Jetsun

I'd like to hear your reflections too CT. I do wonder about the energetic impact of the practice of giving and taking, if you examine the physical posture of monks like the Dalai Lama they do physically look like they have a great burden on their backs like they have taken the worlds suffering on their shoulders, which may have a detrimental impact the meridians and nerves of the body, but then their faces are usually smiling and free of tension so it is a burden they can carry without seemingly being detrimental to their cultivation. Or maybe that just applies to the Dalai Lama because of the extra responsibilities he carries he has a greater weight on his shoulders than others. But I imagine if you can meditate on emptiness with ease that meditation would purify anything you may have picked up or have become attached to so there is no need to fear anything you may absorb from others as it's nature is emptiness anyway and will return there in meditation.

Someone mentioned in another thread that their master got cancer he believed as a result from trying to heal other people and it ended up killing him, so there are a few of these stories around, it is always hard to directly conclude a direct cause and effect from these situation though the people involved may have got sick anyway. I think the intention of the Buddhist Bodhisattva is to take on all suffering of others including their Qi and Karma and illnesses no matter how they manifest, so in a sense it is training in fearlessness to be prepared to be that open while the Taoist approach of storing appears to be more contracted and fearful. But yet the Bodhisattva is not usually applying any sort of direct energetic healing manipulation so maybe the Taoist if they are healing they need to take the more cautious approach, but if they are not directly healing then maybe it is not required.

I was hoping it would be today but unfortunately all I found was a pain in my back, I will try again tomorrow

Yeah ego is a pretty loaded term. I think much of your persona can be seen through so you can see that is not a such a serious thing worth fighting for, so you can relax your psychic structures so they are not as rigid or prone to absolute beliefs but you will always have an individual personality I think even if it loses it's form in meditation it will re-emerge in life in order to serve you. In daily life you need to navigate distinctions and preferences in duality even if the ultimate reality is oneness and non duality. I have never met anyone enlightened or know of anyone living who is enlightened so for me to believe in permanent enlightenment it would have to be a faith based belief, I have met Boddhisatvas though who can genuinely give without expecting any reward in return and live through their hearts, and that seems to be the essence of where it's at from what I have seen so far in my life. Perhaps I shouldn't say that I don't believe in enlightenment though as that may exclude it as a possibility so I am open to it as possible but I have not seen any evidence of it so far. I have been told that I am already enlightened but I need to go meditate to see if it's true, i'll report back once I find out.

According to Nan Huai Chin all the energy manipulation, healing and siddhi type powers people can develop through practice are low level powers still within the desire level of development, so if they are still in the desire realm you shouldn't expect them to be particularly well emotionally developed.

I find the White Skeleton meditation really powerful, but it is probably more Chan than strictly Taoist, but it will lead to good results and is easy to instruct for a group. There are better instructions online but basically you sit and imagine all your flesh and outer coating is coming off your body and you willingly compassionately give it away to those that want or need it, then you start to feel your bones one by one starting with the big toe on the left foot and imagine the bones you feel are lit up with a bright white light, so you work through left foot then right foot, left leg then right leg, all the way up to your skull until you are a complete bright white skeleton, aquainting yourself with a picture of a skeleton can help locate all the bones. Then the important part you now imagine all your bones turning to dust and being carried away on the wind, I start with the feet upwards turning to dust, then you rest in emptiness for as long as you can not attaching to any thought or sensation. Then at the end dedicate your benefits to others. I find this meditation has many aspects rolled into one and allows letting go and finding a calm detached state of mind very quickly and easily, its also a very old legit meditation not a new age one.

I don't believe in enlightenment, I think there will always be an ego but the spiritual process is about making it a servant to your heart rather than a master.

If someone has a wider compassionate intent you can assume it comes from a place of maturity, recognising that isn't always easy especially when it comes to tough love, but if someone is narcissistic then you can assume that stems from a lack of emotional maturity. There are plenty of "masters" who I think lack emotional maturity because they put their own egoic needs ahead of the wider compassionate perspective. Oldgreen's thread talks about this quite well http://www.thetaobums.com/index.php?/topic/18274-spiritual-maturity/

There are two different levels of compassion, the limited or relative and unlimited. You can overcomplicate these things though, unlimited compassion is just having a completely open heart which radiates compassion like a lamp over all those who come under it's influence, and every human has this heart already within them right now but its radiance is filtered through conditioning and ignorance which tells you that some things deserve compassion more than others and creates fear which contracts it's radiance. Emptiness or absolute Bodhicitta equalises all things which cuts through ignorance and fear so there are no barriers to your heart, yet this state is certainly not limited to Buddhists, many other paths lead to this point.

Some people get possessed on purpose such as Shamen and Oracles, so possession doesn't have to be a negative thing, it might be a talent of yours and can help get information and predict the future. The Tibetan government still employ state Oracles who helps them out with state affairs and advice on occasion

Exactly, the Buddha only gained enlightenment when he gave up asceticism

I have heard that if you find a partner who is also a cultivator you can help each other wake up, as long as you don't think you own the other person and don't expect them to make you happy I can imagine such a relationship could be very benefficial spiritually, now where to find such a woman is the question.

Perhaps the terminology is the best available to describe the techniques , but if possible I think you are more likely to connect widely to the public by changing your own mental frameworks to communicate rather than trying to bring the public into your own. An example of this is if you read books by modern Buddhists like the Dalai Lama they now reference a lot of their work to psychological studies and neuroscience and have cut back with a lot of the more obscure and mystical Buddhist terminology, so they are using skilful means to try to bring the Dharma into scientific Western culture by trying to communicate about it within existing Western mental frameworks. I don't know if it is possible to do this with medical Qigong as most Western people don't even believe in Qi which is quite a big stumbling block to get over, and many Taoist techniques may be too poetic in nature to frame in such cold logical terms. But maybe certain aspects can be explained further for example if you talked about the medical qigong healer in terms of being a human biofeedback mechanism which can send different signals to diseased parts of the body disrupting feedback loops it might be understood better. I may try to write that boring left brained book about it myself if I ever become a healer.

Do you have a link to the video? There is a big difference between treating some physical problems and emotional problems, with physical issues you may be required to cause dramatic physical realignments in the body which may cause an enormous amount of pain and require a great deal of force from the healer, but you can't automatically take that same mindset and force when dealing with emotional problems.

It's the modern Western mindset that you can just blast out your emotional problems with brute force, which is why Western medicine tries to attack and cut out problems rather than understand and naturally heal them with compassion; if you have a personal problem attack it and destroy it, if there is a problem in the world drop bombs on it to try get rid of it, there is no subtlety involved and unsurprisingly it usually causes more problems than it solves. It's like using a big blunt instrument to try to deal with a very sensitive, complex, subtle problem. The best healers do have power and force and can give people tough love and pain, but they also have great sensitivity and softness when required, like Lao Tzu said "The softest things in the world overcome the hardest" "Water overcomes stone".

I think if you want mainstream acceptance of Taoist medicine it first needs to be explained more thoroughly to the modern Western mind, to the average person most of it probably sounds like mystical mumbojumbo, terms like "sick Qi", "listening", "non linear" wont mean anything except to those who practice. Bruce Frantzis does quite a good job communicating how his techniques can heal using more familiar language and psychological understanding but I don't know if it is even possible with other Taoist medicine whether it can be explained more rationally due to the fact that it isn't dealing with that part of the mind. The other option is to use things like brain scans and neuroscience to show the benefits like many Buddhists are now doing. Without this there is no way to distinguish it from all the hundreds of other alternative therapies out there.

Is this book any use for beginners or those without much knowledge of Taoist alchemy terminology? I have read many Taoist books but I did not recognise any of the terms used in the contents. Is it more just a training accompaniment book or does it stand alone without necessarily needing personal instruction from the teacher?

Are there any videos which are not uploaded by Garys own website? If his method is so good I would expect there to be. I am not a healer myself but I have been investigating emotional healing methods for about ten years from many different angles, I have had healings from dozens of healers including some "famous" ones and tried to understand their principles and read many books on the subject and from my current understanding I see it as impossible and ludicrous that he believes in one session he can wipe any person clean of all their deeply ingrained emotional issues. Even modern neuroscience says that is rubbish and if you believe in karma he would have to be on the level of Jesus Christ or a Buddha to do that. No decent healer I have found would claim such a thing as there are so many factors out of the healers control. The whole idea that you can somehow aggressively attack these issues to get rid of them contradicts everything I have learned, which is why I feel I can speak with some conviction on the subject. If he heals and helps some people that is great but I don't believe he is a miracle worker.

The whole problem of emotional healing is that you need to do it without triggering the persons defences or you get nowhere, so with the really raw vulnerable emotional issues only a soft nurturing energy will be able to penetrate it, you can't force your way through those defences aggressively without traumatising the patient. Which is why the best healers are more like soft artists rather than hard warriors. Trying to aggressively blitz the issues from someones body simply will not work with those sorts of tender emotional issues, so it is of no surprise to me that Mother Ayahuasca could get to the sorts of depth Clyman could never get to.

Not the ones I have watched. Every single video I have found on youtube is put up by Clymans website and are not spontaneous messages of gratitude, the people could be paid, his friends, his students. People in the modern age want instant miracle cures without putting in the long gruelling, disciplined practice required to purify yourself, Clyman is smart and knows this $$$$$$$$. If anyone on the Taobums who has personally had this treatment and can testify that is is a miracle worker then I might reconsider but from everything I know personally about healing I am not buying it at the moment.

I'm still sceptical most of the videos come from his own camera straight after the he's done the technique, has anyone here had it done and can testify to this miracle technique? I went through a period of seeing many healers and straight after the sessions sometimes I would feel great and like a weight lifted off my shoulders, sometimes even weeks later I would feel good until a stress happens and a the old issues flare up again. After one Zero Balancing session I felt the most grounded I had ever felt in my life, but all the benefits proved to be temporary. Many healers know what points to press to temporarily remove stress and even faith healers can generate the healing effect just from placebo and through the force of their personality. A good healer can release a lot of physical problems in one session but to wipe you emotionally clean no chance, maybe i'm just cynical but my bullshit detector goes off around Clyman.

I have not had the technique but I have been looking into healing methods for many years and usually anyone promising miracle cures are snake oil salesmen. Can anyone who is not associated with Gary Clyman testify that it really does what he says it does? I don't believe a word of it to be honest, because long term emotional and psychological problems create grooves in your mind/energy which take a long time time to adjust and heal, science has even recognised this with studies on neuroplasticity showing how these grooves and habits which cause a lot of our emotional problems are formed and strengthened over time, so how can a one off treatment "wipe your slate clean" in just one session?... he would be the greatest healer the world has ever seen if he really could, but people will pay big money for the possibility of a miracle cure so there are plenty of people who promise it.

Yes this is even being recognised my mainstream trauma experts now, the theory is that when a trauma is overwhelming or we don't want to deal with it our muscles and fascia contract to block off conscious awareness to the energy of the event so it is stored in our body in order to be deal with at a later time or controlled so we don't express it at the time. So it is not the trauma itself which causes the physical symptoms rather it is our reaction to try to control or deny the trauma which can cause our body to contract around it which can cause pain long term. I don't think there is one place where trauma is stored, I know of one person who was having bodywork on their legs and it brought up a traumatic episode from their childhood when they had to run away, another person had the traumatic memory of being slapped by their mother in their cheek (and could release it using Taoist methods).

Why emphasise respect of women ahead of men? Is yin more worthy of respect than yang

I can relate a lot with what you say, I think one way to get out of your head and allow it to let go a bit is to work with your body meditatively, I generally find most qigong and yoga etc to be too forceful in this regard as you move your attention around too quickly but there are others which I think are more effective like vipassana, White Skeleton, inner dissolving meditations. There are some Christian methods for this purpose too. I think if you are very cerebral completely letting go all at once is very difficult, you are better off doing it slowly by balancing yourself towards your emotional centre first in my view, if you can centre yourself in your heart then it is much easier for your head to let go.