Jetsun

Just about all the sacred texts contain the idea that man's body is a microcosm of the universe, so you can understand the universe by studying the body and you can understand the body by studying the universe, how are you supposed to go about this without putting your mind on the different parts of the body? I already quoted one book which talks about this. How do you think people originally worked out the acupuncture points and wrote texts like the 'Yellow Emperors Inner Cannon' without making the body completely conscious? how do you make the body conscious without putting the mind on the different parts of the body? which is a practice you think is worthless for attaining the way.

Through reading books written by the immortals in many different traditions not just Taoism and through my own experiments over many years. How are you going to harmonise your mind, emotions and body without letting go of the blocks and tensions in the body? how are you going to let go of the tensions in the body without making them conscious? "What you cannot learn in your own body, you can learn nowhere else" - the Upanishads

The coffee thing I just made up from the top of my head to be honest, it seemed to me that since the smoking ban came in loads of coffee shops have sprung up on every corner and everyone is into it like addicts, while all the latte's and creamy coffees so popular now are just like a substitute form of breastfeeding with the feel-good milky rush you get from having one. Certain teachers I study say the real devil which keeps people down and stuck is what they call "self calming" so instead of facing the void and problem emotions inside of us people try to avoid it so when they start to feel bad they reach for the cigarette, chocolate bar, beer or coffee instead of facing up to reality.

Ancient Taoists used to say that a "real" man was one who was conscious of their entire body all of the time, but the modern man is so unconscious that they barely even know that they are hungry let alone are aware of the different rhythms and tensions which move through the body throughout the day. How do you become a "real" man without putting your mind on the different parts of your body? They say there is an entire universe in your body but if you do not make your body conscious how are you ever going to be aware of that?

Hugo Chavez said the other day that he thinks that US have developed a cancer weapon and have been using it on South American leaders as the proportion of them getting cancer is far higher than the national average http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16545513

What you say here makes sense with my own thinking and with masters like Liu-I Ming who says that only natural methods will bring you to the Tao, but forced or un-natural methods can bring you to a natural practice, then you can then let them go. Also Lao Tzu stresses over and over the importance of being un-contrived and it seems to me all that forced breathing and manipulation of Qi and visualisation stuff, mantra etc is very contrived so on their own they will not get you there. But it sounds like you are making really good progress, congrats!

Worldwide governments are secretly promoting the Coffee industry as they have realised that caffeine addiction keeps the population at a low developmental stage of their psychological development so there is a constant feeling of underlying anxiety and helplessness in populations leaving them ripe to be exploited by advertising and government agendas

In terms of metaphors I always understood the Dragon to mean your raw primal energy and power, but then I never really understood the Western fairytales of the knight slaying the Dragon, it makes more sense to tame and conquer the Dragon so you control it rather than try to kill it, I don't think you can kill it anyway, many people try and it just makes the Dragon more angry.

Sorry to hear you are still suffering. Unfortunately there is no such thing as a miracle cure for these sorts of problems despite many people in the alternative healing area promising miracles, if someone promises such a cure it's usually a sign they are completely clueless. I would forget what most other people say and trust your own intuition, listen to your body and try to find out how your heart would direct you.

I think we need to continually work to know ourselves otherwise we stagnate which leads to suffering.

The impression I get from nearly all of the threads about sublimation of sexual energy is that many people are doing it to try to get rid of their sexuality rather than doing it from a healthy place, this is just a subjective observation though so doesn't prove much, I can't link from my phone at the moment but the old posts by Non were an example of this. I just think people should keep in mind what Twinner said that shame around sexual energy is one of the main methods through which we are controlled and turned into sheep by the powers and people who wish to manipulate us.

Yeah but humans have the ability for self reflection which cats don't have, which suggests to me there is a purpose for this. To "know thyself" is the aim of most genuine spiritual systems since the saying was enscribed on the Delphi temple and probably before, how to go about doing this is the issue. If you spend you life like a cat I don't know if you will ever know thyself.

I very much agree with you here, the real way people are controlled is by manipulating them to turn their most powerful energy in on themselves, so most religions tricked people into feeling guilt and shame about their power and sexual energy. This form of control is still embedded in most Christian countries culture and psyche even if people are no longer attending church much. My understanding of sublimation is that some people need a period of abstinence and others don't, it depends on the individual. If you are feeling guilt and shame about things like nocturnal emissions like you sometimes see on this board then this is a big problem I think and the guilt and shame needs to be dealt with first before any attempts of sublimation is made.

There is a Da Vinci exhibition at the National Gallery at the moment, supposed to be the first time many of his works have been brought together, you would have to get there early though as advance tickets have sold out. For tourist stuff the Churchill war bunker is meant to be good. Watkins Bookshop is really good near Leicester square, has a Taoist section as well as loads of other stuff I don't know of any masters personally but I expect there are some around China Town area if you ask in the right places.

"To give attention. It is the simplest and purest act of love. The greatness, the joy, the rapture and the beauty of all love depends on the intence receptivity of our attention." - R.A. Jodjana

Yeah I think this book might get a bit of a bad rap in serious spiritual circles because it was so popular with the masses and the title is a bit cheesy, but it is a really good book.

Yeah you often see him talk about the most serious grave subjects and then burst out laughing, but it doesn't appear a nervous or inappropriate laughter degrading the subject, maybe it's part of the practice to open to suffering rather than contract or maybe he sees life as a big cosmic joke. I too would be interested in what the oracles said. I saw in the movie Kunlun about his escape from Tibet the oracles predicted that he would return to Tibet before his death, which looks unlikely at the moment but things can change fast in the world so you never know.

I think we have a right to question everybody, nobody is untouchable, I think it is a fair line if inquiry to ask whether if someone takes a fast to an extreme where they are on the verge of death whether that is a form of self violence rather than something noble. It's similar to all the self immolations going on in Tibet at the moment, is that a form of self anger or hatred directed inwards or is it done from a pure compassionate intention to try to help the situation?. No doubt Ghandi was a great man and one of the greatest leaders the world has ever seen, but that doesn't mean we can't question him. Ghandi spoke at length in his autobiography how much his spiritual beliefs influenced his politics and political actions.

Thanks for the vid. The whole Tibet issue may end up having very bad consequences for the rest of the world because in a sense the non violent approach to oppression is an experiment which at the moment looks like it has failed, so it looks like non violence doesn't work which is a sad state of affairs for the world in general and for future conflicts. Things seem to be becoming more violent now with thirteen self immolations in just one year and it could be that when the Dalai Lama dies that things will become more and more violent although there is more time.

I can't recall any account of direct energy transmissions except the one you probably mean when Fritz Peters came back exhausted from the front line in the war, there are various stories of Siddhi type powers but Gurdjieff generally taught that unless you earn something for yourself you won't appreciate its full worth so you would have to develop your energy yourself and deal with your own karma rather than rely on a master to do it for you. Perhaps the way energy is used is one of the differences between the Fourth Way and Taoism as the intent in the Fourth Way is to open up and allow the higher energy to come down to the body, so there is a meeting of the vertical energy of the earth and horizontal heavenly energies and the purpose of humanity on this planet is to allow this meeting to take place, but there is no intention to manipulate those energies for healing or anything else, which is why it is perhaps more Christian than Taoist. Perhaps in that story of Gurdjieff giving a woman an orgasm at a distance was an example of him using his Siddhi powers in order to get her as his student, perhaps he saw enormous potential in her and needed to use that power at that time in order for her to be convinced enough to follow him. It is true that in the beginning when In Search of the Miraculous was based he taught various yoga type exercises perhaps even the full lotus, but he stopped teaching them later on in life so I assume he wasn't happy with the results they brought.

That is the first time I have seen that story, perhaps he was horny and couldn't keep his energy in, I don't know, but I doubt it was a common occurance as nobody else has mentioned it and it is not talked about at all in any of the materials I have read, I have got three or four books written by women who worked directly with him and they don't mention it. Perhaps he wouldn't be directly against someone if they wanted to sit in full-lotus all day, he said the monks/fakirs way is a valid way, but it is not the way he taught. All the stories I have heard about the way he taught was he would set a person a task to be done with conscious attention then as soon as the person mastered it he would give them a new one, so the body can never turn the task into another habit to fall asleep in, so he taught dances instead of meditation, like these: I know someone who is quite involved in the Gurdjieff society now and there are some body type meditations they do which have been passed down through the oral lineage, but there is no mention of the full-lotus, the important thing which is stressed is to keep the legs open and without tension so the energy can pass through them without blockage.

Using Gurdjieff to validate these ideas is a very tenuous link, in none of his teaching material does he talk about giving orgasms at a distance at all, there are dozens of books written about Gurdjieff including many written by females who worked with him for many years and none of them talk about this phenomena at all. I have read all the main books thoroughly and the first time I head of it was when Drew talked about it, most of the work around sex is to get the sex function in it's proper place because many people use the sex energy in the wrong centres of their thought and emotion. There is the idea that the sexual energy can be used to create for yourself a second body or astral body but to be using that energy instead to stimulate other people would be considered a wrong usage of that valuable energy and a leakage. Have you considered that you are too open Drew and need to plug up your holes? As for the Pythagorean harmonics stuff this is something I don't know about but Gurdjieff says that kunderbuffer was the kundalini itself not what is blocking the kundalini, but whether this is meant literally I dont know, but he never said that the full lotus is a good way to remove this blockage or that sitting in full lotus for a long time is even healthy, he was infact against anyone sitting in one position or using a single technique for too long.

These Taoist practices have the best names

I have read that second book, one of the authors argues that both Ghandi and Mother Theresa were doing a spiritual bypass, Ghandi would internalize all his anger and do extreme fasts brining him close to death on a few occasions punishing himself, so he was using his practice in a masochistic unhealthy way to try to deal with his anger and the author argues that Mother Theresa was consumed with guilt and shame and rather than face upto and find the root of those shadow emotions she worked relentlessly in charity to avoid them. I found that perspective pretty interesting, it made me wonder if a lot of the spiritual role models we have may be doing a bypass of some sort.

I guess that't right, it can help change your perspective in many beneficial ways so you can see all the positives within the negatives and if you study the Tao and the nature of change you can gain faith that all things will change and be transform naturally if we let them and stop interfering, so suffering and pain can become more bearable and manageable by trusting in the natural process of it resolving itself rather than anxiously trying to get rid of it.