Cheshire Cat

They're not immortals and none of them is chinese

... and then this God of yours would redefine the concept of "motherhood".

Isn't the sacrament an experience? Do you think that for people like St. Symeon, the Eucharist was just paraphernalia? Surely, a spiritual seeker who have learned a lot like you did, he may kind of interpret every symbol and dogma to pinpoint truths and understandings that he gained elsewhere... thus, effectively transforming any exoteric imagery into the esoteric teaching that he found right and true. But I feel that I can confidently assure you that for the traditional christian churches (catholicism and the various orthodoxies), there wasn't a "secret meaning" behind the transubstantiation, but everything was laid out in the doctrines quite clearly. From the cathechism of the catholic church: At the heart of the Eucharistic celebration are the bread and wine that, by the words of Christ and the invocation of the Holy Spirit, become Christ's Body and Blood. Faithful to the Lord's command the Church continues to do, in his memory and until his glorious return, what he did on the eve of his Passion: "He took bread. . . ." "He took the cup filled with wine. . . ." The signs of bread and wine become, in a way surpassing understanding, the Body and Blood of Christ; they continue also to signify the goodness of creation. Thus in the Offertory we give thanks to the Creator for bread and wine, fruit of the "work of human hands," but above all as "fruit of the earth" and "of the vine" - gifts of the Creator. The Church sees in the gesture of the king-priest Melchizedek, who "brought out bread and wine," a prefiguring of her own offering. In the Old Covenant bread and wine were offered in sacrifice among the first fruits of the earth as a sign of grateful acknowledgment to the Creator. But they also received a new significance in the context of the Exodus: the unleavened bread that Israel eats every year at Passover commemorates the haste of the departure that liberated them from Egypt; the remembrance of the manna in the desert will always recall to Israel that it lives by the bread of the Word of God; their daily bread is the fruit of the promised land, the pledge of God's faithfulness to his promises. The "cup of blessing" at the end of the Jewish Passover meal adds to the festive joy of wine an eschatological dimension: the messianic expectation of the rebuilding of Jerusalem. When Jesus instituted the Eucharist, he gave a new and definitive meaning to the blessing of the bread and the cup. The miracles of the multiplication of the loaves, when the Lord says the blessing, breaks and distributes the loaves through his disciples to feed the multitude, prefigure the superabundance of this unique bread of his Eucharist. The sign of water turned into wine at Cana already announces the Hour of Jesus' glorification. It makes manifest the fulfillment of the wedding feast in the Father's kingdom, where the faithful will drink the new wine that has become the Blood of Christ. The first announcement of the Eucharist divided the disciples, just as the announcement of the Passion scandalized them: "This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?" The Eucharist and the Cross are stumbling blocks. It is the same mystery and it never ceases to be an occasion of division. "Will you also go away?": the Lord's question echoes through the ages, as a loving invitation to discover that only he has "the words of eternal life" and that to receive in faith the gift of his Eucharist is to receive the Lord himself. The Buddha described very briefly his experiences and discussed extensively the methods to achieve it. Here, you depict a St. Symeon who talks extensively about his experiences and then says "I have them, you don't and you can't really understand. Deal with it"

No, he's talking about the Sacrament of the Eucharist. "He who eats My Flesh, and drinks My Blood abides in Me, and I in him" (John 6:56). By receiving this Sacrament he become members of His Body, of His Flesh and of His Bones (Ephesians 5:30), and he also become partaker of the Divine Nature, (2 Peter 1:4). Yes, you can definitely experience the sacrament of the Eucharist.

No vatican inquisition at the time, plenty of heretics here and there.

If you like naivety, that means much... ...but if you don't, you recognize the empty words christians use to talk about experiences that they don't have. BTW, he's talking about the SACRAMENT OF THE EUCHARIST. Go, try it and see if the words fit.

Definitely, it's not a state of being. Theosis is a term that could be compared to "spiritual cultivation". Is "Spiritual cultivation" a practice or a state of being?

I find your daoist harshness quite disturbing My argument wasn't based on the veracity of stories, but on the matters of the stories: with theosis you have a very clear theological conclusion about achieving immortality and I tell you, since you show a large degree of ignorance on christianity, that when a christian talks about immortality, he means the real thing: physical body and eternal life. On the contrary in daoism, immortality could mean "ascending to heaven", which is actually to die... or it could mean to live eternally in a physical body. The point that I made is that the theological theory of theosis has no evidence of actualization: theologians love to discuss very abstract ideas like "how many angels can sit on the eye of a needle?" and I think that there's a chance that theosis was one of such theoretical concepts. In fact, there are no anedoctal evidence of people who achieved immortality. On the contrary, the idea of immortality in daoism is born out of anedoctal evidence! And it develops to mean a variety of realizations! As for folk religions, it's evident that an immortal is venerated exactly as a saint... but this doesn't prove that they're the same types of individuals! For your amusement, I can tell you that even Moses ascended to heaven according to the records of Josephus Flavius. But those figures didn't practised theosis because Jesus wasn't born yet. Apparently, the single christian character who ascended to heaven with the physical body beside jesus is... the virgin Mary. But she didn't practised the theologians theosis...

Is Theosis the method supposedly practised by angels, jesus and god? If not, what's the proof of theosis? People who talked about it unfortunately tend to die as mere mortals... "Saint" is a title attributed by the church after the physical death of the guy to make use of his life as an example of christian behaviour. In christian doctrine, everyone has an indestructible soul and one day Jesus will resurrect corpses as well. In Christianity people assume to be already immortals. When you speak about immortality in the christian tradition, you mean the real thing: living eternally in your physical body. There are no accounts of such a thing apart from Jesus' story, but he was god himself, you know... In Daoist tradition, there are stories of people who never physically died. There are no parallels in Christianity.

I'm not aware of stories of christian immortals: maybe theosis is theory(s). A theory without even anecdotal evidence.

In my opinion, it wouldn't because -in a sense- it's aim is to harmonize the body by means of stilling the mind. It's an old meditational idea: you cannot have a truly concentrated mind if the energy movements inside your body aren't properly shaped (for example, the MCO). In the golden flower (Cleary's translation and Wang LiPing translation), the student is instructed to work solely on stilling the mind and not to manipulate the energy system. In the Golden Flower (Wilhelm version - which is imho a later transformation of the original text), the initiate reads clues of a system which seems to be close to the fire methods with actual engagement of the mind in MCO rotations. The bulk of the understandable part of the Golden Flower is this, indeed. But what about the chapter VIII ? Is it about a dantien meditation? Or is it a poetic description of subtle phenomena which takes place in the quiet mind? To be honest, I don't know.

The Golden flower method existed long before the water/fire methods were invented, imho.

What about sufi meditations?

Crowley was heavily on drugs... maybe it was just that.

The quote I'm referring to was supposedly made by John Chang himself to describe precisely what mopai meditation is from a practical viewpoint. He even says explicitly that you mustn't be aware of yourself to be in that form of meditation. It looks to precise -as a description- to be a poor translation imho. I don't want to act as MPG, but I gogleed it: it's page 81, magus of java. I agree. Also, it appears that this form of buddhist meditation was actually "re-invented" in recent times ( https://vividness.live/2011/07/07/theravada-reinvents-meditation/ ).

It's interestingly to notice that, according to the author Kosta Danaos, the Mopai method of cultivation is centred around a trance state at the threshold of sleep. According to the teacher in the video, this would be a bad worst method .

From what I've seen and experienced, this is absolutely untrue. Karma & rebirth is the dogmatic standpoint of buddhists: it can't be proven and if you don't believe blindly enough, you're ignorant...

It seems to me that they're making a lot of money. How could that be "bad karma"? Ah yes... they'll be punished in some colourful hell after this life

So God created man in His own image; He created him in the image of God. (Genesis chapter 1)

Thank you! This one is much more interesting for daoist people https://www.amazon.com/Practical-Taoism-Thomas-Cleary/dp/1570622000

Is there an effort to drop the breath rate in all of that?

Good question. I never understood the general abstract answers that we get from traditions and parrots. Here's my approach. We perceive the breath with two of the five senses: tactile sensations and hearing impressions. Rely on tactile sensations to give a location to your attention and listen to the sound (real or imagined) of the breath to stabilize concentration. @joeblast, I've read your posts on breathing but everything seems so complicated and contrived in your instructions. English is not my native language: maybe it's just that.

It all started with tantric initiations in which secrecy protects the practitioner himself, and the vows of the student protect the Guru. In practical term, when the student talks about his practice to others, he breaks samaya vows which in turn damage the efficacy of his practice. ... and the health and good luck of the Guru. It's something with roots in the magical side of vajrayana. Call it superstition if you like, but imho it works exactly like that. At least, consider that the various tibetan gurus think that this is real. Western students have a passion for breaking samaya vows and the gurus noticed it. Therefore they started teaching dzogchen, a tradition which is free from all this bad karma results and can be sold as a higher teaching. It'something safer for the gurus. Here's the great popularity of dzogchen. But once you try the sweet exclusiveness, you can't go without it... so why not keep the secrecy for the taste of it?

Two more books on the same subject https://www.amazon.com/Daoist-Meditation-Purification-Discourse-Forgetting/dp/1848192118/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1469883870&sr=1-2&keywords=sitting+in+oblivion https://www.amazon.com/Sitting-Oblivion-Heart-Daoist-Meditation/dp/1931483167/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1469883870&sr=1-1&keywords=sitting+in+oblivion

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