing the energy in your dan tien. In doing so do you find that females notice the energy less now? I ask because as you know a few weeks ago I was having more of the kinds of problems you were mentioning about the display behavior. Then you suggested storing the energy in the dan tien. Since that time I've noticed that while the issues has not totally gone away, it does seem to have lessened. Of course that could also be that this past week my kundalini was exorcising all sorts of emotional blockages which was very unpleasant, and I am pretty sure it was having this effect on all who got near me (which is why I mostly holed up in my apartment this week like a hermit lol). I went to the nature trail earlier this week when kundalini was still in full force, and I stopped at the cliff wall where some rock climbers were climbing to watch with a few other people. Well as soon as I show up the other spectators all start looking "fidgety" lol and uncomfortable and leave after about a min.

Actually its very interesting being at her bf house and watching the interactions between him, her, and his friends. More often than naught their latest gossip conversations that they have every single time they get together get very boring for me very quickly. So we are all sitting around his living room, and they are all talking about pointless crap, and I just start meditating haha. Anyways after a few min of meditation I become sensitive to the qi interactions going on in the room. I feel her bf's friends lusting after her, and being jealous of him for having her haha. I'll feel her ego wanting a boost and then a second later she'll make some sort of comment to get an emotional reaction out of her bf, and when he reacts on que he releases some qi and she absorbs it and feels pretty good from the experience. Of course she has no idea that shes trying to milk some more qi out of him, so does not understand why the reactions she gets out of him makes her feel good. lol Then its like his ego feels the qi loss and wants it back, so he'll say or do something to get a reaction out of her, and then you get a reverse exchange, and back and forth and back and forth it goes. Its kind of like ping pong haha. Then one of her bf's jealous friends will tease him and that will get a rise out of both of them and now he gets the qi, and it goes on and on and on.

This is the aspect that I notice in class as well. I might choose a table that is relatively isolated and class starts and the professor is talking and I'm taking notes and no big deal. Then like 30 min into the class I start to feel my qi being drained and I'm like "?". So I turn around and a female classmate had just come into class late. I noticed the qi first, her being there second. It's more noticeable if I'd done a lot of meditation before class.

Haha that made me laugh (the Tarzan part) lol. Well she was draining my qi, but it sort of made me realize where that legend about how a "vampire can not enter your house unless you invite them in" came from. She took the qi, but only after she subconsciously affected me in such a way as to sort of want to donate it lol. I think that's why in the past week I'd gotten better at not allowing her to drain my qi, cause I told myself I wasn't going to fall for it haha.

Very much agreed, as this common theme has been very much a part of my realizations this week as I see into this ego thing more deeply. Today I feel very good, so I hope that I'm through the worse of this thing. I helped a classmate move yesterday and I'm wonderng if the heavy physical labor helped to burn off some of the excess?

How unusual lol