Jetsun

And I haven't seen any Qi power so far which is more powerful than a gun and any old fool can get one of those.

True power is not feeling like you have anything to defend or hold onto, all these Qi guys who spend loads of time trying to gain and store power and energy may just be cultivating insecurity and weakness because they are trying to get and hold onto something which can be taken away from them.

Why is there a ban on negative votes? I thought this was a Taoist forum not a new age one where we have to be positive about everything all the time even if we think its a load of rubbish

Ordinary people don't attain freedom because they don't meditate. Practitioners don't attain freedom because they do meditate.

I don't think its advisable or needed to use sacred plants if you have a working spiritual path which you resonate with, for emergency situations and healing they have their uses. This is coming from someone who spent two weeks in Peru with Shaman taking Ayahuasca. There are so many risks involves, finding a genuine Shaman to work with is essential but they are very rare even in countries like Peru, the majority of those who call themselves Shaman have no real development and are obsessed with money, women and power like most other regular folk.

I think just getting in your body and breath is a heart based practice if done with a soft welcoming attitude, many of your feelings have been cast out of the light of your awareness and live in isolation a lot of the time so just giving them attention is a compassionate act; but your mind and ego is likely to resist this as the feelings you find there could be threatening to your self image, so there needs to be a bit of distance and mindfulness so you can observe the minds reaction without being dominated by it while you feel your body. The Goenka type Vipassana retreats sound quite good for this as you spend the first few days building up your skill of mindfulness of the mind, then once that is established you spend the rest of the time with mindfulness on the body. The method Tsoknyi Rinpoche is teaching his Western students is 'Lungjam' and gentle Vase breathing, which is to scan the body until you find what he calls "misplaced lung" which is usually a buzzy kind of feeling then slowly and compassionately bring that feeling down using your breath to below the navel, he says that most of the problems of the screwed up subtle body of Westerners are due to misplaced Lung in the body, the home of Lung is meant to be below the navel but it gets stuck in various parts of the body and by connecting your mind to it and bringing it to your lower navel and using Vase breathing it brings your lung to its proper home and then gets purified in the central channel. Many of the Taoist practices using the lower Dan Tien probably do the same thing. Christianity is meant to be about opening the heart but I think one of the reason why people are stuck in their heads is because of the shame Christianity has put on many of the emotions, if you are shamed of your sexuality and forbidden to feel things like anger because you are told that you have to be forgiving and loving all the time you create a image of yourself in that mould using your imagination, so entering the body could be very threatening to many Christians to see the truth of what they are really feeling.

Thanks Walker that is really helpful, the wonders of the internet generation always amazes me that you can contact practitioners across the other side of the world to get such obscure information. Fortunately I don't have bad blood pressure at the moment so I won't be adding it in, but if I ever do get it at least I know something which might help. It surprises me that not many people use this method, reading Bodri's books he talks about having to teach it to many monks who's health had deteriorated and had stagnant channels and seems to regard it is quite important, I wonder the reason why many don't use it.

"Most Tibetan people don't have this speed-problem. They have a dullness-problem, opposite problem. In most of the three-year-retreats they sleep. When they come out of three-years-retreat, expert on sleeping! So a lot of "trulkor" works for the clarity. In the West the clarity is quite ok. But if clarity is mixed up with emotions then there is a problem. Anything harsh doesn't work for the body. But a very long time of gentle nurturing opens up. Then the heart is very good. So I think there needs to be a little bit of a new design. But both methods are in Buddhism. We have these standard problems, all sentient beings, wherever we go. But the culture problem, the environment, new problems like restless lung - some countries have, some don't. To feel bad about yourself all the time, like hollow - some countries produce it, some don't. But all have the five poisons; these are the standard for all sentient beings. But sometimes you have to take out this culture-created suffering before you practice authentic Buddhism. Tibetans need more clarity, westerners need more emotional healing. I call it wounded love. In the west it is very high. The love-area is very hurt. Wrong expectations, wrong approach and in order to feel love, you have to have some external thing to love you. I think it is very good to first bring your mind into the body, fully into the body so that your mind becomes emotional, feeling, and sensitive of the body. From there bring the clarity- practice Dzogchen. Otherwise Dzogchen becomes maybe a little bit spaced out. " - Tsoknyi Rinpoche

It is my experience that if you haven't made friends with the emotions in the stuck area you are working with energetics won't shift it no matter how powerful it is. It can help you get in contact with what's there so i guess a lot of it is to do with the attitude you do your energetics with. I imagine throat blockages are quite common, most of us have to swallow a lot of crap and bite our tongue and are taught not to speak our truth through a lot of our lives.

I always suspected the true face of Mara could be Keanu Reeves

The Little Book of Meditiation - William Bodri http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Little-Book-Meditation-Spiritual/dp/0972190783/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1353513079&sr=8-1

I had not heard of that Canon I will look into it thanks. I used to agree with you about Tibetan Buddhism but there are a number of modern younger Lama's who have either lived in the West or taught a lot of Western students over many years who are better able adapt the teachings better for who they are teaching, people like Tsoknyi Rinpoche who I already mentioned, Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche and Mingur Rinpoche seem to understand, or have been forced to understand the differences in their students backgrounds and adapt the teaching to get through to them.

You can get PDF's of most of the expensive ones

Manipulation is a subtle form of violence so nothing spiritual can come of it as the automatic response of a person to violence is to react with defence or rejection. The problem being that often we don't realise we have been manipulated until after it has occurred which just leaves the residue anger inside of us with nowhere to go, so those religious teachings which manipulate guilt are in my opinion some of the biggest evils or sins that exists on the planet as they are just powerful disguised forms of violence which abuse people in the name of what is holy and good.

I usually would agree that if something sounds crazy then avoid it but Master Nan seems to know what he is talking about, he explains it like this "The Qi that stays in the head is the most difficult to release, more so than the Qi in lower body. Once the Qi that stays in the head is fully released, the skull disappears and all kinds of wisdoms may be attained. You see - the real problems all originated from up here in the head, not from down there. The problems from down below are fake ones, they all originated from up here. Therefore all the problems will disappear if the head is chopped off." And even using the basic instructions I have found it a very powerful meditation so I should probably just stick to that, the end result is emptiness meditation which is the intent of most other meditations so as long as it leads there I guess you can't go too wrong even if the method before it has been corrupted from the original. Thanks, so maybe he was just trying to get me to buy his book. I have many of his other books which are quite good but I may yet get this other one to add to the collection at some point, although I have too many other things to get through first.

Go for a run

Yeah true

meh

Thanks for the replies, it would be very interesting to know how the Chinese students were taught the practice. I emailed Bill Bodri with this question and he was kind enough to reply to me very quickly saying: "There are over 3 dozen versions of the skeleton visualization. THE LITTLE BOOK OF MEDITATION has detailed instructions,which is what you want and need. The important point is a stable visualization held in the mind. Each version differs as to particulars." Which is annoying because The Little Book of Meditation is one of the few of his books I haven't got. Does anyone have this book and can repeat what it says about visualising the head inside of the body?

The Masons employ regular people like any other organisation, my brother worked for them for a few years doing their computer databases, so if you have the skills you can probably apply on their website or phone them up, you don't have to be a member or the slightest bit interested in spirituality.

Has anyone practised SFQ for a long time, for many years and can testify to its benefits?

Thats the way they are doing it at the moment while growth is still strong and steady, who knows what will happen when it isn't. Foreign war is always a sure way to divert attention from internal problems. They already have started going slightly insane about some pointless Japanese islands which nobody knew existed until they were told to get angry and outraged about them.

On old DVD players you can put in a code so you can watch US DVDs and on new players you can usually change it in the settings, I have a fair few US Qigong DVDs

World War 3 will start when Chinese growth slows down and their population gets angry when the wealth they expect doesn't come. The Chinese leadership are terrified with the shadow of civil war which has destroyed China many times before so faced with that they will have to choose overseas expansion to drive growth and unite the population against an enemy. This is why the US are already strategically repositioning themselves towards Asia so they are ready if this happens, but I would say this time is pretty far off at the moment though.