Maddie

I think as several people have posted here the issue seems to be more with your gf, perhaps you should talk to her about the wisdom of contacting her cousin in meditation.

Hey Wolf I took a look at that website and if your goal is increasing sexual potency and experience then I think its a good way to go. But my real point is that I think a lot of the confusing and debate in a lot of these kinds of retention posts in TTB's stems from the fact that there are several different types of retention, sexual, and/or celibacy practices all with different goals and methods. Some systems are good on a health and performance level. Others are more purely spiritual as far as goals and methods go such as what monks do. So I think its important for one to identify their goals as far as sexual practice goes and once that is accomplished there will be less confusion as some of the various methods while fine for their own purposes are contraindicated with another method. (I sure hope that made sense and did not sound like random babble as I'm fasting again and my mind is a little spacey lol) *but yea if your goal is more potency I think this will get you want you want. ;-)

Its interesting the pattern you mentioned because that's pretty much how it plays out. It kind of goes like this... I can be sitting there minding my own business, with any desire related topics the furthest thing from my mind. Then BAM! out of the blue desire hits me and at the same time my heart starts kicking into over drive, and at this point in my life I say to myself "oh boy here we go again" and if possible try to get to the meditation cushion as fast as possible. Then once I'm sitting there usually the next thing I feel (in addition to the desire) is a great deal of irritability and all the classic symptoms of Liver qi stagnation including constriction and discomfort along the course of the Liver meridian especially in the lateral-costal and epigastric regions (classic symptoms). So yea its just like you said, first my heart freaks out and then my Liver freaks out. Its like the heart fire catches the liver wood on fire. So I meditate for a while, and observe all this with as much detachment as is possible, and gradually it dissolves. What I don't understand is the suddenness of it all, as in just BAM out of the blue, it freaks me out. As far as storing the energy in the lower dan tien, what method do you use to do that? Abdominal breath, intention, ect.. ?? Yea as far as diet goes I modified it again like I did a few days ago (when I fasted because of this). I was going to go out and get some BBQ, but with the flare up decided that probably eating in general and especially beef would not be helping my cause lol. So since my Spleen qi is a bit on the weak side, I guess I'll just fast until tomorrow morning since I have to go do hours at the clinic. Just as an aside, I had this patient today, a middle aged lady who had severe Shen disturbance, as in hadn't slept for 48 hours because she was hearing things, and on bi-polar meds and all that fun stuff. At least by the end of the treatment she seemed to have calmed down significantly, and was weeping a bit, as opposed to looking like she was on the moon. Oh the point... it seems that celibacy+meditation/cultivation= much better results from my patients :-), ... ok enough tooting my own horn lol. Joe thanks for sharing that stuff :-). I skimmed that wiki article you posted and noticed something interesting. It said that the Efferent never lead to the inner ear. Weird thing was today as I was meditating in the midst of the situation I was describing earlier for a while I kept having to unblock my ears by popping my jaw cause they kept closing up... weird.

I had some recent thoughts and observations about the issue of desire. I'm not quite sure how desire manifests itself in other people, be it physically, mentally, ect. But personally what I've noticed lately is that from time to time I have what I'll call "desire flare ups". Now I suppose there is nothing really noteworthy of this in and of itself as that is pretty much part of life and the reason we are in Samsara in the first place. The dilemma for this with a cultivator as has already been discussed extensively in TTBs is holding onto and transforming one of the most potent "fuels" for spiritual cultivation which is sexual energy. The energy can either go up to further spiritual progress or go down for the purpose of pleasure. Either way there is no judgment or right or wrong in this, just a matter of goals. In my case the goal is using this energy for fuel for spiritual progress, yet which from time to time creates the dilemma of desire flare ups. Now what I've noticed lately is where and how desire is felt when it flares up. When I was a teenager and shortly thereafter usually desire would manifest in the sex organ itself, and most commonly in the form of an erection or at the very least swelling and an increase of sensitivity and the craving for physical stimulation. What I have noticed now, and this applies for the past several years is that desire flare ups now usually don't affect the sexual organ, but I tend to feel it strongest in the chest. While sitting in meditation lately, specifically when doing mindfulness of the body and breath I've noticed I tend to feel desire manifest as pressure and constriction in my chest primarily, which then sort of radiates down and up a level to create this same sensation in my throat and solar plexus. There is a lot of constriction, tension, and I can feel my heart rate and blood pressure increase. Lately I've noticed by internal observation during mindfulness of the body and breath that not only physically do I feel my chest constrict and tense, but I feel my lungs constrict and breathing becomes more labored and my heart rate and pressure increases. Along with those physical symptoms I've noticed as this is occurring an acute experiencing of the emotions of these two organs, that being the grief/sorrow/nostalgia of the Lungs, and the over excitement/passion/impatience of the heart. Generally after about and hour and a half to two hours of sitting in meditation the intensity of these symptoms tends to subside and at last I am usually able to reach some level of emptiness. It is at this point that I feel the constriction and tension relax, the heart rate slows again, the mind quiets down, and those emotions that I previously listed calm down. I guess what surprises me about this is that in the past I had usually assumed that sexual desire was just always felt in the sexual organ primarily and what ever other sensations occurred in the body were just a result of the excitement of the sex organ being the stimulus for it. The notion of having no arousal of the sex organ at all but feeling extreme sensation in the chest area has been novel. My question is fist of all to those who are really in the know about this, as I really don't want a bunch of guesses or people who don't know what their talking about speaking a bunch of rubish. But if someone else has been through this or something similar, and/or has some real knowledge or insight as to this type of experience I'd love to further my understanding of this somewhat confusing and at times stressful event.

i'm not sure, maybe I have, but I'm still not too up to speed with the Sanskrit terminology for things yet. Also the fact that I find some concepts of Buddhism confusing is why I'm at the Buddhist forum asking questions in the first place.

I agree ^ ;-)

That's the five senses right? could you elaborate please?

What I want to know is what exactly is EGO? I know this word gets thrown around so often, but what is it from a Buddhist point of view?

Hey my question would be is this a problem for your gf? To me it sounds like if she is communicating to him through meditation then shes not too upset by all of this. If that is the case then I don't see what the problem is. Is the ghost of her cousin actually causing any problems?

Something I've wondered about for a while now is the prevalence of flood myths in just about every culture world wide. Of course there is Noah and the Ark, but it seems that just about every culture no matter where they are in the world has their own version. Heck when I was an undergrad in Alaska I learned about the Eskimo version of a world wide flood and one chosen man who saved the day. What is behind these flood legends?

That part with the numbers made me think of a couple things. First it made me think of Taoist cosmology where first there was wuji (0), then tai chi(1), then that made yin and yang (2), then the three treasures of shen, qi, and jing (3), then five elements (5), and then the ten thousand things... The second thing that made me think of is something this website I've been checking out lately "Numerologist.com" said about the earliest known writing ever was a turtle shell found in China and what was written on it apparently was numerology, basically deciphering the universe with numbers and math.

I had to stop fasting today because I had to go into the student clinic and do some hours. Prior to going in my limbs felt so heavy that I could barely life them lol. One thing of interest was that one of the other students asked me if I had been out in the sun because I looked tanner or as thought I had more color in my face, but I had not been in the sun lol. Though doing it yesterday I feel was important because I feel that it really helped to tame that desire flare up. My only real concern with fasting is my Spleen qi. It tends to be a bit on the weak side as it is, and the last time I did a fast it crashed and was only restored when I went to our clinic and got some herbs for it. When I was in the church I used to fast often and I would pass out almost every time after about 24 hours. As I mentioned in my last post the morning meditation was also pretty intense as I was still fasting. This evenings was not quite as in intense in that regard, but on the other hand it seemed that it was easier to enter and maintain emptiness than previously. I also noticed that all my patients seemed to feel very good today after their acupuncture treatments, so that was nice, it seemed to be very efficacious. *Oh btw what is Pythagorean philosophy about?

I had this happen to me yesterday as well hmmm...

So day 2 of the fasting. I woke up feeling very "fresh" and light. Then I meditated and here is what I noticed this time. The desire aspect was not as much a factor like it was yesterday, but the thoughts that did arise were more grief/nostalgia related. This and yesterdays experience has made me wonder if the organs in my middle dan tien area / upper jiao are being.. um "exorcised" or something like that. Reason I say so is the two main organs in the middle dan tien / upper jiao area are the heart and lungs. The Heart's problematic emotion being over excitement, is what I was feeling yesterday. Today it was more past grief coming up, which is a Lung thing. Anyway so there was that. Also at some point during meditation I felt a dripping on my back. I reach back and feel and my back is just dripping with sweat, weird. Not sure why. I also felt a lot of buzzing/tingling in the back and front of my head and here and there all over. The last thing I noticed was again just some more insight into ego stuff.

This morning during meditation I switched up the mudras a few times depending on what I felt I needed, be it concentration, patience, to energize a bit ect... it helped a lot

I wonder how and where Atlantis fits into this?

Many people don't realize this but Tom Cruise is a Mo Pai master ....

Yea I'm not sure how long I'll fast, I guess I'll just try to listen to my body. But at the moment we have a week break between semesters so if I was to ever do it I suppose now would be the time, though I do have to make up some clinic hours so if it interferes with that too much .... I'll just see how it goes. Yea I am drinking water, but I have not been fasting all that long. Yea I can see how lots of meditation would be essential during such a process. I plan on doing quite of bit of that with my free time during the break. Otherwise the celibacy would either make me nuts or end, its as though I feel compelled to meditate when my body lets me know there is another build up of sexual energy. A few other things I feel are. 1. Loopy, dizzy, and kind of dazed and out of it. 2. A lot of heat, especially in my face. 3. Pressure, mainly in my upper body. 4. And sort of wired but in a out of it, calm kind of way if that makes sense.

Haha I'm fasting today due to the intensity of it all! :-). It was as though during meditation that something told me to. Also a few things I forgot to mention is that during meditation and even still now I keep seeing these white orbs of light floating around for a split second out of the corner of my eye, and then when I look at them they vanish, its a bit odd. At the moment I feel a bit loopy, and have a slight headache (which I almost never get). Though the desire aspect has diminished greatly. There was one point during meditation when the thoughts coming up shifted for a few minuets from ones of desire to realization of how much more ego motivated I was than I had realized, and that was right before the point when things began to settle down. It's nice to know there is someone out there who has been there done that so they know what your talking about, cause pointers and insight on a day like this are better than gold lol. :-P * the whole Garden of Eden topic seemed very relevant today. ** One more question. As this energy ascension/transformation takes place is it typical to have desire intensify like that? Is that what makes the practice of cultivation difficult at times?

Speaking of which, today's meditation was very intense and exactly in this regard. So as I had mentioned earlier for the most part lately desire has not been particularly much of an issue as I've been cultivating emptiness through mindfulness meditation. Well as far as today goes, I suppose it was something along these lines. So today desire was in full swing and intense. In order to try and deal with it as it was intense and therefore uncomfortable I sat for quite a while in meditation (half-lotus). So at the beginning I was focusing on the breath but the stream and intensity of thoughts coming up was strong, intense, deep, and persistent. It was just one after another, or one that lingered for an extended period of time. So I did my best to simply observe with detached objectivity. I just kept noting them as they came up. Well while all this is going on I also note that first I feel a lot of pressure in my head, all over. Then that lets up a bit and now I notice the sensation of pressure and buzzing in my throat and center of chest. At this point my heart is beating hard and I can feel it buzzing. Then that subsides and I feel it in my solar plexus. Then I feel it in my sacral and then finally sacral and root area in the perineum. At this point the loudness, number and intensity of desirous thoughts diminished significantly and then at about the same time I felt a lot of sensation in the back of my head and neck, like a lot of movement, buzzing, and tingling. It was at this point where my timer went off at about an hour and twenty minuets and I felt much calmer. I'm not sure about what happened as far as the finer details go, but I assume the emptiness was doing something with in me, or at least it certainly felt that way. It was rather intense and a bit confusing.

Is a meditation like Buddhist mindfulness practiced in Taoism as well? I ask because the only Taoist meditations I know of are not this type.

Makes me thing of the Genesis story of the Bible where man was basically put above nature and told to rule it, and then due to eating of the tree of knowledge feel from grace.

So interesting. Ok so that raises a few more questions. First of all what exactly is Pythagorean philosophy. To be honest my only real reference to Pythagoras is from brief references in math classes about his theorem. Beyond that I don't really know what he was about (though I have noticed Bill Bhrodi making a few passing references to him on his site). Also you mentioned that Taoism being older than the other solar/patriarchal religions that you listed is lunar/matriarchal based. Since I've read that Taoism has its roots in Shamanism would this indicate that Shamanism is also matriarchal? Or is that basically what the Bushmen were? I remember Chia in his book about semen retention (which I'm glad I don't do it his way anymore) has mentioned that a lot of what men, and society these days does is deep down due to a male fear of the feminine, because on a deep level they realize that in the end yin overcomes yang, or something to that effect. My ex-gf amongst other things spent some time as an anthropologist. She pretty much said the exact same thing as you in reference to agriculture when I asked her when and why things became the way they are now. I'm still kind of confused about this, but she said it had something to do with agriculture leading to cities and some how that led to male dominated society. I'm still trying to sort all of this out and make sense of it.

I realize this is probably a difficult question to answer, and at best might be speculation, but in your opinion what caused things to change?

Yea that's pretty much how it seems to play out as I'm doing it. I sit there and thoughts just keep coming one after the other. Sometimes the thoughts are more mental so I am aware of my mind. Other times the thoughts make me feel particular sensations in my body, so I just note that for a while until it goes away. Ect, ect...