idquest

As a rule, when we ask for something, there is a price to pay. For example, asking for something from a devil usually involves a some kind of spiritual payment, like selling one's soul, as saints and christian scholars teach us (I could be wrong here, please correct me then). But is not the same transactional rule apply when followers ask for something from their deities, such as Jesus, Allah, Buddha, etc.? Do people accrue a 'spiritual credit card' liability when asking for things from their deities?

That was a typo, I meant stress training rather than stress straining. Something like resistance training. If qigong works for your balance training - great, this is what you need. From my personal experience though, the insufficient/lack of balance in seniors results from diminishing volume of muscle tissue and a resulting inability to maintain a proper body posture. Everybody has their own muscular-skeleton problems, but generally I'd say building up butt, hamstrings, and back muscles would be a key in enhancing the balance. Taiji is certainly a MA, but what you see when groups of elderly people doing form - this is more like qigong or a dance. Ideally, MA will have a partner training component and this is when resistance training can be tested. To clarify my thought - qi does not replace strength and power. Soft qigong forms are good if you can't do more physically demanding MA forms - this is why ba dua jin variants are so popular among elderly. So judge yourself.

You need some kind of stress straining for body tissues. More accurately, you might not need it if you are younger than 30 YO, but with age, you need it more and more. No qigong provides a required kind of stress training, but forms like daoyin, MA, or ashtanga yoga (the brutal one) can work. If you don't do something like this, you will have two kind of issues: - your qi will stagnate and won't develop internally - your health will deteriorate with time. Walking is a good practice but it is sort of one-sided and does not provide a required spectrum of physical training. It does not have to be MA. it is just that Chinese people developed good curriculum of combining reaching several goals by training MA, so it is sort of time efficient. Speaking from personal experience.

One of the biggest obstacles on the path (and life in general) is arrogance/pride/hubris. This is why it is important to train humility. Quite often, hubris masks itself as pretended humility - this is a tricky one. Damo is genuinely humble. Call him and his school whatever, but he is deeply and genuinely humble, and there are few people like this who walk the path. To clarify: this my opinion of him comes from several personal interactions I've had with him.

No not really - re his question marks. But they are minor. Jesse teaches several sets. I like his 'Washing' qigong set the most. Jesse has a good level of details explaining the movements and general daoist concepts. Whether this works for you - this will depend on what your goals are.

You did not mentioned it and I'm not sure to what extent you are aware, but Damo Mitchell studied with Mark Rasmus for several years, and I believe Damo's real core abilities come from Mark. Often, people get entangled in language of the system and miss substance. Mark does not use daoist vocabulary much, but what he can do and what he teaches eclipses what most 'daoist' teachers teach.

I agree. Jesse Lee Parker has a good curriculum even though it is not very flashy. Jesse has his own question marks, but overall my experience has been good.

TO be honest, my opinion and experience from years of practice is that the LDT development is overrated. If you are into MA, you just need to understand how psoas muscles and waist muscles work. If you are in spiritual development, you need to work on the internal tissues (neigong) and at the same time work on the qi field surrounding yourself. LDT is just a piece in a big puzzle. Of course one might place a lot of focus on the LDT development in their practice, but to what end? As always, all of this boils down to one's goals. My opinion of course.

I've taken several workshops with Damo. One time I was standing in wuji, eyes closed, and then I felt something strange in my kidney area, like something was moving there. After some time, I opened my eyes and saw Damo walking around people and doing some finger transmission in ming men area. It was not a big deal, lots of qigong instructors can do that, but it was certainly very distinct. In any way, Damo stopped doing any transmissions in open doors events after that guy from apricot garden died from failed heart doing too much of faqi. I guess that death had an impact on Damo's approach to teaching. Regardless of all this, I doubt any new students will be able to pull off a training session with Damo these days. From what I understand, he has trained enough qigong instructors for open doors events, and only very few of his senior students can now work directly with him. Just crossed my mind how I was in a class with Shou You Liang and he decided to demonstrate how to emit qi, and for whatever reason he kicked his leg and shot his qi from his young quan towards me. It was not much, and I was not sensitive those days, but there was a very distinct feeling of some weird stuff hitting me. Good days...

The topic question is a good one. For me, the distinction is this: what is the difference between instincts and the will. And what is the will, anyway? As I understand it, the will is something that should come from one's soul. The will is not instincts, and it is not a logical conclusion, for me anyway. As a side note, there was a time a studied a bit of Kashmir Shaiva tantra, and the idea there was that there is no free will at all. I'm just repeating this without full understanding of it.

I don't know, and you don't know for sure. The highlighted part is your understanding and your opinion, but this is not truth. At least this is how I see things. As a minimum, Gods require worship in return, and possibly much more than worship if somebody wants to obtain something from Gods. Hence my initial question. The idea of gold, silver etc as a means of spiritual payment is just ridiculous, I can't understand why this keeps being brought up. As for beggars - I'd say that most people give them money/resources for getting psychological rewards in return, whatever they could be. The psychological rewards are very tangible, mind you.

Yes this idea has been around - that gods want people's prayer energy, and in return the gods might grant something in return. Remembering - this is the kind of energy that could be close to prayer energy.

IMO this is a weird self-rewarding scenario. A lot of people get high when they 'give'. Some people do give without any expectation and condition, but honestly - such people are rare. Same with domestic animals - most people enjoy being a 'master' of the animals, having power over them. Not all people, but I'd say a significant part of them, judging how people walk their dogs in the nearby park. Getting a 'high' from giving - something feels wrong about this one.

Interesting perspective, thanks for sharing.

Care to elaborate? This one is easy - this is just a fight for control and power It is strange that when talking about transactions, people think that transactions are limited to the monetary ones. Monetary transactions are the cheapest in value. I believe that most people pay their mothers back by being emotionally attached to them and in long term family relationship with them. Nobody here talks about dollar amounts, although some people could.

So God wants to have a relationship in exchange for service?