Maddie

Good question. The primary reason drugs make one feel good is because they initiate a very large and unnatural release of jing from the kidneys. So yes this has the same effect as too frequent ejaculation. This is also why hard drug users age faster... loss of jing. In regards to addiction it is a tricky cycle. The Kidneys house the Zhi or the will. So the more one weakens the Kidney Zhi the more one weakens the will, while at the same time developing attachment to the pleasure of the unnaturally large jing release. So yes very much related to the kidneys. This is one of the main approaches I use to treat someone that has addictions with acupuncture and herbs for this very reason.

I was recently watching a talk by a monk on youtube and he had read a lot about St. John of the Cross and he had mentioned that a lot of the stages he described going through were the same as developmental stages in other meditative traditions. Like I think the stations of the cross as he explained were various achievements energetically.

I am not but that sounds very interesting.

This might seem like a funny post for someone who has been on this forum for so long, but I wonder, what exactly is the Taoist religion? When I initially started my spiritual path I began with Qigong. I liked the health benefits, and sense of peace it brought and most of all that it was not a religion. A few years prior I had left evangelical Christianity and was rather burned out on the notion of religion in general and was certainly not eager to join another one. That being the case the secular nature of Qigong suited me just fine. As time came to pass though some of the more philosophical aspects of the Taoism from which Qigong draws from like Tao, Yin and Yang, Wu Wei, began to raise questions with in me. I began to want answers but found finding anything definitive was very difficult. I found the well defined question and answer system of Buddhism to be very satisfying but still find myself wondering how someone "practices Taoism"? I realize there are different schools of Taoism and different methods of practicing, but not sure what the basics of being a Taoist and practicing Taoism are? Especially as a religion.

Icons are interesting as if you look closely they tell a lot of the oral history and tradition that you won't find in the texts alone. I find the frequent halos interesting on icons of the saints as one commonly reported effect of having the crown chakra opened is a halo.

As far as I know there is only one, and I think he was before the church split into east and west.

Yes good point. Lao Tzu didn't invent the Tao, he just was one of the first the describe it.

Yes St. Nicolas was a saint known for generosity.

I suppose that is a good topic to consider.

Obviously can't say for sure, but the very first thing I thought of when I read this was it was from a past life.

I've always assumed that part was just a legend. Kind of like how after the Buddha was born he walked around and spoke. I think things like this are just literary devices to make a mythological point.

I don't know enough about that to say one way or the other. I do think how ever that a lot things considered "Taoist" are actually just Chinese like yin and yang, there was a whole school of yin and yang that was not Taoist. I-Ching pre-dates Taoism as well. Same with five elements.

I don't think Feng Shui is strictly Taoist, I think its just more of a Chinese thing.

So basically what I noticed is in the West generally seems to mean doing Qigong, reading the DDJ, and things like this. In Asia its more about going to a temple and doing rituals that involve gods and chanting. Again I realize this is general and there are exceptions, but on a broad scale this has been my observation.

So would you say the thing the separates Qigong from calisthenics or just swinging one's limbs around is intention?

Has anyone found that some of the simple arms swinging movements that are meant to only be a warm-up before Qigong seem to be a nice Qigong routine in and of themselves?

Well being pragmatic about these issues I would say start with the heart sutra simply because it's shorter and therefore it would be easier to memorize.

Yes I think if someone is going to make a claim then they have to give a logical reason to support that claim. This kind of stuff reminds me of the people I went to Acupuncture school with which is a very interesting crowd but we would have parties on the weekends around campfires and they would just say stuff like I am you and you are me and I am everything and nothing in the cosmic consciousness of the cosmos moves through me and I threw it, and afterwards everyone would say how cool that was while I be sitting there thinking okay what did they actually just say? LOL

So to revive this thread what I wonder is is doing Qigong and reading the Tao te Ching what Taoism is as thought in the West. Because I've noticed in Asia they have a very different view of what Taoism is.

Yes just like water can be ice, liquid, and gas. Jing is the most dense. It is not sexual energy, but it is where sexual energy mainly comes from. Jing is where everything substantive comes from. Sexual fluids, blood, other body fluids, marrow, ect. There are many ways to deplete Jing. Excessive drug uses, excessive lack of sleep, excessive stress, and yes excessive sexual activity. The key common word is excessive. Jing also relates to DNA, but of course in the past in ancient China they didn't know what DNA was per-se but they knew the underlying function and principle of genetics. It's also for this reason that jing relates to producing the cells that pass on our DNA.

I can't think of any logical basis.

This might sound like a dumb question since everyone has emotions, but what are they really? As an acupuncturist, I get people all day every day asking me to help them with this or that emotion like stress, anger, anxiety, depression, so on and so on. Yet when you ask various people how they experience these various emotions the descriptions vary greatly. Actually, when I ask a lot of people how they experience their various emotions they don't even know how to answer the question as though they have never thought about it before. For some people, they describe it as unwanted thoughts or a busy mind. Other people describe it as physical tension or discomfort in a part of the body. I've noticed not infrequently someone comes in for back pain or something like that and after I needle them they start crying or getting very emotional as the acupuncture dislodges somatized emotional energy that was stuck in the body. But what are emotions really? I'm sure there will be as many opinions on this as there are people that respond.

I apologize in advance if this is something that you have already thought about and/or tried, but if you can not observe thoughts without getting entangled in them then what about backing up to what you can do and perhaps try observing your frustration with your perceived lack of success observing the thoughts themselves? What I'm trying to say is don't observe the thoughts, observe the feelings of failing to observe your thoughts.

Isn't it though! 😉