Neophyte

I fully agree with this. My body is more deeply relaxed and pleasant now than before I learned qigong. My moment-to-moment qigong practice is incredibly deep and varied: every moment I'm watching my thoughts and controlling what I think about, paying attention to, etc. My qigong work, though, is mostly unconsious. I regulate my body, breathing and mind. There's an old maxim: "The real regulating happens only when you don't need to consciously regulate." This is true, and I've reached the stage of "the real regulating without regulating." I'm doing everything unconsciously. I am constantly performing either Buddhist or Daoist Breathing, and I always keep my tongue on either the hard or soft palette (usually the soft), and it's all totally natural and unconscious. I also often focus my attention on my upper dan tian and keep my attention there, even while I'm doing things throughout the day. My breaths are long, slow, thin, and silent. I also practice "letting go." This part still requires some of my attention. I immerse myself in whatever I am doing, I make myself forget, and abandon my worries, plans, hopes and all of my emotions. I concentrate on what is going on around me. I listen to everything; I see everything; I piece everything in my environment together. I become engrossed in my activities, even those I find to be boring. I am constantly cultivating my mind. Becoming more in tune with my surroundings actually greatly enhances my ability to calm my mind and to reach the fringes of the void, when I sit to meditate.

For now, I'm still going to pursue this path, until someone can redirect me to something better. You said that it doesn't look at all related to the traditional practice, so where can I go to actually find a traditional practice that will instruct me in how to achieve immortality? If TY isn't a traditional practice, then where did it come from? Do you think it has any value at all? If I practice it, will I be able to achieve the light of vitality in Chapter 6? If an erect penis at tsu does not manifest yuan jing, then what does? Does the erection at tsu do anything at all, because everything in TY is based on that! It's okay if you can't answer my questions, but If you can, or if anyone else can help answer my questions, I'd be very happy.

The total amount of energy in the Universe is ZERO! There is no energy according to modern physics: When you add up all of the positive energy with the negative energy (the gravitational field) in the universe, they exactly equal each other. Thus, there is no need to hypothesize where the energy came from initially and where it will go ultimately. Please watch the lecture A Universe from Nothing, by Dr. Lawrence Krauss. Here he is being interviewed about how the Universe came from Nothing.

I wish that were true, but I can't say for sure that it is true. I don't think that their names are already written in the ranks of the immortals. I think that it means that achieving this state is the hardest part, and that once it is achieved, and the practicer can enter this state easily, then progressing from that point will be easy, and immortality will likely be gained. But I might be wrong. Personally, I am getting closer every day to achieving jinzuo/dazuo. When I sit in meditation, I can block out more and more and reach deeper states, than I ever could before. Soon, I think that I will be easily able to reach the void easily and be able to maintain that state. What Vitalii quoted fills me with hope and joy, because I want my name to be in the ranks of the Immortals.

I'm glad to see you guys are interested in Finnish music. Finland is actually one of the "Three Capitals" of music. The vast, vast majority of music in the world comes from Norway, Sweden and Finland (the Three Capitals). Finnish music is unbelievably good, no matter the genre. Here is a video from possibly the best-selling and highest-grossing band to ever come out of Finland, having sold Platinum and Gold all over the world; in other words, they are one of the best bands to ever grace this beautiful earth. This song I posted is so uplifting and powerful that I've actually heard about people crying the first time they heard this song--because they were so much moved by the grandeur and genius of this song. Please watch the whole performance, and don't skip through any of it, just watch the beauty unfold; you'll be blown away. edit: I just wanted to add a comment written by someone on Youtube that I just noticed under this video: Comment by Berra Ersoy: "This song and its lyrics cannot belong with this world, it certainly comes from another heaven. Such a masterpiece is too much for this world, i think."

opendao: This might be technically true; however, Taoist Yoga says that one must persist in dazuo while condensing spirit into its cavity. After long training, when one has restored the generative force, in this absolute silence and stillness of dazuo, the positive principle will manifest, causing the penis to erect: This is yang manifesting. It is after this point, if one continues to practice neidan properly and successfully (as described in TY), that one can slowly restore the body to yang, while reducing yin! So while what you warned about may be true, it is necessary to pass through this stage in order to nurture the positive principle to manifest. It is like taking one step back in order to take two steps forward.

Yes. The practices in TY are extremely simple, yet extremely deep (by which I mean difficult). The text seems to be arcane and esoteric, but once you completely understand what it says, you'll realize that the first seven chapters are very thoroughly explained. What one must practice is incredibly deep, but the meditations/exercises themselves are inherently simple (not complex). Carefully reading TY does in fact explain everything you'll need to know to fulfill the first seven chapters. And even if I were to only achieve the first seven steps (in this lifetime anyway, haha), I would have achieved producing the light of vitality. This light first appears in chapter 6, and is stabilized in chapter 7.

Hearing that is very dismaying for me to hear! because Taoist Yoga has basically been my "Bible" and framework for everything I've been practicing for the last few years. I really want to fulfill the sixteen steps of TY but now you're telling me that there are many mistakes; so is there a text that is parallel to Taoist Yoga which I can use?? (I also practice qigong, but qigong of course does not provide me the ability to achieve my neidan goals). I have been practicing qigong for several years and I've now calmed my mind and body to the point where I'm ready to undertake practicing Taoist Yoga chapter one. I was planning on sitting down at tsu to fix spirit in it's original cavity (Chapter 1 of TY) and to practice the "swallowing saliva" exercise to restore my generative force (as described in TY). So what are my options if I should just abandon TY? I was really looking forward to beginning Chapter 1! Seeing what you just wrote is now perplexing me further, but it disagrees with what I had "learned", which is that: prenatal = yang = positive = original. This is contrary to everything that I've heard. Even here on Tao bums, fellow bums talk about shen degrading into chi, which degrades into jing. The purpose of neidan, is to reverse the flow: Jing is transmuted into chi, which is transmuted into shen. ________ Neophyte, on 06 Nov 2013 - 14:09, said: The first step in Nei Dan is to produce positive jing. When this is full, one is to cleanse and purify it in the mco, then sublimate it into positive chi. When positive chi is full, one is to cleanse and purify it in the mco (inner copulation). The inner copulation also sublimates positive chi into positive shen. Is what I just wrote correct? Then opendao replied: If that is just the basic schema, where do I go to fully understand everything? Because I want to fully know the process and all the details so that I can implement it.

At the beginning of my practice, I started with Nine Palaces System. It is a lineage from the White Cloud Monastery in northern China. I used Qi Gong for Total Wellness by Dr. Baolin Wu as an introduction to this lineage. As others recommended, I also recommend The Root of Chinese Qigong by Dr. Yang, Jwing-Ming. It provides a good foundation and overview (not a specific lineage, though. It also discusses the most fundamental and important concepts you will ever need to know, whatever lineage you practice: The Five Regulations. One must have a mastery of these five regulations before you can safely and successfully advance very far. After studying and learning The Root of Chinese Qigong, you can move onto the next book in Dr. Yang's series: Embryonic Breathing.

So when I begin to practice Taoist Yoga (Luk) seriously, should I give up my qigong practices? Or should I do them concurrently? This is something that confuses me: Is Post-Heaven Jing semen? What then is Pre-Heaven Jing? According to Taoist Yoga, sexual release converts primordial (positive) chi into jing. (Is it negative or positive jing?) It also converts positive jing into negative jing which is ejaculated. So does positive shen (pre-heaven, primordial) get converted into positive chi? Or negative shen? Or does it not change at all? The first step in Nei Dan is to produce positive jing. When this is full, one is to cleanse and purify it in the mco, then sublimate it into positive chi. When positive chi is full, one is to cleanse and purify it in the mco (inner copulation). The inner copulation also sublimates positive chi into positive shen. Is what I just wrote correct? If you can clarify this for me, please do. But if you can't, that's okay. I'm hoping that somebody can help clarify this for me, though.

For fascinating anecdotes of children remembering past lives, read the book, "Return from Heaven" by Carol Bowman. She is an expert on children's past life memories, she performs hypnotic regression and life-between-lives hypnotic regression. I read the book several years ago, and it's immensely interesting. The book only covers anecdotes she's collected of young children who spontaneously recall their past lives. (Nothing about hypnotic regression, etc.) The book goes into far more detail about the children than the snippets of information that is posted at the top of this thread, so they are more convincing and give context. (But I must note that the brief anecdotes in the OP were nevertheless very interesting and intriguing.)

Okay, here is a song from the same band that sounds MUCH more like folk, than that other song. It is sung by the two female band members and is all acoustic--so it doesn't really sound like metal at all. It also features the antiquated instrument called a hurdy-gurdy, and the lyrics are all in the ancient language of Gaulish. If you didn't like the first song I posted, you may really like this one:

Haha, you're the first to point it out! It is indeed metal. I intentionally left out the word "metal" from my description because that word would deter many people from listening to it, and I'm trying to promote it. So simply calling it folk music would draw more people in. However, it is NOT death metal. It's actually a genre of metal called "Folk metal", so it is indeed folk music, but also metal. The band I showed is Eluveitie; they are probably the biggest Folk Metal band in the world right now. They use some really old instruments, such as the hurdy-gurdy, and they have one album in which all of the lyrics in ancient Gaulic (not Gaelic), which is the language of the ancient Gauls; and is a language that's been dead for almost 2000 years. There is much in their music that is "folk", in fact, much more than in folk music of other genres. But it certainly cannot be considered death metal, which is very different.

I become a tree in my daily practice. I sit in a forested area near my house and empty my mind of all thoughts, letting go of everything in my life. As my mind fades, I'm watching the nature around me. Sitting on the bare earth gives me communion with the earth. I peacefully watch the breeze playing with the branches and tall grasses, I listen to the symphony of nature surrounding me. After a blissful while, my mind becomes quieter and quieter and I slowly cut off my senses of sight and hearing. Being in contact with the earth fills my body with chi. As I sit in half-lotus, my body feels infused with a tranquil energy. It feels like I'm sitting inside a blissful "ball" of energy. This is not an energy that makes me hyper--but an energy that quiets my body and mind into stillness. I become, in a sense, like a tree. As I sit there, I have no more purpose than a tree does. While I'm meditating there, I've given up everything that makes me me. Or perhaps I'm more like a log. As Taoist Yoga says, "After sitting, the body should be senseless like a log and the heart (mind) unstirred like cold ashes." And I'm getting pretty good at it.

I've noticed that many posters to this thread are interested in folk music. This is a folk band that I've been listening to for years. In fact, they are considered to be the best folk band of all time. They are from Switzerland. Here is a great song by them. Please listen to the whole thing. It's an excellent song! I promise that you'll like it. I've listened to this song ad nauseam. I never get tired of it and I want other people to hear it so that they can also enjoy this beautiful music.

Voting for a "third party" is never a wasted vote; voting for a party that will definitely not be elected in the present election is never a wasted vote: in fact, they are probably the most valuable votes. Those smaller parties would have a chance of getting voted into office if it weren't for the common fallacy of Strategic Voting. I personally do "reverse" strategic voting, haha: I intentionally vote for a party that really has no chance (presently) of being elected, even though the party I most identify with is a top contender and has an excellent chance. This latter party doesn't need my vote: they'll be elected--or narrowly miss being elected--without my vote. I choose to help build up the ranks of the smaller parties. One vote for a major party is mostly worthless, but a single vote for a smaller party is worth MANY votes: The more people vote for them, the more we build up their ranks and eventually, they will become major contenders. So please, if you don't like a major party, then vote for a smaller party--any of them--your vote will be worth more than a vote for the status quo.

Yep, daily meditation is required to take advantage of the neuroplasticity of the brain. It's extremely difficult at first, but no matter how difficult it is, you must continue sitting. When I first started meditating, I would sit at different times to meditate and I felt the same way: as if I wanted to do ANYTHING other than meditate. It would take over an hour before the feeling of resistance would dissipate completely. It was brutal. Over time, I also noticed that the MOST productive times to meditate are when I had the most mental resistance! Meditation practiced when there is little or no mental resistance is useless. It's like weight training: the more difficult it is, the faster the progress.

I'm not referring to the normal function of swallowing saliva. I'm referring to the technique of swallowing saliva, which is an exercise to restore the generative force. In fact, it's known as the FASTEST way to restore one's generative force. It is described in Taoist Yoga and also by Yang, Jwing-Ming in 8 Pieces of Brocade. To very briefly describe it: You should sit in a posture described as "forming as circuit of the eight psychic channels." After deeply relaxing and counting breaths, keep tongue at heavenly pool (soft palate). Done properly, the mouth fills suddenly with saliva; your mouth is so full it almost bursts out. You then imagine swallowing the energy from the saliva down jen mo into lower tan t'ien. Then swallow the saliva with a loud gulp down to tan t'ien. You are to then practice six or seven breaths of embryonic breathing, before swallowing a mouthful of saliva again. According to Taoist Yoga, swallowing saliva should be done in the positive half of the day which begins at tsu and ends 11:00 AM. But it says, more specifically, to swallow it after midnight. In books by Yang,Jwing-Ming, it also says to do at after midnight. There is a fellow taobum who told me that true midnight changes according to sunrise and sunset. He showed me how to calculate it. According to his instructions, I calculated true midnight to fall at 2:36 AM. tonight. This is how he described calculating midnight: "Example Sunrise 8AM. Sundown8PM = 12hours. Rest= 12hours 12 hours / 2 = 6 . Midnight is at 6. So 8PM + 6 = 14 hours or 12 + 2hours = 2 A.M 2.A.M is real Midnight arcording to the day. <- Real absolute max of Yin Time based on the Sun."

Okay, so I calculated true midnight to be 2:36 A.M. (because sunrise today was at 7:51 a.m and sunset will occur at 6:41 pm.) So, the hour of tsu begins at 1:36 a.m? So, I should start meditating around 1:36 A.M., and then wait until after 2:36 A.M. before I practice the swallowing saliva technique? And this is Daylight Saving Time, so does that change anything? I'm not just asking ChiDragon, but anyone who can clear this up for me.

I hope that someone can answer this: I know that true midnight needs to be calculated: it does not coincide with Western-clock time of 12:00 am. But for simplicity, let's say that true midnight is exactly 12 am. According to qigong literature, the hour of tsu begins at 11:00 pm and lasts about two hours. Taoist Yoga says to begin meditating at hour of tsu. TY and other literature says to swallow saliva after MIDNIGHT. My question is: What is midnight? Is it at the beginning of hour of tsu, or halfway through?

Here are a couple of my favourite youtube channels: This gothic woman gives a window into Goth culture (of which I am not a part, but which piques my curiousity). Russia Today is a great news channel: The David Pakman show always provides strong information on current events, and is a lot of fun to watch: Transgender transition (timeline) videos I often watch.

Here is a Swedish metal band named Arch Enemy. They have a female vocalist named Angela Gossow. She's very talented, as is the band. They've been one of my favourite bands since about the year 2000. Here is a video by the ALL-Female band "Sacralis" from Germany. I uploaded the entire album to youtube, and giving you a taste of the title-track "Infera Destino." It's REALLY good. If you like it, check out the rest of the album from my channel; and rate, and leave comments haha.

If you don't mind my asking, do you happen to know what the symptoms are, when this happens?

What did you try to do with it when you had filled it? According to my understanding of TY, once it's filled, you begin "boiling" it by cultivating nature and life by looking into and concentrating on lower tan tien. This sublimates jing into vilatity, and eventually the mco will begin on its own. I know it's difficult to achieve in modern times, but I nevertheless still want to complete the book haha. I just have be accept the fact that it may not happen, but it's one of my life goals anyway. I think it's difficult, but I wouldn't say "next to impossible." I wonder if it's something that's almost guaranteed to happen for us, if we've built up the karma that opens it up to us. Some taobums on here say that it's karma that leads us to the right books and enables our progress. I didn't think that it was about "visualizations" because I didn't see any mention of visualizations in the book. But the book is always talking about achieving a state of absolute void (without a single stirring thought). It says that the void that is relative is empty and void that is absolute in not empty. I took this to mean that we must achieve an absolute void without a single stirring thought; it is within this state that we practice the mco, etc. and eventually results in the light of vitality (the void that is not empty). If the void is relative (some stirring of thoughts), then the void will always be empty (no light of vitality will ever be achieved in our practice). He said that you can never even think about sex, but from what I derived from my study of TY, I think that it's only after you create the spiritual embryo that it is absolutely necessary never to ejaculate--because you'll literally ejaculate the spiritual embryo! and all of your practice leading up to that will have been in vain! It's okay to occasionally ejaculate until one reaches chapters 8 or 9 (I think) when the embryo is created. However, sex will DEFINITELY slow down one's progress and it will take a very long time to achieve anything, but if it does happen, it doesn't mean that ALL progress is gone. An ejaculation will convert positive jing into negative jing and flush it out of the body, along with some positive vitality; plus you'll have to wait at least three or four days before you can continue your practice. I used to practice chapter 1 of TY, by fixing spirit in its cavity. The book says to always concentrate on cavity of spirit (upper tan tien) at all times, not just when meditating. So I was doing this, and it resulted in a very bad side effect: it seems to have built up a lot of energy in my lower brain because I feel it lodged there. But what's worse is that it has caused me to almost permanently have songs in my head. If I hear a song on the radio, I hear it persistently all of the time (not with my ears, but in my head). It's making meditation impossible, and I'm convinced that it's a direct result of always focusing on my upper tan tien. In your work with Chunyi Lin and SFQ masters, or whoever else you worked with, have you ever heard of this side effect? And how can I fix it? If you don't know, that's okay. I'm just putting these questions out there so that they may come across someone who does know; and you've worked with Chunyi Lin who's achieved so much from the book.

Void DOES exist: it is the formless aspect of the Dao. But one will always see the void as void until the light of vitality manifests. This light will only appear after long training, when one's jing, chi and shen are full.