SFJane

you did a brave thing, yet I have mixed feelings about it myself. he did not want to die though, not really, he wanted to shock people into forcing attention on himself. the highest sign of the supremely selfish and incomplete personality is the person that makes other people have to deal with them. he does need help. he needs love and clearly is an entire universe away from loving himself or life. the problem with how we treat lost and broken people that demand our attention by doing things like visiting people to tell them you want to die with a knife in your chest is that their next stop in life will be mostly likely, biological psychiatry. there are worse things than death. such being only half alive. if he had had died, he would not longer be in pain. at least not until the wheel resets his ass when he incarnates again and has to go through it all over. but subjectively speaking, he would have escaped the burden of corporeal existence short term and been free. in all likelihood by now he has a mental health diagnoses and is most likely under the influence of emotion,mind and chi damaging medications toxic to the body that will render him incapable of feeling or thinking about the nature of the problems that led to stabbing himself in the first place. these drugs will mask the symptoms and for the entire duration of his experience with them, he will truly no longer be himself but an artificial personality if he ever gets off psych meds, his old suicidal self will still be there. the reasons people want to die have to do to love or a lack of it or a lack of a reason to live or a meaning to life. or all of them there is no therapy no drug that can give you those things you have to scale your existence back to the beginning and find yourself and who you are and what you want in partaking in psychiatry you distort your true self and move further and further away from that understanding like i said there is worse things than death

so I am reposting a few things to get this rolling. during the course of talking about kiai masters getting owned and the uses of chi a couple things came up witch posted about being easily hypnotized and something to the effect of being vulnerable to people with either suggestion abilities or chi abilities or both. I replied that the best way to remedy being easily hypnotized is to volitionally control your own presence and remain completely aware at the level of consciousness and chi. In the process you remove the gaps in your attention and awareness that make it possible to be hypnotized or trances rendering you immune to either. In addition, the practice will allow you to detect other people gapping out and to take advantage of it. There are several practical reasons for degapping yourself. From a meditation point of view, it is necessary to be fully present to apprehend the mindstream as well as the various energy bodies. From a healing point of view, it will allow you to detect energy imbalances in your own body in and in others. From a martial point of view, it is both a defense and offense, you prevent people from slipping in between your gaps while you make, use or exploit their gaps. This brought up channeling and trance and the nature of gapping and not gapping. I want to focus on this sentence. " When your local conscious mind takes a backseat to whatever you're channeling." This is absolutely antithetical to taoist energy arts and genuine meditation. The entire concept is anathema. witch added So my first question is why? Why trance? Why channel? If you trance or channel, what is the exact purpose? What do you think you are channeling? How can you tell what you are actually channeling versus what you want to channel? I have some personal experience with the subject as I was involved with channeling since I was a child. The first channeling I ever saw with my own eyes was in a private Third Order Franciscan prayer meetings. Our group would channel the Holy Spirit and Speak in Tongues and Lay On Hands. I was fanatically and unshakably Catholic for some years as a result of being exposed to that as a child. When I deconverted from Christianity, the first thing I became involved with was the occult. I stayed with the occult from the age of 13 to about 23 when I had to make some major decisions about paganism as it pertained to me ongoing spiritual development. " I am surprised that taoist alchemy would disconnect a person from astrological influences; usually with alchemical practice it is the opposite." Taoist Alchemy and Taoist practices in general, put your life and the energy around you under your own personal influence. You become 100% responsible for everything about you. It is not possible to be influenced or effected by the mere energy of distant planets once you have come into contact with your spirit through meditation. You become the master of your own destiny and for every thought and action that comes up inside you. You take full responsibility for your karma and your energy and you start writing your own ticket rather than being subtly influenced by astrological influence. At the more intense levels of nei dan, you very much connect with the sun, the moon, the planets and the stars. You decide, at the level of energy, whether or not you will be effected by anything in outer space. Clearing your central channel and gaining control of your own chi will make it all but impossible to trance, be hypnotized by or influenced by anyone else's mind or energy. There is no reason to be subjected to or effected by other people's energy or intent. When you trance, you create gaps in your mind stream that you later have to connect to be totally present. When you channel anything but chi into your body, if your mind take a backseat to anything, you are installing gaps in your awareness and your mind. It is like sprinting in the opposite direction of being fully aware, awake and alive be being present continuously. It is not much different than getting passed out drunk, being stoned out of your mind, taking presurgical sedatives that leave the hours preceding the surgery vague or foggy, it's like being hit in the head hard. Each and everyone one of those things puts gaps in your mindstream that you have to connect up to make all your levels of being awake and present at the same time without gaps. Which brings us to practicing the occult in general. Why practice the occult at all? Taoist nei gung and nei dan directly connects your mind and heart to the elements and your inner and outer worlds. When you do Taoist Alchemy, you were working on the level of energy with your conscious awareness. It is not vague or random or maybe. There is no need for a robe, a candle, a bowl, an altar, standing stones, a full moon or a solstice. You can perform all the ritual circle casting in your mind without moving if you can control your chi. You use your own chi to consecrate and charge a space to work the occult in. One of the reasons I got involved with Ba Gua was the description of it in action. Walking a circle projecting chi from your hand and creating spiraling vortexes both inside your central channel and in the center of the circle that combines earth energy, heavenly energy and your own chi. It sounded like Taoist Wicca In casting the circle you face a direction, your receptive hand faces your body or the ground while your projective hand extends outward and you build a magic circle by creating circles and spirals and spheres, You walk clockwise and counter clockwise or widdershins. You open your energy channels to the sky and the ground and channel various energies into you, through you and then out of your body into space around you. You build the circle up and then dissolve it away when you are done. Anyway I am curious about why people channel or trance, what you think you are getting out if it. I also made a video about the nature of the occult practices and spirituality you can view if you are interested. Depending on the replies, I may or not share my experience with channeling, shen and out of body experiences as well as near death experiences. If you guys are interested in hearing about that, let me know.

since you and Adam have asked, I will do so. It is one of the hardest posts I have ever done mainly because it so personal. As some of you know I am actually writing my memoirs about this whole affair and I have over 50,000 words committed to the manuscript at the moment. The only thing I have not written about yet on my blog, talked about in my videos is this experience. So I actually need to talk about it. This all happened quite a long time ago. I think of all the message boards I could possibly discuss this with from the mental health forums to the martial arts forums, I think you taobums are possibly the best people to share this with. It could possibly help you in your own endeavors. It is going to be a long post and fair warning in advance, it will be heavy. I was in love with death for a long time and it deeply effected my entire being. I have had not one near death experience, but several. Give me a bit to form the words for something that is somewhat beyond language to describe. There is a light at the end of the post because in the end, I had a near life experience and that experience healed me of the need to leave this life permanently.

I depended on weed for several years in my 20s I was dependent on it to get through the day without hurting myself or others. Psyche meds may work for others but for me they were worse than the problem and only made me sick. Pot relaxed me, calmed my anger and quited the Voices so I could think. Believe when I say that straight, it was sometimes very hard to think coherently because of my ongoing meditation psychosis. I could actually think clearly, when I got high enough. Pot allowed me to move into chi gung because it augmented my natural sensitivity to chi. Eventually my chi really became strong and quiet after much practice. I found that when practicing something like the microcosmic orbit I would literally burn out my buzz prematurely. Dissolving and circulating raise your vibrations and clear your thinking by energizing your brain and calming your nerves. Eventually I was able to rely on chi gung for my mental sanity on a day to day basis and weaned myself off cannabis dependency gradually. Chi gung did for me what pot was doing for me, but it did it better and left me able to focus more intensely. Eventually it became a waste of good sattiva to smoke and do energy arts. Within a few minutes the energy movements and my focus on them burned my buzz away like so much fog. If you have any intention of finding out where all your chi is coming from, you can not be on drugs of any kind. They mask your consciousness. Smoking pot and cultivating becomes like 2 steps forward and 1 step back.

There is some truth to that though. I don't believe it has anything to do with anything. In my opinion sensitivity to chi is almost entirely biological. People who can sense their chi at an early age pay more attention to it tend to be drawn towards disciplines and behaviors that naturally or deliberately increase their own abilities. Even when they have no name for it. One of my girlfriends who has no training at all in any energy disciplines like yoga or chi gung can easily feel me when I manipulate her chi. She has no vocabulary to describe it but I can even sense her sensing my chi and hers. She is an artist and physical therapist. My brother on the other hand, intellectually understands it and believes in chi. He uses energy visualizations and the like. He can not sense my chi or his own at all. No matter how I much juice I pour in he feels nothing. He is totally disconnected from his body energetically. He is a mechanical engineer Fearless spirit? resolve eh? care to get pregnant, carry for 9 months and give birth? As for cutting the red dragon. We know a whole lot more about biochemistry and women's bodies are not quite the mystery they have been for most of history. Suffice it to say, the way out of that nonsense is to deliberately map out and control your energy on your own. I have never quite understood how the guys think they are supremely advantaged because of being able to cycle the jing from sperm and use it to raise energy. That is a male energy and it is yang upon yang, Shucks darn girls we got screwed over. We can never achieve the vaunted levels of the cultivating male. Yea right. You really think the universe did not supply us with a means? In Taoism especially you must be aware of the power of opposites. We have yin within yin. It should bother you guys that it is not glaringly obvious the advantages women have over men in terms of cultivation. The universe saw fit to give us unlucky enough to running on estrogen another avenue to the same goal. Let me try to put it like this. There is a power in us that is the basest form of yin. A small black hole in the center of our being drawing in and sensing energy at every level. It is ultimate yin. In martial arts terms, it is the power of drawing to oneself, of closing and draining and most especially, absorbing. as in breathing absorbing techniques. If you give yourself over to falling inwards during the absorption phase of inhaling you can fall inward eternally effortlessly. There is a power in us of ultimate surrender that is the opposite of ultimate effort. Go with your graces. Follow that sense of surrender until you utterly apprehend yourself on every level. It requires less effort and is the truest sense of letting go. I am now enjoying in my 30s, the fruits of my labor during my 20s. Desperation has a way of making you take ontology quite seriously. Agreed. I stayed single for my entire 20s so I could devote myself to alchemy There is not much secret about something sitting in plain sight waiting for you to take notice of it. no you don't. not to sound peckish but that is total nonsense. do standing chi gung, post standing, embracing the tree, whatever, as awake and aware as possible, no trancing out. Stay absolutely present and you will easily sense your chi

what do you mean,"stop practicing" never!

I agree with this answer most. job is half done, forget the word kundulini, just think of it as energy moving up your spine. Indian yoga traditions do not have a monopoly on energy moving up the spine, they just got hung up there thinking that was it

sorry that I have no haiku for you today perhaps another time

2 things, 4 levels physically, fast and drink a lot of water emotionally, smile and sing! mentally, let go and focus energetically, dissolve and circulate dissolving as in the central channel dissolving methods described by BKF and circulating being the various micro cosmic circulations described by Chia and others

I read that book to understand what happened to me when I had my own encounter with the other side. It was very useful and I too recommend this book to anyone.

at the risk of appearing cynical I will say this. I am glad I have nothing to do with Taoism of any kind any more. Among the many things I have dissolved, I dissolved my attachment to the *ism* as Buddy would call it. Once I found myself and gained internal equilibrium I had become the practice and therefore no longer needed it as such. After dissolving my inner attraction to Taoism, all I was left with was these wonderful energy practices. If I ever teach publicly I have decided to forgo calling my practices Water, Fire, Taoist,Buddhist, Tien Tai, whatever. It is what it is and nothing more. These transmissions and lineages and sects and reinventions are nothing but a headache.

congratulations on being published! sorry about your husband leaving over your libido but after writing that book I am sure you must have a line by now I liked your overall story of taking control over your body and getting it to function the way you wanted it on your own terms. One of the articles mentions that you suggest dark chocolate. There I could not agree with you more. Dark chocolate can make me orgasm as soon as it contacts my tongue. Talk about dopamine sensitivity.I make a ritual out of it. If I am enjoying chocolate I don't need anyone else to be satisfied.

with all due respect, the W M Keck lab at U Madtown is not the only place these tests are occuring. I assure you from experience, your leg position has nothing to do with how far out or how far in you can go with your mind. I speak from having read Dr. Sarah Lazar's work, among others. Dr. Sarah Lazar works at Harvard. I emailed her to partake in her study and get my brain scanned, but they did not have the funding to add more participants at that time. well, I too don't care to pick fights either with all due respect, you should present your findings to the psychiatric community if you are that confident. I am currently working on my manuscript about a book about bipolar recovery. I spent years at close proximity to the mental health system, I have a bipolar brother, sister and mother. I am the only one in my family that is without bipolar symptoms. Bipolar and schizophrenia, occupied most of my life. Like yourself, I happen to know something about this as well. In all humility I have quite a few psychiatrists, psychologists and even a few neuroscientists subscribed to my videos on youtube. There are people in the mental health field listening to me now. I have done the therapies, drugs, the works. I was one of those for whom nothing worked. I have run the gamut of diets, nutrition and supplements. None of it can dent suicidal depression or the mania. It is like this, there is no vitamin, no supplement, no acid, no salt that can give you a reason to live. If deep down you do not want to live, there is nothing anyone can do for you. All I can say is, I tried everything with the exception of ECT. Certainly diets and supplements made me feel better, but they have nothing to do with why people come down with bipolar disorder or getting rid of it. Meditation worked, where all else failed. I say this having myself as the test subject for my personal bipolar recovery experiments. There are some people for whom changing diets or adding supplements can have major dramatic positive effects on them, in that case, they were not bipolar to begin with, they suffered nutritional deficiencies which caused symptoms that masqueraded as symptoms of bipolar. That was not me. In the book that I am writing, I go into these things extensively. As such, I am presenting my findings in the hopes that others with severe mental illness can find their path as I did. I am really quite confident about both my knowledge of meditation and my knowledge of psychology and mental illness. Since both have been part of my life, in some form or fashion for over 30 years now. Since you seem to think malnutrition causes bipolar, I really doubt there is much I could say to convince you otherwise. I have talked about this extensively on my youtube videos and on my blog, both of which are linked below.

I wish it had all been just a dopamine issue. it would have made a lot of things so much easier. as it turned out it was far more complex than that what proper meditation does is build a circuit of stillness behind the left prefrontal cortex. this circuit is built in the area of the brain responsible for emotional and mental processing. in the last ten years several studies using PET fMRI and other highly sophisticated imaging techniques on tibetan and buddhist monks revealed that that area of the brain is significantly lit up during meditation. the same tests were done on western meditators using similar meditation techniques. the western practitioners had varying degrees of experience ranging from 9 months of practice to 20 years of practice it was found that even the 9 month beginning meditators were activating the same area of the brain although no where near as strongly as those westerners and easterners with 5-10+ years of experience. it was discovered that those that practiced the most had the largest circuit of meditation in their brains and they could access it faster and stay with it longer than those who had not practiced as much this is exactly what I experienced in terms of the 5 + years spent meditating mostly by myself for prolonged periods of time. the symptoms of depression and mania did not disappear suddenly. Even in the beginning there was not much change at all. As time wore on the depression and mania eased off very slowly, very gradually. At some point they went away, then stayed away and never came back. if you are into the chemical imbalance paradigm, then the extreme states coinciding with dramatically lowered seratonin (depression) and those extreme states coinciding with dramatically heightened seratonin (mania) gradually became balanced so the mood swings and energy states were no longer oscillating between two extremes (Bipolar) and instead became completely balanced. there is also much to what sheng zhen was saying, I did not learn to ground energy or sink or drain. I basically turned on all my switches at maximum and kept them that connected full time to everything. the layers of complexity were more involved that all that as well. I was born with several birth defects and I was born to a mother with manic depression as well. the first 9 months of my existence were spent inches away from the heart of a person that wanted to die. a person who chain smoked during her pregnancy with me, exposing my fetal body to waves of nicotine,depression, mania, irritability etc. That all had to be dealt with when I took on the 8 bodies using dissolving methods. It was all there too inside of me way in there like the innermost rings of a tree. suffice it to say that I had issues that affected 7 of the 8 bodies. Unraveling the entire matrix of interwoven problems was the most difficult thing I have ever done in my life. Hi there Matt, yes I suppose there is a lesson from that regarding what not to do when taking on these practices. You sometimes get exactly what you want and it turns out to be much more than you thought it would be. To date I am not sure the immortality angle ever was meant to mean more than living a fairly long lived natural human lifespan with your health and faculties intact. Alchemy on the other hand, is what I what I have always been into ever since I started. It is one of my favorite subjects Congratulations on your experience as well.

"You should feel joy and bliss" why should you feel joy and bliss at all?

good lord. if you actually do some how find and follow up on the urge to do that I ask only this that you tell him I said " It worked and it saved my life. I know who I am now. Thank you" I doubt I will ever deliberately cause a situation where I could deliver that message.

okdoke never mind what I said then. I figured it would give him a few sounds bites to chew on that's all there is no substitute to learning san ti from BKF! (which I did btw via the Fairfax classes) but...i doubt i learned absolutely every single thing and every inner most secrets!!!...so ignore me.

If you can call be being born that way an imbalance. The psychic sensitivity training increased my natural ability and made me too sensitive. With dissolving you can dissipate those sensations to the point where it is integrated and natural and in control. It may seem to be a vulnerability but in the end it is a strength.There is no more imbalance now. Everything is exactly as it should be.

oh be nice, point him in the right direction read the book, The Power of Internal Martial Arts by BKF There is a section on san ti, gazing, gapping and intention. The what, the why and the how.

You are very welcome

meditation psychosis symptoms and the symptoms of severe manic episodes, schizophrenia/schizo affect disorder and narcissistic personality disorder. A. A distinct period of abnormally and persistently elevated, expansive, or irritable mood, lasting at least 1 week (or any duration if hospitalization is necessary) B. During the period of mood disturbance, three (or more) of the following symptoms have persisted (four if the mood is only irritable) and have been present to a significant degree: 1. inflated self-esteem or grandiosity 2. decreased need for sleep (e.g., feels rested after only 3 hours of sleep) 3. more talkative than usual or pressure to keep talking 4. flight of ideas or subjective experience that thoughts are racing 5. distractibility (i.e., attention too easily drawn to unimportant or irrelevant external stimuli) 6. increase in goal-directed activity (either socially, at work or school, or sexually) or psychomotor agitation 7. excessive involvement in pleasurable activities that have a high potential for painful consequences (e.g., engaging in unrestrained buying spree, sexual indiscretions, or foolish business investments) C. The symptoms do not meet criteria for a Mixed Episode. D. The mood disturbance is sufficiently severe to cause marked impairment in occupational functioning or in usual social activities or relationships with others, or to necessitate hospitalization to prevent harm to self or others, or there are psychotic features. E. The symptoms are not due to the direct physiological effects of a substance (e.g., a drug of abuse, a medication, or other treatment) or a general medical condition (e.g., hyperthyroidism). check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mania as well, perhaps more importantly http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychosis between 13 and 15 years old I was taught and learned several supposed meditation techniques which were in fact techniques for developing psychic ability. Most of them involved visualizing what amounted to stars (energy gates or mini chakras) in my brain between my eyes, my ears, my throat, my third eye, the back of my skull and the crown chakra. I then connected them by going deep into inner space and literally forging lines of light between my psychic chakras and the central channel. This was my introduction to meditation and energy arts. I poured my all into practicing it because this what I lived for, this is what I had always wanted. Within days I began having lucid dreams both asleep and awake. Nearly every sensory psychic ability turned on simultaneously. The experience was very much like having a super nova quietly go off a million miles deep inside my mind. In the process a babble, a veritable cacophony of voices began to pour through my mind. All the voices were commingled and barely intelligible over a roaring sound, a great wind that circled my head like the clouds of jupiter or a hurricane. The worst of it may have been the constant deja vu and derealizations. first I became *manic*, then I became seriously psychotic, then I became suicidal and nearly died by my own hand several times. I ended up being committed several times for being a danger to myself and others and for my *delusional states* How do you think you would feel if a miniature tornado was racing around your head day and night? My brain felt like fusion reactor stuck on maximum output. I am not going to describe most of the psychic experiences except to say over the months many of you have talked about psychic stuff and it would be of the same ilk. It was not as if I was starting this with no prior mental training. My mother and I use to sit with rosaries and do hours long prayer and devotionals. I use to pray on my own incessantly until I deconverted from that faith. There were many attempts by others to bring me back to earth and to sanity and they all invariably failed. I have been blessed and prayed over and had people lay hands on me and it failed. Eight years of psychotherapy and 4 years in mental health institutions as a teenager to no avail. The only thing that ever interfered with my telepathy was psychiatric medications. I was put on one of the most potent *antipsychotics to ever come out of a lab for half a year and it felt as though my mind was dying and it made me more suicidal. I have tried crystal healing and various diets, chanting and music, light and color therapy. I tried reiki and flower essences. There was nothing that could slow down my racing thoughts and nothing that could turn off the noise in my head except combining drugs, alcohol, ativan, pain killers and liberal amounts of marijuana. Without constant drug dependancy I would become explosive and intense within hours and become suicidally depressed shortly there after. The whole affair nearly cost me my life several times. What solved 99% of my mental problems was dissolving down for a bazillion hours and it took years. It took over five years of dedicating my life to dissolving practices and clearing out energy blocks and restoring the natural flows of energy in my mind and body. During that time I did what previously as a teen I could not do. I got the hell away from everyone. I spent long hours in total isolation and solitude until I found the inner and outer boundaries of what in Taoism/Tien tai is called the 8 bodies. The physical proximity of other people's energy, emotions and minds has been overwhelming me for years. When I literally got miles away from a single human being, my mind got quiet all by itself. It was like being in heaven. To taste mental quietude for the first time in my life was better than any drug or sexual or culinary experience. I kept at it because it was working. Gradually I found myself, energy body by energy body by finding where I began, and where I ended. It took a long time. Eventually, close to my 26th birthday, after years of dedicated water method dissolving I found what I was looking for in the greatest meditation/ne gung/ occult experience in my entire life. Afterward I was never suicidal or psychotic again. My racing thoughts were gone. I won't go so far as to say I had The Great Stillness. I can say, that I experienced a level of inner quietude and equilibrium that I had been denied all my life. With it all my fears went away and with it, the rest of my obsessions. I was absolutely and completely calm, relaxed and truly loved myself for the first time in my life. From a psychiatry point of view, I used dissolving to beat schizophrenia and manic depression. I was never plagued by derealizations, out of body experiences, delusional states, feelings of possession ever again. The voices in my head went away. The visions and chronic deja vu went away. The lights and noises in my head went away. That is what I mean by using BKF's water method stuff to cure yourself of meditation psychosis

Buddy what happened to the shoulder blade wrapping?

Been there done that. I did that stuff very seriously when I was 13. I gave myself a ten year case of bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. Messing with your brain is no nonsense and will make effects. I broke all those rules before I knew they existed and I paid the price for it. If you want to end up in psychiatric hospital in isolation on powerful anti psychotic medications, just start pumping energy into your third eye and configuring the energy gates in your brain. I will say this. Kumar will not come out to your house and fix you if you screw up your brain with chi gung. It took me years to fix my brain on my own studying everything I could. What worked was dissolving for years. I happen to know something about repairing meditation psychosis as a result of this.