Jetsun

Sounds great, do you have any more information about this or any links to sites or books? I have been doing a lot of walking recently and it would be good to be able to do a good walking meditation

Well shit Michael, that is discouraging. I think that is true, of course each person is unique but psychological issues can be very complex and in my experience there can be issues like secondary gain involved in many of them where you simply don't want to let go of them for whatever reason so even the most powerful qigong in the world wouldn't shift it. Or if you are using Qigong to try to get rid of part of you out of non acceptance then that will only stress you out even more and could even make you more sick. I did Qigong from a place of self hatred for many years and it only made things worse as I was trying to force change myself, but I think you only change when you allow things and accept something by letting go of your resistance to it, then change occurs naturally.

Thanks for the tips, I didn't do the full closing in it's entirety yesterday perhaps I will try doing it on it's own for a few weeks and report back. I have been trying to do grounding and bought one of those grounding straps to connect to the earth point in the plug but it seemed to make my sleep worse for some reason, but nothing beats physically touching nature for grounding.

It seems like to me that the mental fog is caused by nervous system overload and there is a sharp energy in my body, for example I sometimes get a shock by simple things like a sudden hand movement or even someone saying my name unexpectedly seems to activate this energy or shock and my body jolts. I did Stillness Movement meditation last night from the book and the energy was shooting around as fast as lightning causing my head and neck to twitch around, it feels like a loose wire of electrify just firing off in my body, stillness movement feels better than many other qigong/neigong I have tried as it's not forcing anything to go anywhere so it's not violent but still it seems to charge this energy and nerves which can cause a negative reaction.

The Trauma Release exercises in the other thread are quite good for grounding, I thought Taoist energetic exercises would be good for this sort of issue but it seems like they can overstimulate the shock energy in the nervous system, which can cause a negative reaction

I am a grand master at the breathing out part

Yes Jung was interested in Taoism, he was one of the first westerners to talk about "The Secret of the Golden Flower" text which he had translated, but yet if you examine his work it is more influenced by western alchemy and gnosticism, whether those traditions were influenced by Taoism is another matter but personally when I read some of the gnostic scriptures they feel Taoist in nature, so it's possible it all comes from the same source at some point in history.

Do you have any experience with or know if stillness movement can deal with the issue Bruce Frantzis calls "fog" in his Water Method books ? where you dissociate and it's like your mind is in mist and you don't know your way out. This is a big issue of mine.

I think most people are energy vampires, the more holes they have in their energy the more they try to get them filled by trying to manipulate energy out of other people because they have no idea how to repair them themselves so they look to the outside world Loneliness is a difficult issue though because it goes right to the brain stem in our evolutionary development when we used to live in groups when being ostracised would probably mean death, so it is one of the hardest insecurities to confront in my experience, I don't know for sure but I imagine it would involve many different areas like the kidneys, heart and throat.

They are all just maps but the maps aren't the territory no matter how complex they are. I'm sure the Buddhists weren't the first to create such a map and considering every person has a mind I don't see why Freud would need to rip any ideas off from anyone, he could just study the people around him and study himself to create a map of the psyche, which is apparently what he did with the aid of hypnosis, it's not that hard to conceive is it?

My understanding of Taoism is it is a way of being un-contrived, to apply this to posting on the internet would be to just post what's on your mind, your first reactions, not to censor what you reply, not to go back and edit it and if it offends someone you are better off apologising for that after the event rather than micro editing your interactions with people, which is just a form of contriving your reply into an unnatural response trying to create a contrived image rather than trusting in your spontaneous response. I'm still working on this myself, if working on being un-contrived is even possible

Yes maybe the more robotic society becomes the more potential there is for awakening because the unreality of it all becomes too glaringly obvious for those a little bit aware not to notice

Yet Buddhism is not so hot on dealing with problems from your early years of development, so at least psychology is trying to tackle this area even if it's not hugely successful at least it's trying, so it's not all about money it's about trying to relieve some of the worst sorts of suffering. Buddhism is about transcending a mature ego, it already assumes the ego you are working with is relatively mature without developmental issues, but what happens if you don't have a mature ego? one of the few places to turn is psychology, Ken Wilber explains in his work pretty well why this is the case and recommends western psychotherapy ahead of meditation for a lot of people.

I guess what i'm saying is that most people grow up to identify with the mask/persona as who they are rather than their 'true self' or complete ego.

As a child you develop an ego to survive in the world and to do so usually involves identifying parts of you which are socially acceptable to the world and parts which aren't, and those which aren't acceptable are cast out from you into unconsciousness or the dark. So in a sense we all end up fake at some point with a persona which we present as our face to the world and most people remain fake for their entire lives because they never go through the process of becoming a mature adult by reclaiming all that they had to cast out as a child, they never regain their wholeness. The reclaiming of all that from the unconscious is the heroes quest talked about in all the myths, the journey to the underworld to conquer the demons and forces inside of you. Which is why psychological breakdowns and crisis can be such a blessing because they force you to go through this process of maturity, but in the current age without any real understanding of mythology or real psychology they are treated as diseases and a person is drugged up rather than supported through it.

That is more or less what Freud said about people on the spiritual quest, that all they want to do is return to the comfort and oneness of being in the womb rather than face up to the harsh realities of life, they want to regress rather than evolve, which is probably true for a lot of people but not all I think.

I think the 'true self' includes the id, superego and ego if you want to use that model, it isn't just the ego without the other parts.

I haven't, I will check it out, thanks!

In the tradition I study they say seeing other people as robots is the easy part, seeing yourself is the hard bit

That's true, but isn't story telling like in the example you gave another form of hypnosis? you even said the girls were "mesmerised". Or perhaps I am not understanding the concept of ganyang or the magic in your example, I guess you mean the solution came to you from your environment which is the magic aspect of it rather than the actual effect of the story telling.

Most of the magic I have witnessed is a form of hypnosis of some sort and i'm not just talking about tv magic, it usually involves a method of narrowing of the attention of someone and changing the tempo of their blood with a regression to a time when they first received a powerful emotional impression, which then leaves them completely open to the suggestion of the person pulling all the strings and under their power like they are a magician. The scary thing is that the people who really know how to do this can bring you under their spell using the tempo of their speech with a few sudden hand movements in a number of seconds.

The whole world is in extreme suffering, so how to open up your heart without becoming depressed is an important question. I imagine depression would be a stage in that process of opening up while you still have identifications in the world and then you are left with a choice of letting go of all your attachments completely or becoming bogged down with the whole world's suffering on your shoulders.

If only the cure for most of your inner suffering was as simple as lyposuction, I think you are right to intuitively not trust a man who says it is

I'd say a huge amount depends on the state of the individual person doing it and their intent, but as a general rule Bruce Frantzis says never exceed 70% of your capacity.

Working on yourself doesn't work, all you can do is expand your awareness and accept what is