Jetsun

If you think of the flow of life like a river your ego patterns are going to cause friction or resistance to that flow, the result of which is suffering, as the flow of life will always win no matter how hard we fight with our ego, therefore suffering can be that signpost and motivator to change and let go of our ego patterns in order to become more harmonious, so you can battle and stress against the river or let go and accept the flow. The further we stray away from the Tao the more we will suffer, so suffering is the essential component which brings us back into balance. In the Fourth Way system they say not only is suffering required for growth but intentional suffering is required, not masochism but rather you have to intensify all your inner contradictions and patterns in order for the suffering they cause you to become more conscious so you can let them go when you see clearly how they don't serve you.

It would be interesting to know if there is a difference at night with energy exchange because at night trees give off CO2 so in a sense at night they are in competition with us and not symbiotic.

This isn't very Buddhist but it is certainly Taoist to tune yourself in with nature, I recommend reading the first few chapters of "The Yellow Emperors Classic Of Internal Medicine" which explains the benefits of tuning yourself in with the rhythms of nature and the seasons, apparently the Ancients were so well harmonised that they had a huge range of benefits such as health, longevity, balance, understanding. Liu I Ming's interpretation of the I-Ching has a lot about this also to do with when to cultivate energy and rest according to the time of the day. Most Buddhists seem less worried about this sort of thing though, I even know some Buddhists do retreats in complete darkness for three years so some try to escape all the natural rhythms completely.

I have heard that as you go through cultivation as your body adjusts to more healthy postures after years of wrong alignment your body goes through a lot of pain as the old patterns and tensions resist the process, which is good positive pain. Apparently this process had a name in Taoism as bone crunching and adjusting or something like that, I have heard the teacher Yap Soon Yeong talk about this process how after a good Qigong or healing session if your bones and body painfully ache that is a really good sign of progress.

Is there some direct linking to this being due to Aquarius though, for example isn't Aquarius associated with water and floods and being too spiritually inclined without much grounding, it's hard for me to see links with Aquarius and things going on in the world like you mention and other things like the Arab Spring and the rise of China. I can see how many new age beliefs and alternative therapies which have become popular are quite Aquarian but they have been around for a while now.

What does the age of Aquarius mean for us?

How does Qi projection treat the mind and spirit of a person? I understand how it can treat the physical if the source of something like pain is due to a past accident, but what if the source of the issue is psychological and the person has beliefs like they deserve to suffer or has a great deal of guilt and shame around their lives? what if they gain secondary gain from the problem and subconsciously don't want to release it? I know if you have a problem for a while it can becomes part of your identity so you may even fight to keep it, I don't understand how Qi projection can help this except in short term temporary relief, surely these issues can only be sorted out by the person themselves. The healing of animal stories are great but it is of no surprise to me that animals are easier to heal than humans because they don't have the developed frontal cortex which can create all sorts of interfering beliefs and life stories which can interfere with healing.

If it is a dark night experience the advice from St John is to just sit with your darkness and negative emotions without trying to get rid of them, just wait with patience that it will pass, which also matches my experience. It may only last a long time if you try to get out of it, but doing nothing is very difficult for most of us when we are suffering.

It sounds like you were given a great deal in just two ceremonies! quite often people have to develop a relationship with the plant over time and go through a great deal of purging before the plant will reveal many of it's secrets. Typically they say you need three ceremonies to get to the depth, the first is more about physical cleansing, the second emotional and the third spiritual purging, so maybe more will be revealed when you have a third ceremony although it sounds like you have quite a clean system already. I can't really comment much on your positive experience as I was not given any one consciousness type experience to compare to but I had similar thing of being caught in mind loops and feeling of loosing my mind, the purging out of both ends can release these loops, you can literally shit out your outdated dead patterns and mind loops. I haven't heard of anyone gaining complete ego release through this, it's more about just releasing what is already dead inside of us, the feeling terrible can just be your soul and emotional issues coming into the physical realm in order to be released, but I wouldn't over analyse things too much what is revealed to you is revealed generally it's not stuff you can work out with your mind.

Celestial influences are many of the forces which imprison us, which shows what we are up against in our struggle to free ourselves as we have to try to even free ourselves from our star sign, which is no easy task. There are other earthly forces that we are bound by like the need for food, water, air and sleep as well as many others as well as many psychological laws all of which rule us. It may be possible to gain such freedom that you are not bound by all the laws we can identify, it is often said that those at high level of cultivation don't need sleep and some even don't need food, so maybe complete freedom is possible in this life.

It seems like while we are alive we always serve something or are governed by something, for most people they serve their ego which is a tyrannical ruler, but then through spiritual work we can gain some freedom from that, but then we still are governed by the heart which may be a better ruler but it is still a ruler and we are not totally free, which may be why some religious people talk about becoming a servant through their spiritual work as we have to follow something to guide us through life. In the Fourth Way system they say in life you have a choice between being an unconscious slave or a conscious servant, which many people don't like to hear as they want to be totally free and not to serve anyone. They say man is always under laws but we can work to free ourselves so we live under fewer of them but complete freedom is not possible while we are alive all we can do is try to free ourselves from fewer and fewer forces acting upon us.

Without spiritual work like meditation most of what you do will come from set in patterns or karma, so I think free will is possible but you have to work for it. If you can witness your old patterns from a distance then you have an option not to go along with it, you are given a choice, but without training in this then I don't see how you have free will if you just automatically react out of outdated frameworks all the time.

I actually think it is a book more for those in the East, for the most part the West is pretty self critical already, in my country probably too much so. Sure it is sometimes easier and useful for an outsider to see blind spots but it is more Easterners which glorify the culture than anyone else which need to reappreciate their own. In Korea for example American culture was fully embraced but in the process they lost much of their Buddhist culture which needs to be relearned as they find they still aren't happy despite material wealth. But essentially it comes down to power, people adopt whatever is most powerful, so as Eastern countries rise again they will start to assert themselves in all areas.

Yes I know of someone who got put on the path by Mother Meera, now he is one of the most open hearted people I know but apparently before he was quite aggressive, then he met her and got a hug and realised there was a different better way to try to be in the world. Apparently she opens up some blocked energy pathways in your back with her hugs, I don't think he was instantly transformed as such rather he saw that he needed to take up regular spiritual practice and make up for the mistakes he had made by helping others, so he retrained as a psychotherapist. From the people i have met I rate the Malaysian healer Yap Soon Yeung, he has healed many people and has students in many countries now, he is humble keeps things very simple and doesn't charge much. The Peruvian Shaman Percy Garcia helped me also and is a powerful healer, yet he also scares me a bit but I imagine the best Shamen are meant to be a bit like that. Plus the Dalai Lama of course, people knock him for his popularity but he is a genuine Bodhisattva and people should go to his teachings and see him while he is still travelling so much as he may stop or go into retreat soon.

I don't think Taoist alchemy is very clear, who out there is giving clear instructions? so I expect people make all sorts of mistakes and wrong turns. I think other paths like Tibetan Buddhism as laid out by Tsongkhapa is far more clear and methodical.

Some say all that matters is that you follow your heart but I think trusting your heart and gut as well as taking into account your mind is probably the best way to go about things. The balance between your lower brain and upper brain is your heart so that is probably where you will find the most balanced answers, yet taking all into account all three is probably best, but not many can achieve such balance.

Bashing Christian culture is popular these days and it is easy to do given it's past and it's association with colonialism but people often forget the positives. I work with a guy from India and he remarked to me how surprised he was when he came to this country how well people look after the disabled and people with learning problems, how much is done to support them and help them in their lives. Charity too is a big tradition, despite our current financial problems in the UK we still give India $500 million in aid a year despite them growing at an enormous rate and having their own space programme; the US too has a great tradition in philanthropy and charity, and the biggest aid and humanitarian organisations in the world like the Red Cross working in the most deprived and dangerous areas of the world are essentially Christian organisations When the Tibetan refugees fled from Chinese invasion many Christian charity workers came to their aid and the Dalai Lama has remarked many times how his own people can learn a lot from them and their dedication to charity. I'm not a Christian myself but if Christian culture is going to be rejected it is not wise to throw out everything just out of principle.

Why do you think he hasn't realised emptiness? his main meditation practice is resting in emptiness, he is empowered to transmit teachings in the highest forms of Buddhism including Dzogchen which requires resting in emptiness. I have heard him say that he is not enlightened and that he is looking forward to death as he thinks he may be able to become enlightened in the bardo realm, but I have never seen him say he is not a Bodhisattva or that he hasn't realised emptiness, infact I have regularly heard him say the opposite.

He is a Bodhisattva, he has spent his whole life living the teaching and serving others, he does often say that he has no great attainment in meditation though but part of being a Bodhisattva is to lower yourself and be humble. But he did say that killing Bin Laden may be a good thing and not necessarily against the Buddhist ideal if it stops him from harming others, so it's not black and white that all violence is always wrong from the Bodhisattva perspective.

I'm only going by what I read on the web but my understanding is the that the 32 parts of the body meditation originates from the Pali Canon meditation named Patikulamanasikara which translates as "reflections on repulsiveness" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patikulamanasikara which is meant for monks as an antidote to lust by including urine, sweat, pus etc in your meditation.

I guess it depends on the circumstance, ideally the Bodhisattva doesn't project any strength or put up any barriers at all as that encourages others to do the same which just creates a defensive fear cycle. One of the principle practises of a Bodhisattva is to break this cycle were all in to show people that it is possible to have the courage to completely open up and be vulnerable and for it to be ok and a better way to live. But practically it doesn't always work like that, the Dalai Lama for example when he was in the UK had two Tibetan bodyguards and was given two SAS bodyguards to protect him, he says they are more for show but he has enemies, it is not compassionate to let others hurt you, many people need the barriers set for them to show them what is acceptable because emotionally many people are still children, especially criminals, and it is not compassionate to let children just do what they want it's good for them to learn boundaries so you do them a favour by setting them.

Yes it seems there are different instructions, the ones here http://www.scribd.com/doc/67064883/William-Bodri-How-to-Practice-the-White-Skeleton-Meditation don't have much of the disgust meditation on the more repulsive parts of the body but the instructions elsewhere do. The more detailed meditation of this type which Bodri teaches seems more similar to the Chod techniques of Machig Labdron rather than straight from the Buddha, so this elaboration could come from there. Personally I found it a good meditation because by focusing on the bones you ground the meditation in the earth element which I find gives the meditation stability so as things come and go I was less easily taken by them and could remain detached more easily, yet I can't find where the Buddha emphasised the focus on the bones his instructions seem to talk about all parts of the body equally, so I wonder where the emphasis on the bones came from.

I imagine many Taoists wont like the conclusion that Bodri comes to that many of their practises originate from the Buddha's meditation on 32 body parts, I wonder if he can really back up his claim. The flavour and intent seems to be quite different as the 32 body parts partially concerns meditation on disgust or repulsiveness whereas I don't know of any Taoist practise with that essence, and even Bodri's White Skeleton doesn't have this essence so even that must be an elaboration on the Buddha's instructions, it is an interesting meditation though I just tried it and it does feel powerful.

The scientific approach is good, essentially the Buddha was a scientist but some aspects of Qigong may not be able to be explained in rational terms at this time, at least not by me, but that doesn't mean they dont exist, the Stillness Movement practitioners may be able to explain better but this other aspect is often described as non linear. For example my personal issues to do with healing have been very accurately read and diagnosed by people on this board who have never met me and live in a different country, you could call this aspect the more Shamanic side as it seems to work outside of regular notions of distance and maybe time, but I don't blame people for not believing in it I didn't either until I had experiences of it. I still don't really believe in distance healing though but I do believe in distance sensing or distance reading of people and other such abilities which arises out of some qigong practice.