Jetsun

If this system develops you as a person and is healing by nature then at some point it should open up your heart and develop your compassion, then you would want to help and heal as many people as possible which is at odds with charging a lot of money. The best healer I have ever met charges less than most of the local Reiki practitioners because he wants to heal as many people as possible not heal just a few but get rich.

$10,000 a seminar!!!!! ridiculous

Out of curiosity why is Kundalini considered female? if what I have experienced is kundalini it doesn't feel very yin

I always thought that Qigong was the movement of energy in your body through movement of the body, while Neigong was movement of energy through the body by use of the mind.

If you felt you had the remedy for the sickness in the world would you not try apply it? I wouldn't say Buddhism is "logic only" but there is certainly a great deal of logic and reason in the Buddha's explanations. Reading a few of the basic Pali scriptures such as the 'Middle length discourses of the Buddha' can give you a good understanding of how the dharma was taught, which was usually in the form that one learned man would come to the Buddha with a certain popular view and the Buddha would correct him and explain why it was erroneous and the learned man would usually leave with a changed view satisfied with the explanations given. There is nothing particularly noble about not correcting an incorrect view out of respect of the persons view on reality, though you have to be a teacher of great skill to be able to do this without stirring up any great resistance or resentment and this is the main reason why the Buddha was seen as so great because he had such a talent to teach and explain the dharma while so many other people before and after him have had the same realisations yet have lacked the ability to really transmit it to other people.

I don't think he did, he gained a great reputation so people went to him to discuss their beliefs and concepts, I don't think he went around trying to convert people in a missionary sense. If he saw a wrong view on reality he would correct it and logically explain the reasons why it was wrong, which he probably felt was his duty once receiving such insight.

I'm not sure where all this dependent origination as a belief system comes from, if people are using it for that they are missing the entire point which is that either the sense of a separate self is independent or it is dependently originated, the truth is either one of these two positions and we are encouraged to find out for ourselves. The only practical evidence I have that it is an important investigation to look into is that the only people I have found who I get the impression they really get what life is about are a few Buddhist masters I met, in that they seem to retain their completely open hearted childhood outlook on life despite facing extreme sufferings, they are the only people I have ever met who I instantly felt were my best mates. The importance of this is that they are like lamps in the darkness showing that another way in life is possible and they consider the investigation into dependent origination important. I'm sure other traditions talk about the same thing they just use different terminology or frame it within their tradition

When investigating the nature of the self the truth must be that it is either independent or it is reliant on causes on conditions ie it is dependently originated, surely only one of these can be the ultimate truth of the self, beliefs aren't important. I have not personally realised any of this but I don't see how you can realise that the sense of a separate self is an illusion without also seeing that it is dependently originated, unless I am missing something they seem to go hand in hand.

My understanding is that a mental grasp of dependent origination isn't enough rather you need a deep permanent realisation of it which then will dissolve your sense of a separate self which is supposedly the root cause of suffering. Many other systems deal with opening the channels and removing tensions but the Buddhist aim is to go for the root tension or corner stone which holds the foundations of all the tensions and blockages in the channels together which is the belief in a separate self, deal with that and the whole structure of blockages which are preventing you from seeing clearly comes crashing down. Even temporary realisations of this are supposedly life changing and deeply healing. That is the theory from my understanding and those people who I have met who are trying to realise this and apply these ideas are the most compassionate people I have ever met which suggests to me that they are on to something.

If you focus on a practice which involves letting go then visualisation is an impediment rather than a help, isn't the saying something like there are thousands of meditation techniques you just have to find the right one for you, just find an approach you can work with.

I relate a lot to what you are saying, this is something I struggle with a great deal too I'd say that one of the best ways of taking responsibility for your suffering is to reach out, easier said than done though

I think it's all about the nature of our consciousness, in effect most of us feel trapped and constricted or unenlightend because we identify with things, but practises like meditation can show that all identifications are groundless, under scrutiny they are shown to be imaginary or created and they fall apart, therefore if we could clearly see that all what we identify with isn't real then we would see that ultimately our consciousness is free already because we don't have to identify with anything at all. The problem is that so many of our identifications are so subtle or so deeply ingrained in our subconscious they are hard to uproot and see them for what they really are. Those people that say that they are already enlightened so they don't need to do anything are missing the point, they are still full of identifications so they haven't made any real meaningful realisation yet, you need to work at removing your identifications and letting go of all you have aquired, well most people do anyway.

I think the media can give you a screwed view of what people are really like, most of the papers and news are full of pure violence, while films and computer games are full of brutality and throw in the regular viewing of hardcore pornography and so much of your input is overly focused on just one dark part of life, whereas in reality (where I live anyway) most people I meet are very friendly peaceful people. After many years of indulging in all this im trying to cut as much of it out of my life as possible as I believe it will help to see things more clearly to get rid of such negative brainwashing.

The problem with student master relationship is that it can just be a re-enactment of child parent relationship which is just a repeating the patterns you are trying to break free from. I was recently reading about the psychologist Steven Wolinsky who had studied under a few traditional master relationships where he would do anything the Guru says, but when he met Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj and tried to treat him with the same dynamic Maharaj immediately replied saying something like "I don't play those sorts of childhood games" and Wolinsky immediately knew he had found a master who genuinely wanted to set him free

There is nothing wrong with expressing anger in a controlled way when you feel like you have been faulted, I don't put trust in any approach which says otherwise.

Yeah it would be egotistical of me that's why I said I don't know what level anyone is on, but maybe not of someone who is a teacher who knows, I guess it depends on whether you trust the person giving you advice really knows what they are doing. If I had found a teacher I implicitly trusted a long time ago I would have saved myself years of wasted effort

They say that the two main fears that babies are born with are the fear of falling and fear of loud noises, nearly all the others are learned so theoretically can be unlearned. In terms of what is possible to make conscious there are some Yogis who have made their automative mechanisms of their body like their heart beat under their conscious control and people like Bruce Frantzis can flex his kidneys at his own will, so it is possible to bring these automative things from the subconscious into the light if you want to, what use it is is another matter. Uprooting the emotional and psychological stuff is much more useful and important in my opinion.

I don't know the context of this thread or the level anyone is at but in my own experience when I first got interested in this area of spirituality I tried jumping into the highest meditations and tried to learn about all the highest practices I could find, reading all the advanced texts and material, but after many years of getting nowhere I have had to admit that what I need is work on the real bottom and foundations of development, which was and still is hard to face. All that I learned about the higher stuff may well serve me in good stead in the future but without healing and work on the level that im at right now it's not much use except as motivation. Seeing a psychotherapist was quite good at cutting through all the bullshit, I would do some high meditation think that I was developing some advanced spiritual attainment and balance but then when I would sit infront of the psychotherapist I would revert back into my usual confusion almost straightaway as he could see through any pretense quite easily which showed to me that I had got nowhere. But back in the day if anyone had told me I wasn't ready for a teaching I would have thought they were just trying to put me down and stifle my development so I wouldn't have listened to them, so it was something I had to learn myself the hard way.

Repetition is basically a form of hypnosis or adding scripts to your subconscious which can have it's benefits but its like if you add a load of extra programmes to a computer eventually you can get crashes and conflicts in the system. A better method is removing or letting go of your scripts in my opinion. Essentially all the triggers and charges of your subconscious are held in the tensions of your body so if you can soften and dissolve your tensions subconscious material can come into your consciousness and you can let it go. You can never let go of memory but you can remove the charge and your identity from memories which then liberates your energy and prevents you from being taken away by its trance. There are many methods to do this, the Water Method is one, in SF Jane's books she describes how one time working with dissolving her face she re-experienced being stuck and could even re-feel the hand on her cheek yet with the dissolving the charge could be released and so the memory became a normal memory rather than one which was traumatically charged which triggered anger or fear. It seems to me that working with body is key to bringing your subconscious into light if anyone has any other methods I would be very interested.

Nice topic. My contribution is I think the theory of karmic rebirth is one designed to brainwash people into being submissive so they don't revolt against the top 1% of society who control nearly all the wealth, so the population feel completely responsible for their lot and don't try to change an unfair system. Also I think there is a condradiction between the concepts of karmic rebirth and Buddhist concepts of emptiness yet Buddhists seem to freely accept both concepts without question.

I have been doing the Water Method and some other more Yin based healing methods on and off for some time now trying to get my nervous system to let go and relax, but after reading some of SF Jane's book and BK Frantzis material it seems this method was good for both of them because they both appear to be hot heads, outwardly aggressive, Yang type people. With their already strong Yang and anger the Water Method would cool those flames and bring balance, but what im starting to wonder about myself is that is doing a Yin healing method still good for someone who is already perhaps too Yin? As a symptom my body sometimes gets too cold after doing the method so I have to go and exercise or walk to counter that, perhaps that is a bad sign? Most of the healing methods I have encountered seem to be Yin methods which allow you to soften up but are there any god Yang healing methods around anyone knows of? Does healing always have to be Yin by nature to soften your defences and relax rather than hold on and fight? Has anyone ever attained healing through doing an aggressive Yang martial art of some sort?

Ah yeah i'm getting my Ashtanga's and Iyengar's mixed up. Thanks for the info on KAP I will look it up

Is KAP a form of Yoga? can you direct me to where I can get some more information or links about it? I tried Ashtanga Yoga at one point but I came to the conclusion that for me at least it was too aggressive in that you have all these tensions in your body most of which are psychological in nature and forcing them open doesn't feel as natural or as healthy as letting them go and softening in a Qigong way. I once got told that Ashtnaga's teacher had two main students and he taught a softer, gentler, more compassionate form of Yoga to one of his students which was never popularised while the other was taught to Ashtanga.

Thanks for posting this I enjoyed it a lot more than the previous ones especially the first part about mental health, genetics and the environment.

I think the problems are largely caused by imbalanced growth of humanity in that our head intelligence has grown very quickly with all sorts of technological and scientific advancements over the generations which have the potential to do much good, while our emotional side or heart has remained retarded. So there has been growth it's just our emotional development has to catch up quickly or there will always be big problems and I guess it is our job in our generation to help that process along and correct the imbalance.