Maddie

Yes lots of baloney to go around for sure. The other Abrahamic traditions and non-Abrahamic traditions have it as well, but I commented on Christianity specifically because I know it better than the others, and I prefer to speak about what I know. There is a fair amount of baloney in Buddhism as well as I came to discover, but it seems less dangerous. Recognizing that people are people is true for sure, but when analyzing the actual teachings on their own merits is important to recognize what they say for themselves. The fundamental teaching of the Church and New Testament is basically "one must believe in Jesus to be saved, and if you don't you can not be saved". I realize there are more modern attempts to explain this away, but historically this has been the message. This extreme dualism has permeated a great deal of collective guilt and judgment into the culture at large, even for those that don't consider themselves to be religious. As a TCM practitioner I see and treat patients with this sort of existential guilt all day every day.

1. Understandable. I do push-ups, leg lifts, crunches, and simple Qigong movements at home. It's possible to get quite a bit out of this sort of thing. 2. Very nice. 3. Probably the best way to learn what you are is to meditate. When the water gets still you can see to the bottom of the pond.

1. To get stronger go to the gym and work out. 2. To learn more, read. 3. To figure out who you are....... that's a doozy there. Better to ask what you are. This can take life times.

I used to do this practice a lot several years ago. To try to answer your questions as best as possible... 1. The practice time would vary. Sometimes I'd go through all the sounds for a few minutes each for a total practice time of about 30-45 min. Other times I would focus on one or two chakras for maybe 20-30 minutes per chakra. 2. They way I would describe the practice would be it made what ever chakra I was working on more of that chakra. I know its kind of vague, but at the same time I think its a pretty good description of what happened, this would also include the results. **edit: I'd say it was also similar for the healing sounds for the organs as well.

My basement is literally a pain in the butt lol **edit: Very good point though. The first night the attic wakes me up, the second night the basement wakes me up.

I was so glad I found this when I googled the topic. I have just recently shifted back somewhat to Taoist practices that involve energy cultivation (LDT) from a previously almost exclusive Buddhist mind only approach. I have noticed electronics are doing haywire around me lately.

Unfortunately that one you have to pay to see, but I'm not going to demand the world teach me for free though lol

They were scary as heck! lol

Interesting you say this. If I had to pick any one organ or element that relates to wealth it would be the Lung/Large Intestine/metal element. I've noticed over the past year or so as I've been working on this topic I get these weird water filled blisters along the course of the meridian.

Hmmmm 🤔 very interesting to ponder this.....

Possilby, but what exactly do you mean?

I didn't have any dreams last night, BUT I was woken up by pain in my root chakra area which is something that happens periodically when I'm working on these and similar root chakra issues.

They looked like sisters, they had wild hair and glowing eyes. They came out of the attic and we're chasing me. No there was no basement.

Actually a few minutes after I woke up I did think about what you did lol

So I was in this dream version of an old house that I was a kid in. So I'm in the house and I get the feeling something strange is going on in the Attic. When I look at the Attic these two creepy Spirit witches are in there and they look really creepy and weird and scary and they start coming at me but I'm saying one of my mantras to keep them away but I can tell they're looking for a way to get me. So anyway this goes on for a few minutes and then I wake up and I can feel something really bad in the room with me so I do the mantra for real and then it goes away. Coincidentally my daughter said that she had a weird dream last night that involved zombies.

In my dream they were. When I woke up I still felt something bad in the room with me. It went away with the chanting.

When I first started cultivation I had no interest in this sort of thing at all, but years latter now it seems to be my main practice and what I get the most out of for what ever reason.

lol I know what feng shui is, I was wondering if you had any specific advice for what I was sharing?

I get these types of patients in TCM as well sometimes. They think I should be doing this for free for some reason.

What feng shui advice would you have for this? Or explanation?

Ok so probably the weirdest thing (and least expected) by far is the spiritual opposition I've felt from posting this. Even before I posted it I felt something or someone was very upset at the notion. Last night I was harassed by two evil spirits when I was sleeping that had the form of evil witches or something. It even woke me up and I had to ward them off with the Vajrapani mantra. Today I've felt inexplicably agitated until I again did the Vajrapani mantra which is specifically aimed at warding off evil forces. This is really weird and totally unexpected.

This is probably going to take me some time to digest, but I think this is really good!

You are probably sort of on to something. If any good has come out of this thread so far its the questions I've gotten about why I feel the way I feel about this topic. After a great deal of contemplation I have decided that the best explanation is that its simply karma. I've already had two great karma projects in my life. The first was relationship karma which after a lot of effort did change. Same goes for career karma. I began with those two because I went in the order of how much I felt each one was affecting my life. Now I'm at money. I remember when I first began to deal with the other karma at first it seemed over whelming and impossible but with persistence and time it did improve. That being said I am reasonably confident that this will be the same. It's just going to take time and consistency.

I think what does get weird is a few things. First of all the reason I posted this topic in the general discussion as opposed to the rabbit hole or on this website at all is because I wanted an "alternative" point of view on the topic of money. I am already aware of the common sense basics such as don't spend beyond your means, there is a difference between needs and wants, save money, ect., but this is a lot the feed back I got. Secondly there were a lot of assumptions made about me, with out knowing me. I was told to be generous, and grateful, yet I am. Alan Watts makes a good point that along with a lot of other aspects of Western culture there is a lot of guilt regarding money and it is assumed that money must come via suffering. The last point I'll finish with, (and this is hard to explain and still vague to me) is that I have felt an unusual level of "spiritual opposition" since I began this topic. I don't understand this and find it odd, but nevertheless I notice it.

Yes I get that. The tricky part for me is that I have been burned by so many "teachers" its hard to trust anyone now. Though I am aware that practices don't exist in a vacuum. I do think this is a common attitude for many Westerners. Meditation is the last thing listed on the eight fold path and most advanced, but many Westerners like to just skip ahead directly to it and ignore most of the rest. One thing I actually do have a lot of training in is TCM which is one of the reasons I am wanting to explore more cultivation techniques that utilize this.