Jetsun

Maybe they like being ill, perhaps it gives them a load of self pity to cling to and something to moan about, so they might fight you if you try to take it away.

I can blow fireballs out of my arse

I think Buddhists teach far better through their presence or just by radiating Bodhicitta rather than evangelising. When I first met a Tibetan Buddhist monk the most powerful impression or teaching he gave me was that he didn't try to preech to me or teach me anything at all he just radiated love-kindness towards me and expected absolutely nothing in return, so it was completely non aggressive and so was far more powerful than if he had tried to reel off a teaching. How many people do you ever meet who expect nothing from you or dont project expectations on you? There is a certain amount of aggression and anxiety within evangelism so personally I think it is not a very Buddhist approach and may well be counter productive in the long term.

It is possible to get sponsored to go on retreat by a rich benefactor like the Buddhist nun Tenzin Palmo did, apart from that you could go to prison for a few months

I relate a lot to what you say here, realising how cut off from your essence you are is more painful than being completely asleep and oblivious to it like most people are, but hopefully it is a step closer to healing

yup the Buddha became enlightened when he relaxed and let go of all that

Very important line of inquiry in my view, there are doing methods like various meditation methods and EFT, but then people like Lao Tzu talk about the importance of non-doing or just being. How do you really achieve non-doing? because if you sit down and turn inward you will always find your mind and emotions doing things and anything you do to try to achieve non-doing or just being just takes your further away from it, so when these guys say non-doing they aren't talking about sitting around watching tv and being lazy it's something deeper than that.

To make a lot of money from healing I expect you would have to get famous somehow by publishing a book or healing someone famous. There is probably more money in becoming a more mainstream psychologist then using some of these techniques on your clients because there is still so much resistance to alternative techniques. But I don't think money is the main concern of most natural healers.

Thanks for your explanation Snowmonki that is really interesting, I guess there is no real full way of understanding it without having the experience myself.

Being natural and whole is better than being divided, most modern Religions help divide you by helping to create the split between your persona and your more real self and help to make that split so wide that those parts often contradict each other. The best way to control something is by the principle divide and rule which is exactly the same principle when controlling people, divide them internally so their persona is against their natural drives so they become confused, contradictory and weak and thus can be exploited by anyone who is perceived as powerful and as an authority like a Church, government or advertiser. Christianity controlled people so well for such a long time because it was very clever and subtle in turning peoples own energy onto themselves and dividing them internally by making them feel shameful about their most powerful source of energy: their sexuality and aggression, all that source of energy which is at your root is cut off from conscious awareness and cut people at their root and they have no power. When something is repressed and not conscious it finds outlets in other less healthy ways like perverse internet porn or worse things like violence and illness,. But also because it is not conscious it can be triggered and controlled by other people through things like propaganda and advertising, which is why sex sells so well and why governments can dupe whole countries into phoney wars by triggering a fear response as without our natural power we feel the need to trust the authority to protect us. This brainwashing is so deeply ingrained in our culture that they barely need the Church or anyone else to do anything any more, all the hard work is already done and hardly anyone even realises it. Maybe becoming natural isn't the end result of human potential as we do seem to have to work to become enlightened or become a Bodhisattva who embraces all of humanity, but being natural is still a better place to be in than being internally divided and weak, it's a better starting point of development, which is why many teachers talk of unlearning first before cultivation.

I think karma is always trying to play itself out all the time, we just have to let it without creating any new karma, which means we need methods like meditation to get to know it and allow it's release so it can work it's way out without harming anybody else. I don't believe in positive karma negating negative karma or good deeds cancelling out bad deeds, I think you do good deeds to prevent you gaining any more negative karma so as your existing lot works it's way out you overall become less burdened over time.

I think most religions were originally intended to introduce customs and practises which help to maintain the harmonious development of humanity at large, something individual spirituality could not do easily. For example saying Grace before dinner was meant to remind people to eat their food consciously with gratitude rather than eating unconsciously. Fasting at certain times of the year came from astrological science around the digestion of certain foods at certain times of the year. Circumcision to prevent over masturbation. Things like Halal and Kosher intended to reduce the suffering of animals. Pork can interfere with direct spiritual experience. Prayer is a good antidote to rampant egotism. The intent behind all the customs is meant to help people grow into balanced compassionate beings which is the same with the moral code, morality is good for you and good for your own growth, but the problem is that most of these religions have been corrupted so instead of giving you some rough guidelines with which to live your life by which benefit your own growth they turned them into strict rules with dire consequences for disobeying them, so they filled people with guilt and shame and actually started to make people more unnatural and insane rather than harmonised, so in many cases they do more harm than good.

Thanks for your reply Brion. I have heard the saying it awakens you to "who you are supposed to be" a few times in regards to Stillness Movement but could you possibly say a little more about what this means? Do you mean that the practice itself removes false beliefs about who you are and karmically purifys you which opens up your compassion and makes you see clearly? Or is it more the actual practice of healing others and helping them which brings this about? What I'm getting at is that I wonder if you can get the full benefit from the practice without becoming an energy healer? as not all of us are destined to be healers, not in the hands on direct way anyway.

I would be very interested to hear any testimonials about how Stillness Movement has benefited people, there are quite a few healing stories on the board about it's ability to heal other people by projecting Qi but how about how it has helped to heal and integrate yourself? and bring you to higher levels of awareness and improve your own life?

I think people would rather hold onto illusions because they have identified their sense of self with them, they are them, so to let them go is perceived as the same thing as death.

I was thinking of signing up for Bruce Frantzis Bagua Mastery Programme but the stumbling block is the price as I think it adds up to something like $900 in the end, which is a hell of a lot of money even if it is really good. So I was wondering if anyone can really testify to Bagua's spiritual benefit? I have no doubt it is good for your health and can open up the meridians to promote chi flow and healing and may well be a really good martial art, but will it open up your heart and make you soft and flexible with compassion rather than rigid and tough like some martial arts do? I know Bruce Frantzis says that it was originated by Taoist priests and that it has a lot of spiritual benefit but I also know that he is a really smart guy and has a lot of marketing knowledge and psychological understanding so I don't swallow everything he says. Perhaps the spiritual side has been lost to the martial aspect but he would never say that publicly, so can anyone with personal experience testify that it still does what Bruce says it does and isn't just about beating lots of people up at the same time?

Pitt Bull's have become a problem in the UK too, for a while they were popular with idiots who used them as some sort of status symbol or weapon, but now the kennels are full of them because so many of the insecure thugs aren't responsible enough to look after them. But I was to get a dog for protection I wouldn't get a little Pit Bull I would get a Tibetan attack dog like this

I have noticed similar, but I think it could just be that now as a powerful adult you are a potential threat and people are always on the lookout in their environment for a threat. I expect the people who pick up the most from their environment and are most aware of being looked at are those who had stressful abusive upbringings, so these sorts of things may have nothing to do with spiritual sensitivity, it could even be that people are generally becoming more scared of violence with all the violence in the media all the time.

Hi Rob, I haven't been in touch with Alex yet but I read his book "Esoteric Warriors" recently which is pretty interesting, he has certainly met a lot of interesting teachers. I haven't got into Bagua yet as the Bruce Frantzis programme was a bit too expensive but I might take up some sort of training in the spring so maybe see you then. thanks

I have gone through long periods of doing things like EFT and other things where you work on yourself, for one six month period I was doing hours of Shamanic recapitulation every day which is somewhat similar to EFT as well as other practices to try to "erase my personal history", unblock my limitations and heal my traumas, and even though I felt I was making progress with my practice the way I was interacting with other people was getting worse and I was overall becoming more miserable and unhappy. So there is a lesson in this I think, so much focus on your self is not healthy. Practises like EFT where you are deciding what you work on can easily be hijacked by the immature part of your ego which wants to get rid of what you don't like in yourself rather than make friends with it, which only causes more problems long term. The ego will never be happy because it works on comparisons and you will always find something or someone to compare against which will lead you to feeling you are not good enough. Tibetan Buddhists say the only happiness you will find is in cherishing and working for others happiness rather than your own, so they would probably say that so much focus on trying to fix a self which doesn't even exist as a permanent entity is a waste of time if happiness is what you are after, which is something I am starting to see the truth in. But then again I do think it is good to heal the ego, heal our traumas and do spiritual practice from a place of maturity, but how to do this without becoming fixated on yourself is the tricky part, so I guess I have no real answers.

- Raden Ayou Jodjana A Book of Self Re-Education (RA Jodjana was a teacher who integrated Javanese teachings with the Sufi teachings of Hazrat Inayat Khan)

Except that's not actually true, or like Ralis says it's only true within certain parameters.

Your subconscious remembers absolutely everything that has ever happened to you, most of it is just cut off from your awareness, for example a really good hypnotist would be able to get you to recall any micro event or detail from any part of your life even things which didnt consciously register at the time. So really it should be called your superconscious rather than subconscious.

It's something i'm still trying to learn and make sense of myself to be honest, the instructions in the book are over many pages so I can only quote the main parts and are set out in poetry style so it might not read as fluently when quoted here. But my understanding is that allowing the stomach to descend on the exhale creates a space in the body or a sort of vacuum which will have to be filled with air once the outbreath is complete, as the air will naturally move in to occupy the space, so it facilitates a natural non-doing inbreath, as opposed to an inbreath which we have to work at. I wonder if babies breathe in this way with their ribs open and stomach down? I know they breath lower down and don't chest breathe. Also she talks about how the stomach descending connects you closer to your centre of gravity on the outbreath and the outbreath is meant to be used for action and expression so connecting to your centre of gravity when breathing out helps with authentic rooted expression of yourself.

I think she is saying that it is not natural for your ribs to contract inwards through the loss of pressure, because when they do it prevents your stomach from properly descending on the outbreath towards the coccyx, so when you breathe out keeping the ribs open it creates a "stomach pit" which facilitates a proper massage of the internal organs. This might help maybe if there is a bad reaction: "What is the outcome of keeping the stomach downward as we await the gift of breath? The diaphragm used to taking the breath in through the nose and mouth may mount rapidly causing a choking feeling. Let the diaphragm jump. Wait awhile, and let us try to understand exactly what made the diaphragm jump and suddenly refuse to perform its movement of massage which causes 'natural' lung breathing, without our interference. This movement being so gentle, we are not even aware of this gift of breath A simple movement will and must take place. The floating ribs will descend towards the back of our hip bones. In this way the sweet breath of Prana will permeate our being"