Jetsun

"The Tao is natural. All forced manipulations and concoctions are in vain. Some people guard their minds and settle their ideas and thoughts, some people hold their breath and keep it in the abdomen, some people perform psychosomatic energy-circulation exercises. When these people come to the end of their lives and find everything they did was useless, they will resent the gods, also uselessly." - Liu I-Ming 'Awakening to the Tao' From my own unenlightened state of mind I feel that these words are true, I have been practising many different forms of exercise for about 8 years now including manipulated breathing and energy exercises many of which bring nice sensations and some health benefits but down the line I don't really feel that I have got anywhere with them. It does seem to me that any exercise which is contrived in any way by the mind is not natural and therefore cannot lead to the Tao, which includes most forms of Qigong and meditation. So the question is what natural unforced methods really exist? I wonder if even a meditation on any sort of object or focus even on something as simple as the breath or dan tien might be a manipulation of the mind in a subtle way and is therefore not natural. Has anyone found a way or method which they consider completely natural and not forced in any sense?

Thanks this is good stuff. I'm not very experienced in the martial arts so perhaps I underestimate how much power it does give you in the emotional realms of human interaction, any more stuff like this is great.

Apparently a common vision when people from all sorts of backgrounds and belief systems take Ayahuasca with the Peruvian Shaman is one of aliens and flying objects

I read a thing about Mount Athos in the paper not so long ago about how there has never been any case of cancer there and some scientist wanted to investigate this and he created an anti cancer Mount Athos diet from his investigations, but personally I expect there is much more to it than just diet, I expect the monks are purifying their body and spirit in much higher ways than the scientist is able to comprehend. Some people have said that the first Fourth Way teachings and original teachings of Jesus originate from there, it would be interesting to investigate this but they only allow certain monks on the island so it could be difficult.

Thanks to both of you, I hope that all people can recover the essence of who they are, I suspect the world would be a very different place. I did do a few weeks of Stillness Movement not too long ago, I do consider it one of the most natural non violent methods I have tried as in essence it is about doing nothing, but the powerful energetics involved by this doing nothing brought out a resistant part of me after a session of strong spontaneous movement and I started to doubt I was approaching things in the right way for the particular state of mind I'm in. Working without a teacher in person who can evaluate my system to see if things are on the right track is a bit of a problem.

That is pretty inspiring Otis, after watching one of your vids I thought you must be in your 20's : , to regain my naturalness is my aim to, regain my spontaneity, so it is very encouraging to hear how people have done that at any stage in their life, it shows that your natural essence is never destroyed rather it is a matter of letting go of whatever covers it up.

It may not be time wasted I guess it all depends whether it leads somewhere which bares fruit, then it has all been incredibly valuable. I do try to view people as just like me in wanting to be happy and avoid suffering and they all have the heart of a Buddha within them, but also I'm more often than not thinking things like "is this person a threat to me" "could I take on this person in an argument or a fight" etc, so I have a long way to go I think. It is interesting what you say about forced actions as a child, perhaps the difference with force when you are a child is that there is no violence involved while often with the adult mind the focus of the mind involves a sort of violence in a sense when it is contrived and unnatural.

My view is that any spiritual benefit at all from such charity depends on your deep inner motivations (often hidden deep in the subconscious), for if you serve others out of guilt or a sense of being unworthy like many Christian missionaries and even some of their "Saints" do then it would be better off for the world and you yourself to face up to that guilt and lack of worth inside of you rather than try fill that hole in your soul with charitable outward deeds. Perhaps you do such charity to get a sense of moral superiority over other people, or on some subtle level you are expecting something in return like removal of personal karma or entry to heaven, all of which are not pure charitable motivations, because if you do something with the expectation of reward on some level then it is just another form of slavery to the expectation and belief so you are just trapping yourself in the cycle on samsara on a more subtle level . So the only truely charitable act is when you give with absolutely no expectation of reward in any form, but who can genuinely say they are that charitable? who can really give their time, energy and life with no self concern or expectation of reward from their efforts?

I'm not sure one of the jewels is self control, personally having too much self control is a complete nightmare, while self control seems to be the opposite of spontaneity and uncontrivance which are some of the main intentions of Taoism.

I can't believe people in this day and age are still grasping at evidence to try prove that the bible is literally true.

Yeah I wonder if any effort actually helps, because where does the effort come from? more often then not it is from some part of the ego trying to manipulate how other people perceive me and how I feel, so I don't feel "bad" thus it's just another subtle ruse to try to avoid suffering, so any effort just makes things worse It can help to remind myself of a thing the Dalai Lama often repeats which is that all people base their actions on the desire to be happy and avoid suffering which can help bring compassion and perspective to a situation, but apart from that I have found most other attempts in the midst of the world get hijacked by ego motivations and end up causing more stress.

From the recommendations on this forum I have just read "Bone of the master" by George Crane which is excellent and ordered "The Wheel of Life" by John Blofeld which looks really good, can anyone recommend any other similar books or anything you think could interest me like this, im really enjoying these sorts of books at the moment. Thanks

My take is that I think many students idolise their master, they turn him into an all powerful father figure and once you turn someone into a father figure authority you hand your power over to them to a certain extent, so many of these students have already submitted their energy to the master before they even try to punch him without even being conscious of it. While someone who isn't submissive will just walk up to the master and punch him in the mouth like you see in that first vid.

If you could retain inner peace it wouldn't be a very dark night. Just a thought but perhaps trying to cling to inner peace just prolongs the experience

Can anyone recommend any books on the Goenka technique? I understand it is scanning your body but is there any method or path which is advised to take. I have done a fair bit of the BK Frantzis dissolving method of working with the body but for my crazy mind I was trying too hard to make things happen which just added stress, so the Goenka sounds more suitable.

A few people talk about it in this thread http://www.thetaobums.com/index.php?/topic/17794-the-tao-bums-interview-with-bruce-frantzis-march-2011/page__hl__Frantzis__st__16 Also read the interview if you are interested in BK Frantzis, there is a lot of good stuff in there

You were off to the Himalayas a few weeks ago now it's Indonesia, I would make a choice of path soon if I were you or before you know it your life will be over.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwLhXmnbtTM&NR=1 They say this is a mirage but I don't understand who can explain this?

Perhaps they are just learned skills like learning to drive a car or learning how to fix a computer, although they are probably harder to learn and take more concentration they may well be completely irrelevant for spiritual progress. Many such tricks can be done under the influence of hypnosis. If you ever meet someone who isn't afraid to be completely emotionally open and undefended around complete strangers then I bet you would find that more impressive than these party tricks.

In the fourth way they describe people on the path who perform tricks like this as being on the path of the Fakir, which is a path which can lead to some attainment and many extraordinary tricks and body manipulations through the force of the mind, but it is generally considered the lowest path with the least potential out of all the paths available to humanity. There have been many sorts of Fakirs in the east performing tricks for thousands of years but none of them I am aware of have been regarded as spiritual giants, although I imagine it brings in a fair bit of money busking on the streets.

Nice post, can anyone explain to me the meaning of the spot of yang in the middle of the yin and the spot of yin in the middle of the yang? I'm sure I have heard it explained before but I can't remember it's meaning.

Someone posted it on a different football forum, the people there seemed to think it could be military testing of some sort of holographic device, it does look like some sort of parallel world though. It could be a hoax but i'm not sure what the motivation would be.

Yeah these are the traps, you sum it up pretty well. It is quite a relief when I can really see that the past doesn't have to weigh me down or influence the present moment in any way, yet keeping this awareness and really see it all the time and with regards to everything in the mind is the tricky part.

From my own perspective the whole issue of Taoism and neigong is very confusing and complex, many people have turned "secret" qigong teachings that survived the Chinese purge into big business. Personally I don't trust anyone who charges a huge amount of money for their teachings, the whole world is in suffering and in need of healing and if you want to restrict your teaching to the very rich then I doubt your technique is powerful enough to open your heart and if it doesn't do that then what is the point?

Thanks for this, it can help to investigate the source of a problem like described in the video as you can never find it's source so it becomes impersonal, problems are passed down through families from person to person so who do you blame? without a person to blame it is hard to get angry, although I find it hard to maintain this perspective from day to day. I have thought about animals being reincarnated into humans and visa versa which would account for the population changes but I don't know how an animal would get enough merit to be reborn in human form without some sort of extreme luck. Also some animals I would consider already above humans in some ways, they live in the present moment in harmony with their environment and some mammals like Dolphins are more openly compassionate than most humans, if you swim with them they will come up to you and show you love and compassion naturally, while humans are generally too defended to show such open compassion until they know they are safe with the other person, so maybe Dolphins are reincarnated high level practitioners.