Jetsun

In my view it is a big test of your realisation to be able to express it creatively and spontaneously fresh from the moment and to be able to communicate it to those who are listening. One of the strengths of the Zen approach is that it is big on that sort of expression, so if you have the realisation show it to us from your own lips or actions, don't repeat borrowed dead words from someone elses mouth or another moment, or intellectualise it into something that is already decayed by the time your mind has formulated it. The only problem with that is that sometimes the Zen guys end up doing things like randomly shouting or hitting you with a stick to express what is most appropriate.

The only way to be without emotions is through dissociation, which is a form of internalised aggression aimed at controlling life from the position of how you think it should be, in opposition to being in flow or in tune with how life really is, whether you agree with it or not in your mind. Although there are different levels of emotion, there are those which are generated from our personal stories and thought forms which are like projections or phantoms, and then there are genuine deep emotional responses to the reality of the moment. I remember a story about a Zen master, I think is was Suzuki, who received the news in front of his students that his mother had died and he immediately burst into gushing heaving tears like a little boy, not caring the slightest what people think of him. Some of the new students watched in horror thinking they had come to see some realised master who had transcended his human emotions but instead found this blubbering emotional wreck, yet the more advanced students just told them to watch and wait and after an hour or two the master completely recovered and then carried on with his regular duties as if nothing had happened. He had processed and dealt with his grief there and then, while many people who have similar experiences on some level deny they feel those sorts of feelings at all, then realise ten years down the line that they are still sad about their mother dying.

It takes a huge amount of aggressive resistance against the spontaneous natural reaction of a persons heart for them to not feed a hungry baby. Emptiness isn't empty, that is the minds projection onto what is going on spontaneously in the moment.

Very interesting read, thanks!!

Probably somewhere between the two

Life is always trying to heal you, in a lot of cases it is about getting yourself out of the way and allowing it to happen. If you get stuck in meditation they say in Zen that is the critical point and most useful point, when there is nothing you can do and nothing you can make happen then real letting go can occur, previous to that you are always trying to manipulate reality in some subtle way into the way you think it should be rather than just allowing it to be the way it is.

As I wonder through the desolate darkness, my heart yearns for thee oh comma, why did you forsake me in my time of most need?

From the perspective of the Vortex healing modality, entities aren't exactly negative, even demonic ones are on a path of spiritual evolution, except they can be used by humans for negative purposes. And there are two levels of interaction, the first being connections to them on the astral level which we all have and which we all create ourselves through our own emotional positions; the second is where a person has dense enough emotional negative energy inside of them which attract beings to sort of feed on the energy.Its not something to be afraid of though, all those things get worked out over time in one way or another.

That was my first thought. Any high level Vortex healer will be able to deal with such things no matter their source, whether it is an emotional issue or some sort of entity. I expect they would charge less than $100 for the privilege too. Although we are taught that such things only can attach onto you if they find a hook, so basically they can only get attached if there is the resonating consciousness already existing within your field which allows them to find a symbiotic relationship with. Many people could clear such an entity, yet without clearing the consciousness which created the problem they are likely to return.

I think sexual repression and shame is one of the greatest barriers to the realised life, while for many celebacy is just a continuation of this neurotic attitude to sex, but dressed up in spiritual clothes.

Sounds interesting, yeah there might be others, infact near me there is a Steiner school which follows the theories of Rudolf Steiner, i don't know how they teach but he had a lot of esoteric knowledge so it is likely to be better than most of the other schools around here.

There is this revolutionary school started in the 1960s in the UK called Summerhill where there are no rules, attendance for lessons is optional and all people staff and students are treated equally. Most of the students had been expelled or had problems, but they say that in the end all of the students attend all their classes because they realise that they are free and no longer being pushed around. Apparently the kids do quite well and develop more rounded characters where they arent intimidated by authority or hierarchy, which gives them more self esteem when they aren't looking up at people all the time. Its probably the only non aggressive school in the country.

I'm not afraid of death, I just don't want to be there when it happens.

I did find it funny he crashed his car into a joke shop, I wonder if that was on purpose

There are two approaches to meditation, either narrow your attention to a fine point and maintain it to block out everything else, or widen it to taken in the entire universe and include everything. The first often leads to mastery over things in life and powers and concentration. The second can lead to things like enlightenment, peace, openness.

My understanding is that the Buddha tried everything he could to either improve or get away from the present moment, but failed to do so and in that failure he relaxed his argument with reality and awakened.

Yeah I mean more when the student is ready there is no need to hold anything back from them, whereas in the past that might not have been the attitude due to the threat of competition and other things. I agree that there are things that should be kept back until someone is ready for the reasons you say and because people may create some sort of mistaken conceptual understanding from then teaching which blocks their progress.

I read that traditionally one of the main problems in China with the Chinese arts was that masters of a school would rarely teach the full teachings until they were very old because if they taught it all then one of their students would rise above the master and then open their own school and take all the students, so the master would lose their livelihood and ability to feed their family etc. Hopefully that isn't the case any more in the modern day so there isn't the need to hold anything back. Spiritually I heard that was the principle reason behind why the Chinese arts were largely destroyed in China, because too many teachings were being held back which should have been openly taught for the benefit of all. Which is similar to Tibet, in that the spiritual traditions in Tibet were destroyed because they were hoarding spiritual knowledge and power when it should be available for the entire world. So I think any master now who is holding back may not have learned from the past and might be inviting some bad consequences for themselves.

I think all sorts of blockages can stop you from following your passion, especially those around fear, so it could be related to the root chakra area as much as anything else. In terms of the heart with Vortex it is more about going into the heart to wake up and then if you do wake up I have heard that it can make you realise that nearly all of your previous motivations derived from conditioning and aren't much to do with you at all. I heard about one doctor who woke up was bed ridden for six months because he didn't have the motivation any more to do anything, as the new motivation for life from a deeper place hadn't emerged yet. So I think its hard to predict what removing some of these blockages will do

I'm starting to think I might just be conditioning, which is such as disappointment. I had all these dreams about me being some sort of superior advanced being or at least becoming one I will have to settle with me being the entire universe and all of existence instead , but the problem with that is that there is no other to feel superior to in comparison .

I like the sound of that. How about .. Hairy gorilla fist neikung Celestial obese mountain goat qigong

I was opposite to you in that I didn't have any obvious interest in deeper truths until I got anxiety and my ability to achieve what I want in life in the regular world was eroded, then I went looking for solutions and deeper truths. I spend years trying to "fix" my anxiety with spiritual methods and it didn't help because I was struggling against it, it becomes like quicksand in that the more you try to get rid of it the faster you sink. Which is the same principle with spirituality and trying to transcend the ego in my view in that the more you try to change or get out from where you are at the more you become entrenched there. I have an aversion to new age stuff too, my father is a scientist in the Richard Dawkins mould who would probably think I was mad if I told him about it, so I barely mention it to my friends and family as it does sound very new age and unbelievable. But I can't deny my experiences, it was with my vortex healer that I had a glimpse of what is meant by waking-up or awakening and it is only now that I have any sort of understanding of what is meant by terms like "divine" and "spiritual". The specific benefits I would say are less struggle in general, my body feels less tension and I can concentrate better, since I started with it I have changed many aspects of my life such as leaving a job I got stuck in and going back to university and maintaining a personal relationship. I can't put all of that down to the vortex as there were all sorts of other things going on but it all came after I started the healing. The main reason why I think it is effective is because most of the healers are awake in the same way Jeff Foster and the others describe, so from that space a lot more is possible, also there is the element of them bringing in not just energy into issues but also divine consciousness, they also work on the karmic body which very few other healing modalities deal with. Also Amma is another one I would have had a natural aversion to a few years ago, the idea of going to a place where they all dress in white and worship a woman like a god did not appeal to me, yet I can't deny my experiences with her either, and now believe she might actually be some of the things they say about her, like I believe she might actually be an Avatar living in our time, so I would recommend going to see her.

The most powerful guy who I would put in the credible category is Dr Yan Xin, who had the skill to heal huge halls full of hundreds of people at once, so his system looks good. Another guy who seems to be teaching powerful stuff is Wang Liping. There are plenty of other systems and guys who have all sorts of mythologies and amazing stories woven around them, but I don't know if those stories are true or not.

I got into this stuff for similar reasons as you and with similar intentions, basically over the years I tried loads of things Taoist and Chinese to try deal with things like anxiety, but none of it really helped. In this area there are all sorts of con men and people who promise things in order to sell their system to you and many genuine people who promise far too much or present their system as some sort of cure all solution to all your problems, so you have to be careful not to be suckered in. Many of these guys seemed to have studied marketing as well as Taoist arts, but the most convincing writer with regards to how Taoist systems can help with mental health I found is probably Bruce Franzis and his Water Method books, yet I tried his system for six months and it didn't help much. One guy I like is Chunyi Lin who is a legit healer so if anyone wanted to try something Taoist I would recommend his system, although it didn't work for me. I think the main reason why these systems didn't work for me is that they aren't very good at getting to the emotional root of problems which is where the majority of major blockages and mental health issues are located, you can move energy through meridians like flushing water through a pipe which can have a basic healing effect, but unless you tackle the emotional consciousness at the core many patterns wont shift, which is where many of the Chinese practices are weak in my view. I was reading recently about a woman training at Wudang mountain who described the way they train as more like Spartan training where vulnerable emotion is often looked upon as weakness and the ability to control your feelings as strength, yet in reality that approach involves a lot of repression and inward aggression, so not ideal for your mental health. In that respect I think basic psychotherapy is probably better than most Qigong for a lot of mental and emotional health issues. The thing I then found which is working for me is a lineage called Vortex Healing, which on first inspection looks like New Age thing like reiki, but so far I have found it the deepest healing modality I have tried. It actually can go to incredible depth such as clearing karmic patterns, genetic history, trauma held in the organs and tissues of the body, clearing out all sorts of conditioning. While also it is a lineage whose main purpose is to facilitate non-dual spiritual awakening like what Nisargadatta and Ramana talk about, yet with Vortex they heal problems as means to clear the path for awakening to happen and then help embody it if it does happen, helping to clear away the lifetimes of old conditioning which still remains in the system after awakening. Other things which might help are things like the Work of Byron Katie, which looks simple but is like CBT on steroids in that the reversal question at the end can really reveal a lot and turn things on its head. Also one of the deepest healings available to anyone is to go get a hug from Amma, unconditional love has the potential to shift many things.

The issue isn't that it is too hard, it is that it is too simple. The mind the ego wants something to do then it can claim the result as its own, as a victory or an achievement. Yet if you just allow everything to be as it is then everything unravels and is revealed.