Jetsun

I read a book about someone who went searching for the legend of the Bird men http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/161145509X , apparently it comes from the shamanic tribes of Peru associated with drinking Ayahuasca where it allows you to go on a shamanic journey in the body of a bird.

I read 'Waking the Tiger' a few years back, I thought it was pretty good, I would be interested if there is anything new in his new book though. I am currently reading Which is good so far, is a bit long but has a lot of good practical shamanic techniques in it, including thing like egg cleansing and dream re-entry and techniques for soul retrieval.

I meant to start a thread like this the other day rather than derail snowmonki's thread when I said that Chinese approach is very limited in many regards especially when it comes to treating emotional issues. If someone has some emotional trauma or abuse it is dehumanising and reductionistic to say it is due to a say a kidney qi imbalance, there may be such an imbalance but that is only a small part of the picture, yet you get many people in TCM and on this site who think you can reduce peoples lives down to simplistic organ imbalances. This was part of the reply "On the other hand the approach to 'shen disorders' in classical Chinese medicine is a deep and thorough subject, and is NOT simply about organ associations. TCM uses zangfu (organ) theory as it's backbone simply because it was the closest of the Chinese medical maps to Western anatomy. Zangfu has therefore become the main theory that everything in TCM is nailed to. This emphasis is in fact not the way the body, nor the systems of qi were viewed." So it seems that what is regarded as TCM isn't really a very good representation of classical Chinese medicine especially when it comes to problems of the spirit which is such a fundamental aspect of healing.

I haven't met him but I feel the same as you

Nope but I can let you onto my path if you write me a big cheque

As its not the same path which leads to my back garden then it can't be the correct path im afraid, sorry.

I just post so you can all see how wise, intelligent and amazing I am. I have nothing to learn as I am the only one who gets it and sees the truth. I am on the one true path while most of you are just wasting your time. What's that, you think I'm a dick? You think I'm delluded? Well that's just your own projection, its nothing to do with me.

What you call semantics do not appear that way in the Magus of Java, the oath not to make money was a blood oath which was so serious that he couldn't even accept donations when he had cured people of terrible diseases and even had to force his son to give back money that was given to him in gratitude, his family went without meals and starved at times and he couldn't afford to properly look after his family in the way that was expected of him for five years, but he still didn't break the oath.. yet this isssue issue is just semantics. I don't really care what people believe now I am just repeating what is in the book, people can make up their own minds.

Language creates huge barriers in understanding, which is why when writing his own spiritual books Gurdjieff created his own words for many things so you can't attach your own predetermined ideas and project your own interpretation onto what he is saying. Ten people could read a post about Vedanta and each come to a different conclusion about what is being said, even individual words can be confused and have multiple meanings depending on what associations you have running through your mind.

Psychologists have described a stage which every baby and young child goes through they call magical thinking, which is a stage where whatever they want appears, so if they are hungry and scream they get fed, if they want comfort and scream they get comforted, everything they wish for appears as if by magic. Then the child learns as they get older what they want may conflict with what someone else wants, or they may have to work to gain what they want, so things won't always appear by magic just by wishing for them. This lesson in not always getting what you want we all have to go through can be overbearing and repressive so the loa can help free up some of the limitations you have put on yourself but you still won't always get what you want, if you think you can it is just a regression to infintile magical thinking. There is no doubt that using the law of attraction increases the chance of things happening for you for general things, but of course there are limitations, I have tried to use it to get a supermodel girlfriend but it hasn't worked yet, but I did get a girlfriend after trying to use it but she isn't a supermodel. Sportsmen use it too, its one of the techniques of many top sportsmen now to wish for and visualise themselves winning then letting the wish go, but the problem is both sides use it yet only one side can win so it can only work for one out of the two people, so obviously its not the ultimate law some people make it out to be. What you set out to attract may conflict with other people it may even conflict in yourself, then the real work has to begin.

Empty force in martial arts is just an exercise in authority psychology and social pressures, you see all these students being thrown around by their master using empty force because they have handed over their power to him as an authority and will get ejected from the social group if they break the rules of the group. If you don't buy into all that bs you can just walk up to the master and punch him in the face like what happened when that empty force master challenged an MMA fighter and got knocked out in about thirty seconds.

It is very explicit in The Magus of Java that you are not allowed to make money from Mo Pai, it is one of the foundation rules and John Chang and his family lived in extreme poverty for a time rather than break it. So clearly anyone making any money from it isn't connected with Mo Pai, certainly they won't have connection with the spirit of the lineage anyway.

Personally I think Buddhists have the clearest instructions and meditation maps, other traditions have their methods which might be great but they are more of a risk, so out of your list I would start with Jack Cornfield. If you have access to other books the books by the Dalai Lama are often the most straightforward. Or another reliable source is the book 'In this very life' by U Pandita, as this is the book the Burmese freedom fighter Aung Sun Su Chi (probably spelt wrong) used to teach herself to meditate while she was held in captivity, you can tell by her that it hasn't made her mind lax and has helped to give her great fortitude, she never had a teacher either only a few books, this one being the main one she used.

Bruce Kumar Frantzis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Frantzis http://www.energyarts.com/ has put out a lot of Taoist material to do with meditation, Tai Chi, Bagua, Qigong, etc a whole load of stuff. I think his books on the Taoist Water Method are really good.

In my own case I have tried to abide by the rule not to go over 70% capacity and listen to my heart, personally I have usually backed off if I start getting too strong symptoms so I tend not to power through, but I am in a different position than many people because of the condition of my nervous system. Now I don't really do any Qigong at all though as I always end up doing it with the wrong intent, so really being honest about why you are doing it and the intent you bring towards doing it is very important. In Jane Alexander's account of her healing herself using Bruce Franzis Taoist methods she basically says it is likely you are going to get worse before you get better, maybe even much worse, she says on her website that you might have to take out many months from your job and live in less social living arrangements and suffer much worsening symptoms if your condition is anywhere near as bad as her's and you are determined to push through to the other side using such Taoist methods, although she is an extreme case. Others have said that other meditation methods don't have the same effect though so you may not HAVE to get worse before you get better, sometimes the loosening of the knots and tensions can be gentle and easy.

Think I will make another thread to respond to the other issues, don't want to derail this thread any more. Personally I have found many meditations have made me more ungrounded and harder to be around, I wouldnt go as far to say that it was qigong psychosis though. But the issue is that many methods can bring to the surface buried emotions and issues, so they might make you horrible company and angry and give you many dark night's of the soul as a means of purification, so if you confuse this process with unstable practice or psychosis then you may give up before you make it out the other side.

I understand the confusion, im still confused myself, but in the beginning I thought meditation was just one pointed focus so you have your focus and keep bringing your mind back to it and it didn't really matter what the focus was. But my understanding now is that this method in Buddhism anyway is more just a training of the mind in the skill of concentration and then in conjunction with that training you should do analytical meditation too meditating on things like imperminence and karma. So the one pointed mediation method I thought was the whole deal is just part of a wider system, it can lead to some high states and benefits but on its own it is limited and incomplete. I can't really comment on the authors, my advice would be to find someone you admire and want to emulate and then follow their method as then you can see in them your own future if you persist so you can have some faith that what you are doing brings good results.

I bought and read this book yesterday, thanks for the recommendation I thought it was really good and spoke to me deeply, I'm suprised there isn't more spirituality talking on this level of healing trauma as it is such a key issue. It reminded me a bit of Castaneda but I don't think she is a fraud because she is treating clients in clinical ractice, but I was disappointed that she didn't make clear any practical ways we can do the work for ourselves, there was something about bringing memories to the level of your eyes but not much. But I am looking into shamanism methods for this again and dream healing so if anyone has any other good books for this I will be most grateful. I am currently reading "gift of the dreamtime - awakening to the divinity of trauma" by Kelly Harrel , which is similar to the other book, ill report back if its any good.

If they benefit the people worshiping them then they aren't pointless, even if you start worshipping Gandalf from Lord of the Rings if that concept of Gandalf represents an universal archetype in your individual psyche then you can benefit from worshipping him. Jesus may be made up but some people have had incredible things happen to them by praying to him because he represents certain things like compassion and forgiveness, even if he never even existed you can gain benefit by meditating on what he represents.

Japan is much like many of the old European countries, they are like rigid inflexible old men set in their ways, with aging population, low birth rate, stagnation in many areas. It is very difficult for anything particularly new like a new spiritual system to enter these countries. Many people thought the USA could have been this country to create a new dawn, it was a young dynamic country open to new ideas, but that energy seems to have been hijacked by other forces. But such a country already existed in Tibet where something like 70% of the population were monastic at one point, they were completely pacified with no army, no war, little crime and most people working towards enlightenment, but it all came crashing down which shows that the rest of he world catches up with you in the end and levels you out , so it is difficult for one country to go ahead ofthe rest of the world as it is so interconnected, which is why many groups have to be .

The Chinese arts in general have a gap when it comes to emotional issues, instead of dealing with them directly they turn them into physical organ issues so instead of having anger issues you have a problem with the liver, instead of having anxiety you have problems with the kidneys, there is some use in this approach but it is only one pathway which can easily be used by individuals as a way to try to avoid issues head on and as a means of avoidance and repression of what you need to confront, rather than something benneficial for your health. It is only fairly recently that Chinese hospitals even admitted that mental health and illness is something worth looking at. So its worth being wary about why you are doing your practice and your motivations, we dont live in emotionally stunted Imperial China so their methods of maintaing health may not be ideal for your particular situation.

Japan has some of the highest suicide rates in the world, why? because they have a huge cultural issue with shame, which is a destructive, sick neurosis within their society; every society has their demons which need healing.

On the other hand orgasm relieves tension and stress which allows energy to flow more freely through the body

If your complete identity is taken all of the time by your thoughts, emotions, forces and karma flowing through you then you have no free will as you are just a puppet of these forces. If you train yourself to see that you are not these forces and can maintain that awareness then you have a degree of free will, so from that perspective almost nobody has free will as it something you have to work for.