Alcyone

I finished reading a book called: “A jewel in the Lotus” by Danijel Turina. It is the second book in a sequel, the first being “A possibility of the new”. The book deals with the complex subjects such as: Atman and Karman, the accretion theory of karma as a mechanism for evolution and the accretion and transformation of Karma as a mechanism for attaining initiation into Vajra. Apparently, the results of that process are similar to the physical process of a dark body, such as a gas giant, growing by accretion to mass sufficient to initiate hydrogen fusion, turning it into a star! As with the first book, it is available online for free and can be downloaded here: http://danijel.org/fileadmin/books/jewel_in_the_lotus.pdf I haven’t found such concepts expressed at this level of clarity anywhere and I found the book very useful. Here are some extracts of text from the book, in case it sparks anyone’s interest and provides motivation for further reading: Atman and karman “The theory of karmic aggregation states that the entity which humans perceive as “self” is a compound of particles of spiritual substance, an aggregation of karmic matter formed as a result of spiritual choices and actions. Essentially, unlike the classic Yoga which perceives the karmic seeds (karmashayas) as additions to atman which need to be removed, Buddhism perceives atman as an illusory entity created by the aggregation of karmic matter (a concept somewhat evolved from the concept of the karmashayas), stating that there is no “soul” different from “karma”.” Accretion theory of evolution Our “soul” is a karmic aggregate, a compound of all our decisions, bound together by the cohesive forces between the particles. If this aggregate dissociates, the illusion of continuity of the soul's existence will suddenly cease. By development of the positive emotions and mental coherence one is therefore in a position to stabilize his soul, so that its segments start working harmoniously with each other. With sustained and focused effort, the spiritual substance of the soul is transformed, and the amorphous substance of the aggregate, initially resembling weakly bound concrete, transforms into a homogenous, cohesive and monolithic structure. When purification of the soul is complete (meaning the state of homogenous structure and uniformly high energy of the constituent particles), there occurs the phenomenon of cessation of the four elements into vajra, which is the key point of the process of transformation of karma, in a way similar to that which happens when graphite, under high pressure, transforms into diamond, or when the process of nuclear fusion takes place in a stellar core. Enlightenment, according to Buddha, is a culmination of a long lasting process of transformation of karma, of a karmic aggregate that makes a “soul”. It is absolutely not something that is the potential of all beings, and especially it is not a certain event whose occurrence is but a matter of time. Samadhi and the transformation of karman “A Buddha is not just a guy who is in samadhi infinitely. It's more than that. A Buddha isn't human, he's vajra. A guy in samadhi is human. His soul consists of the kalapas of the four elements. A Buddha is pure vajra and four elements ceased without remainder. It's like a black hole, where a whole star collapsed into a singularity point, but in a way where only a portal of a kind would remain in the physical Universe toward another kind of reality, the true kind. This portal, which is no longer a human soul, is mani padme, the jewel in the lotus. Vajra is something that is presence of the Absolute in the Relative, and has qualities of both.” “So, in Buddha's teaching the enlightenment is not switching your consciousness into some state, for instance into a perspective of Brahman , as in the teaching of Vedanta. The enlightenment is not the state of “One” which is “the same in a brahmana of high learning and humility, in a cow, elephant, dog, and even in the lowest of the outcasts”, as Gita professes. That doesn't concern Buddha in the slightest. If asked, this would have been his response: ““Dear Krishna, even if it all were as you say, what is truly reborn – the karma that makes the difference between the brahmana, cow, elephant, dog and an outcast, or the brahman, to which you sing such high and eloquent praise?” Krishna would respond: “Surely, it is karman that is reborn. Brahman is neither born, nor does it ever die.” Buddha would then answer: “If karman is that which is reborn, then transformation is necessary in the sphere of karman, in order to prevent rebirth. The aggregation of karma is susceptible to suffering, disease, old age, death and rebirth, quite independently of its relation to Brahman , which is, under the influence of the apparent continuity of existence known as jivan, known also as the illusory entity of atman . Only in the extinction of karma does the possibility of rebirth cease. Therefore all efforts should be directed into the sphere of transformation of karma, and all activities directed towards switching perspective from the position of jivan to the position of Brahman are to be considered useless for the purpose of liberation, because the attachments that define the karma, untouched by the change of perspective, prevail.” With this, Krishna would have to agree, and would stay with Buddha as his disciple in order to learn more.”” Vajra and the extinction of the four elements “Transformation of the four elements and their cessation in vajra is an extremely intangible and esoteric concept which only a few enlightened ones experienced. Those who have gone through the process cannot explain it to those who have not, because it is a qualitative transformation of consciousness, not a spiritual experience. A spiritual experience is, for instance, when you go through a tunnel towards the light and then you see a spiritual being. This experience can have a transformational quality, but it is essentially just an experience, which means you are the same person before and after. But vajra is something entirely other. In the context of spirituality, Vajra is like expecting a Santa Claus bearing gifts, who will communicate with you on some common emotional grounds, in a “good-bad” context, and instead you are turned into an alien with a completely different hardware for producing emotions, with no glands producing hormones that cause the feelings you are used to, and everything is completely different from anything you have ever read about or heard of, and no “spiritual teacher” you know had ever mentioned it; there is no love, no religious concepts, but there are things you see for the first time, for which you don't have names, compared to which the human emotions and thoughts are but fog compared to a mountain made of bright hard diamond illuminated by inner lightning which is the diamond, the diamond and the lightning are the same substance, described in different analogies. Instead of thought and emotion, you experience hard clear light of consciousness without thought or emotion, with hardness, width and clarity of awareness impossible to human experience, and if you could think, it would be along the lines of “Dorothy, this ain't Kansas anymore, but it's not the Oz you expected, either”. Vipassana, the kalapas and the four elements “I talked to this Buddhist yogi some sixteen years ago (around 1998) in order to compare our respective techniques, and having learned about my technique of the inner space and up-stream kriya he concluded that they operate on the same principles he uses in transformation of karma, with a slight difference in technical realization, since I use the Kundalini-whirlpools to accelerate the dissociation of the compound structures into their basic constituents, while he uses compassion through which he identifies with the karma in question and opens him up towards the suffering it contains. Since similar opening and integration is one of the main elements of my technique, which does the same thing until the point where kriya is activated in surrender to the higher consciousness, I conclude that vipassana, if practiced by an expert and skilled practitioner such as my colleague at the time, is principally equivalent to the technique I developed through experience and effort. My technique contains all the aspects of vipassana, but joined together with the Kundalini-energetics which reduces the directness of contact between the traumatic content and the consciousness, and accelerates the dissociation of the harmful contents with a focused contact with the energies of the higher order.” On the concept of the bodhisattva “The opportunity for attaining enlightenment rarely presents itself, and is to be taken immediately. The concept of renouncing Nirvana in order to guide other beings within Samsara is utter folly. This is so because a being which didn't go through the process of transformation into vajra, which had not been formed by the process of cessation of the four elements into vajra , a being which is not nirvana within the samsara, has no ability whatsoever to lead the others to nirvana. His quality of consciousness is essentially the same as the other beings in samsara, and attempt to guide them would be like blind leading the blind. Only the fullness of nirvana which is present within samsara can function as a magnet which attracts other beings into nirvana. Only the perfect Buddha, the arhat who is pure vajra , can in some form of connection between samsara and nirvana (vajrasattva, vajrapani and padmasambhava) manifest the perfect nature of dharma. Before one is initiated into vajra, teaching means losing coherence of one's own karmic substance, and, likely, spiritual dissociation. So not only that the “path of bodhisattva” doesn't accelerate one on the path towards enlightenment, it actually produces the spiritual death of the practitioner, whose soul will lose integrity if it forms strong connections with others before initiation into vajra. Only by initiation into vajra does one attain the higher order of spiritual substance, defining one's existence in a medium that is an order of magnitude above the basic four elements, and attaining independence of the states of the four elements, which remain to be used only as a means of continued physical existence in order to instruct others. Only a guru made of vajra, vajracarya, possesses distance from the momenta of energy introduced by the students, distance that in fact saves him from being compromised and having his spiritual core broken. The unenlightened ones should therefore never engage in guru-student relationships, because it is absolutely fatal.” “In the meantime, their saints think something along the lines of “Ah, after a million lives I reached the brink of nirvana . I attained liberation from all attachments and the transformation of the karmic aggregate that makes my personality has begun. I realize that my entire personality used to consist of the karmic substance, of four elements bound into compounds, which are now dissolved into vajra without remainder. But alas, the horror! An euglena in the puddle of water beside me suffers due to its hopeless love for some paramecium or another. Seeing its suffering, I understand that I need to return into the world and remain there until all the euglenae attain buddhahood. I will intentionally stupefy myself in order not to understand that new euglenae keep forming due to the source of karmic substance being inexhaustible, making the ocean of Samsara interminable. I will intentionally stupefy myself in order not to understand that rejecting nirvana means to spit into the face of Buddha and his teaching, which stated that it is the only thing worth attaining. In the point where the four elements coalesce into vajra, I will listen to my heart, the fourth of the four elements, thus establishing an attachment/desire on this element, and reject nirvana, thus forming a karmically binding decision which will bind my karmic body with unforeseeable consequences. But when I see the euglena suffering for the paramecium of his desire and lusting after its pulsating vacuoles, desiring to join her and exchange cytoplasm, I understand that my decision to reject nirvana in order to feed my attachment to the beings is of the exactly the same silly quality as its fixation on the paramecium, and I decide I should enter nirvana instead, but since I already made a karmically binding decision on my peak energy level, now I can proceed to fuck myself because I no longer have this order of magnitude of energy at my disposal, and it is no longer possible for me to rescind this magnitude of choice.” Reliance on external means “Buddhism is therefore the way of gradual increase of purity, clarity, detachment and spiritual accuracy. Buddhism is not a magic wand: there is no baptism, or a savior to redeem your sins. Your personal purity is your job; none can redeem you from it, nor would you want him to. Buddha can show you the dharma, but the entire job of developing virtues and removing flaws is up to you.” “Fourth, if Buddha really thought that prayer, intercessions of the saints, blessing of the Bodhisattvas and similar methods could produce nirvana , he would surely have mentioned it somewhere. Instead, he stated that enlightenment is attained solely and exclusively by one's own efforts, and by no external influence. Enlightenment is the result of inner spiritual transformation and has nothing to do with the external influences. Rebirth in this or some other world is equally irrelevant, like prayers, intercession or curses. Buddha attained enlightenment despite being cursed, attacked and showered by illusions of Mara and all his demons. Therefore, the external forces are irrelevant for enlightenment and reliance on them is a delusion and an aberration.” On Gods “Buddhism makes an interesting remark: if you do indeed keep the gods in their exalted position with your offerings, do you really think they will allow you to abandon your position of attachment in which you make your offerings, and attain buddhahood? At the very moment you desire to attain liberation, those very gods you nurtured with your prayers and offerings will become your enemies, and will do whatever is in their power to discourage you from the path of dharma and return you to the position of being the source of their nourishment. According to this, all prayers and offerings are in fact opposed to your best interest, at least in the long run, because you strengthen your own jailers. In order to free yourself from bondage, you will eventually, after having dealt with all other issues, also have to overpower those very gods who grew strong and fat from your offerings.” Death and rebirth: “After the physical death, a man at first finds himself within the subtle (“astral”) body, but within the physical world, and can see and hear people and see his dead body. After this phase, occurs that which I usually call the “top-down sieve”, the process of sieving the pearls through a series of sieves of increasing density. The biggest pearls remain at the top, while the smaller ones travel towards the bottom, until they meet the sieve through which they can no longer fall. The worthless sand, however, travels all the way through, and is discarded. Bardo Thödol describes the process in the following way: A being initially faces the state of nirvana. It is enough for him to decide: “this is my true nature”, and it will be so: he will forever dwell in the all-blissful state of pure consciousness, absolute bliss and perfection of the supreme reality. However, most beings find themselves unable to make such a choice. Exposed to the pure light of nirvana, they feel fear, pain, suffering and horror. Why is that so? Everyone who is adept at vipassana will immediately understand the cause. The karmic aggregates that are exposed to such a high order of magnitude of reality start to strain and dissociate, releasing a terrible amount of concentrated suffering in the process.” “After having ran away from the sight of nirvana in utmost horror, the soul is exposed to the pale-white light of the world of the Devas . If it feels attraction towards the form of existence that resonates with this plane, the longing for the attainment of this form of existence will result in birth at this plane. But most human souls are unable to feel attraction towards this form of existence, either. This is so because life in the world of the gods is a life of truth and virtue, where all sins are immediately visible and cannot be hidden, where it impossible to lie because one communicates by direct insight into the other person's spirit, and most things that humans perceive as the causes of happiness do not exist there. A sinful soul would therefore feel naked and violated in the world of the gods: all its sins and bad intentions would be revealed and obvious to everybody, and all would despise and avoid it; it feels as if the powerful spotlights of truth reveal all its flaws in searing pain and shame. The obviousness of all its lowly and sinful thoughts also makes it impossible to lie to others, to delude them and to exploit them, as it used to in the physical world, and since the beings here are naturally protected from abuse by the very nature of the world, this makes heaven look like hell to the sinful soul, and it would run away from it as soon as possible. Explanation for this is the same as in the case of nirvana– the soul doesn't want to release the identifications with the lowly and sinful structures, and the natural process of their dissolution in the benevolent energy of the heavenly world is perceived as a threat to its spiritual integrity and existence. For this reason, it perceives everything good as evil, as a dark threat to its way of life, and fights it in any possible way, and if it can't fight, it escapes.” “Having escaped the sight of the heavenly worlds, the soul perceives the pale-blue light of the Earth. Most souls, due to the qualities of their spirit, feel attraction for this place, because the karmic patterns that condition them find their natural place of fulfillment there. For instance, it is possible to lie, to steal, to have secret dark thoughts, there are sex, ownership, pleasure of having what the others have not, as well as the coarse sensual experiences the primitive and unevolved souls strongly identify with and perceive them as the only valuable and full form of existence. Experiencing the visions of strongly attractive intercourse of man and woman, the soul is attracted and bound into conception and birth.” Mara “So why do I insist on talking about Satan? Because it is of paramount importance, and holds the key to the final liberation from the world. Without knowledge about Satan, it is possible to attain great spiritual heights, but if you don't know the truth about him, sooner or later he will trick you, he will deceive you with some spiritual concept or another, which will bind you to the world and turn the whole of your spiritual progress into fuel for great attachment and evil. The majority of the traditional spiritual teachings are the result of some trickery or another, which the Devil used to deceive this or that saint, who was spiritually more advanced than you are, with knowledge greater than yours, and who also, like yourself,thought that devotion to God, truth and virtue will protect him. Do not delude yourself by groundless optimism. If Buddha and Jesus had serious problems with the Devil, enough so that they had to endure real temptation, he will not only have you for lunch, but he in fact already did, and when you think that you emotionally or intellectually oppose these ideas, it's in fact him having gas from digesting you.”

I just recently read a book by Danijel Turina called “Possibility of the new” and it was fantastic. The start was interesting, philosophical and very scholarly. Some of the historical facts were new to me, the arguments were useful and it was interesting to reconcile the views of spirituality with those of scientism. Things really started to get interesting at the chapter on “change of paradigm”. From then on my eyes were glued, popping out and my mouth was frequently wide open – either at the sheer beauty and poetry of the words expressed or the newness of the concepts. I'm still trying to make sense of the chapters on Angled shot and Lucifer. But I’ll leave people to read that for themselves: The book can be downloaded for free from his website: http://danijel.org/fileadmin/books/possibility_of_the_new.pdf Below are some quotes from the book, they may come across as a little out of context because I only included sections of the text, but they can still provide a taste for some of the contents in the book. Of course, it’s best to read the complete book in order to get the full meaning. I don’t normal recommend books to people but this one has been really refreshing: Morality of Darshan “Only when the darkness of human existence is stripped away from the soul, and when it finds itself in the presence of God, can one experience that incredible elation and relief, expansion, joy, reality – that is most closely comparable with the power of a nuclear blast, if we poetically describe it as the light that escaped from the bondage of the coarse matter, only in a spiritual sense. You can call this experience indescribable”, but that doesn't suffice, because many trinkets and trivia are indescribable, from orgasm to the scent offlowers. Had you spent your entire life paralyzed like Hawking, unable to move anything but your eyes, and additionally you had a brain injury that makes you incapable of feeling anything more than dull stupor, and at a single moment all that is stripped away from you, the entire mental capacity of greatest genius is made yours, together with the greatest mobility and dexterity, and knowledge that that, indeed, is your true state of being, and not a paralyzed brain damaged state, which is but an illusion, and the reality is the greatest glory and clarity and goodness, and that this reality has no end, that where you going is forever, well that's a limited way of describing the nature of an experience of ananda, the joy of Brahman.” “there's our foundation of morality: to remove from our consciousness and from the consciousness of other beings the ignorance, illusion, spiritual darkness and evil, so that in their consciousness the light of Brahman can shine – to remove its opposites, to dissolve spiritual obstacles, to be a flame of Brahman that sets ablaze the dry grass of human reality. That's our true morality, that is the meaning of doing good, that is the meaning of living the truth. The ethical meaning of human existence is therefore clear. One has to live in a way that makes those who feel you, feel the song of the Ainur1 and remember the shores of a distant land beyond Creation. How and what exactly doesn't matter. Your song is your own, and cannot be given to you, you need to make your own. From Brahman you take and create your own life in your own individual way, unrepeatable, unique, original, and you give something completely new, without any predefined limits. There are no ethical rules other than: be Brahman, and live so in the world. To refuse being Brahman and existing as Brahman is the foundation of all sin, if one understands sin as opposing the will of God, because the will of God is for Logos to be born in the world. The will of God is for Brahman to intrude into and exist in the world. That, if anything, is the lesson we must learn from the history of the Universe.” Ekam sat, ... “Hinduism has the concept of an avatar, a point of God's intrusion into the world with some specific goal or purpose, usually in a time of crisis, where an incarnate God leads mankind through crisis and into a new age. Theism is comparable to a situation where one dreams a dream from a third person perspective, observing some persons doing something, and at a certain point he becomes first-person aware, from a viewpoint of one of the characters involved. Theism is therefore a situation where the dreamer awakes within his dream as one of the characters, and starts acting in his dream as first-person aware. Since the dreamer has, in fact, limitless power to change anything within his dream, this explains the “miracles” within the material world. From a viewpoint of the material beings, those miracles are something impossible, but from the dreamer's viewpoint, it's just a dream and everything is possible, including complete awakening, where only the dreamer remains, and all the characters within the dream are absorbed and dissolved within his spirit. The miracles performed by the Divine incarnations are therefore completely understandable and easy to process once you understand that Universe is the software and not the hardware, dream and not the dreamer, and that God can, awake in his own dream, in form of a lucid dream, simply change any of the “laws” in the dream. The beings who perceive his dream as their reality, viewing it from the perspective of it being “the” reality, can neither comprehend nor repeat those miracles, and in that sense only God can perform miracles and change the parameters of the Universe. Any being that awakens within the dream and thus closes the ouroboros of creation by knowing itself as the dreamer, and attains the fullness of the emergence of Logos, the self-realization of Brahman, or whatever else you might call it, is essentially identical to the concept of Divine incarnation in the world, or a personal God as he is defined by the theism.” The God factory “What I can therefore confirm from my experience aren't the talking snakes, but the existence of spiritual beings who establish their influence over the portions of the physical plane, and who are occasionally motivated by their own idea of realizing some spiritual goal or another, and those goals can be essentially characterized as good. For instance, if we characterize manifestation of Brahman on the physical plane as good, it leaves an open question of the form of such a manifestation, of what it'sgoing to look like. Apparently, the opinions in the spiritual world are divided on that matter as well. As much as Brahman is a given, it leaves an open question of how exactly could Brahman manifest itself in certain aspects of the relative reality, for instance in the physical matter. Is manifested Brahman a state in which there is a complete breach, an intrusion of Brahman into the relative, a perfect self-realization of Brahman within consciousness of an individual being? Or is it manifested when several beings together manifest the qualities of Brahman, in other words when their social interactions bear the quality of satcit-ananda, reality-consciousness-bliss, in a way that the whole of their collective existence is a manifestation of Brahman? Or is it something else, ie. “enlightenment” of all beings, from first to last? What does a being that manifests Brahman look like, is it a strong, focused “ego” of an individual which is the living God, or is it a dispersed, disintegrated ego of a group of barely-individuals who manifest Brahman as a group? The answers to those questions are very important because they decide the direction of evolution, and a wrong answer that appears correct in the short term can lead the evolution of not only human species, but the entire biological basis or at least its large portion, in a wrong direction1, which is then very difficult to remedy due to the inertia of the physical, and something along the lines of a K-T event2 might be the only solution.” “So let's say that the spiritual field of some higher being applies pressure on the matter and creates the human species. That's the aspect the Platonists – or Theosophists – would find familiar. But the conscious matter, a self-aware human being, through its original thoughts, emotions and similar forms of spiritual existence, creates the spiritual forms that didn't exist before, thus giving an authentic, original contribution to the spiritual world. Furthermore, a great Yogi who becomes initiated beyond all the levels of Prakrti and attains realization, becomes in fact a new, original Purusha, a new eternal spiritual being, a new God. So it's not only true that the Gods create men and other beings, but the thing also works in the other direction: the matter creates new Gods, in quite a literal sense: a man is in fact a being which, by breaking through the limitations imposed by the matter, and providing he1 attains fulfillment of his highest potential, creates such a radical spiritual breakthrough that he becomes a new Divine being, which, for all intents and purposes, is a relative viewpoint of the Brahman, without any share of illusion. This concept is particularly pronounced in Hinduism and Buddhism – in Hinduism, some of the greatest Divine beings, the Rishis such as Vyasa and Narada, didn't always have this status, but had evolved from common men; Narada, for instance, was a servant's son from a lower caste. In Buddhism, the Buddhas are not “incarnations of a deity”, but beings of newly attained status, completely self-made. Far from the fatalist systems where enlightenment is some sort of a game for the beings that were Divine to begin with and went through the motions for the sake of an audience, the concept of evolution introduces a new category: the world as an instrument of initiating new Gods.” The plurality of the spiritual “What happens when your ideas about the goal of your spiritual evolution differ from the ideas of the spiritual being which, due to investment of his spiritual force, has authority over the aspect of the physical world in which you create your physical existence? Should one do what the good followers of monotheism would, which is to see what this being wants and declare it our own, the greatest good and the goal of all our aspirations, axiomatically, and join our spiritual energy with his efforts, as foreign as they might be to us, and as local, as opposed to universal, those efforts might be? What if the local “God” implements the concepts that are far from the main stream among other Gods? What if it's an experiment, a deviation, a branch of evolution that's headed the way of the dinosaurs? Should we join the other lemmings' cliffdiving just because the majority can't be wrong, or because “God can't be wrong?” “Those questions are highly relevant in this world, since this world has a King. The King has many names. He is a being of the Eternal Fire, the Bearer of Light. He is called the Morning Star, for he precedes the Sun and proclaims its light. He is the Lightbearer, the one who takes God's light and gives it to the world. He is the Eternal Youth. The King of this world is Sanat Kumara, known in the Bible as Satan, or Lucifer.” Freedom for the new “Instead of passively reproducing the biologically conditioned mechanisms without awareness, allow yourselves something new – a step into the unconditionality of the spiritual. We had enough of the passive reproduction of the same old ideas. Admit to yourself the possibility of the different, of the new – of your own self sufficient light, your own personal path, because the same Brahman that is the foundation of this world, is also the foundation of your own personal reality. All the enlightened ones, the wise and the Gods are already there, and are inviting you to become one of them, and have done so for centuries. You, as a person, yourself, are more important to them than any religion, society or mankind, because you as a person have a personal connection with God, and mankind, with all its self-important religions and pecking orders, is merely a speck of dust which will soon disappear in the ocean of time, together with the other, already abandoned sections of the great poem of creation.”

I’m the other Australian that attended the 5 days of personal training followed by the workshop. An excellent review by Adrian, comprehensive and articulate! I found out about SM through TB and was completely blown away by the 5 days of personal training and the workshop! Adrian described the 5 days of personal training very well and I have nothing more to add. The workshop was like a condensed version of what we learned during the 5 days of personal training. However, not everything covered in the 5 days was covered in the workshop due to time constraints. I greatly benefited from the personal training because up until that point, I had never seen the GOT I, II, III moves before and would have struggled to learn them properly in the 2 day workshop. Furthermore, combing the 5 days with the weekend really upped the game on the training! The 5 days gradually built up to the workshop which felt like going through a rite of passage and initiation of sorts. During the projection, I got to touch a level that would have been beyond reach under normal circumstances! However, a lot more went on at the workshop besides the teaching and projection. There was a very strong Divine presence experienced at one point which filled the entire room and made a person want to fall to their knees. To be honest, I would say that “religious” would be a better word than “qigong” to describe that went on there. Not religion in the sense of organized religion, but true spirituality may be a better word. It was very intense. The projections strongly affected, purified and attuned my heart and crown chakras such that afterwards I could connect with what feels like higher Divine energies expressed as pure devotion and surrender to God. This is my way of experiencing the energy but I think that every individuals experience will be unique. One thing is clear though, this isn’t your everyday type of qigong that you hear about. The system uses higher vibrational energy and is not your regular type of qi energy. Hence the name higher level qigong! Michael is also a great guy with a sense of humor, which he surprised me with when I approached him at the airport and he presented himself as a non-english speaking German that could only speak Dutch! Haha! I also enjoyed spending time with my newly acquired Aussie friend and everyone else at the workshop. I’m humbled by the people I met there and would like to thank Michael again for a truly wonderful and life changing experience.

Hi SOTG I hope your feeling better! First of all, a lot of the posters here have already made good comments and have way more experience then myself, but I offer my 2 cents anyway. Did you consider that the energy coming into the your LDT is Shakti and not yin Chi? I was taught that the source of Shakti for humans is the fiery crystal in the centre of the earth, so every time I connected with that I experience blasts of energy up the spine, although I see it more like an orange crystalline structure and not black. I'm not that awakened, so I don't have any siddhis or anything. But I practice surrender to God and feel lots of ecstatic love (when not dragged down by situations that result in astral body attention). I got some abdominal swelling as well which feels kind of bloated. Especially Kegel exercises pump it up like a balloon, although I'm sure it's not anywhere near the same degree as what you experience. I was practicing lots of Kriya yoga where the head twitches and rotates left-right very rapidly. This movement is extremely powerful but also dangerous. I cleared some huge block at Manipura using it - which felt like some large spinning magnet. Then the next day came the deadly shrapnel! All the debris from that went to svadhisthana and completely made havoc to my navel, so my digestion had been shot for about six months and I've been dealing with extremely serious blocks in that area. You can try dumping overload if that helps. To do that, squat down on the ground with your palms on the floor and ask that all the excess energy from your system returns to the earth. What's funny is that I'm dealing with energy sickness myself! So a few days ago I went to the yoga ashram on my way home. Swamiji gives me this look and I break into kriyas, then my third eye burns up and shoots energy into the middle of my brain. After I get home the pressure in the centre of my head was too much for my body to handle and I've been bedridden for a few days. So it seems I have some more blockages in my brain as we'll! Lol! Right now my practice consists of full lotus while practicing retention and avoiding females and nocturnal emissions! I'd like to thank all the people at Tao bums for inspiring this course of action. Haha! Sorry if I'm rambling, I figure since I'm writing here, I may as well share something about myself.

No that’s not what I mean. Karma is an imprecise word. It is commonly associated with actions and its consequence (manifested or not). At other times, it means subtle desires that determine the personality (vasanas) and the impressions created by past experiences (samskaras) or attachment to emotional condition or state. The later was the type of karma I was referring to, not actions and their consequence. The substance that obscures the clear shining of purusha (spirit) through the layers of prakriti, is the type of karma that needs to be cleansed in order to evolve spiritually and express the higher spiritual states through the physical body (like a transparent lense). A large percentage of that is simply ‘debris’ – which includes: archetypes, desires, projections, fears and limiting beliefs etc. These can be cleansed fairly easily – with surrender, sincere remorse, energetic yoga or similar methods. Then there are attachments or stuff that has not been outgrown due to resonance with the current personality. Here one has to ‘learn the lesson’ contained in them in order to outgrow the point of resonance with them. When the lesson is learned they breakdown into the first category of generic ‘debris’ that is easily cleansed. Mostly, it is necessary to ‘feel’ the stuff in order to surrender it or to learn the lesson – for that it needs to ‘click emotionally’ and not be repressed or ignored. Lastly, an aspect that may be encountered when breaking down the karmic structures - are ‘karmic consequences’ which are basically deadly things that to try to hurt you. These are best dealt with by remorse, total surrender to God and non-possession of self. I’m just mentioning this here for completion . Regarding being out of the body, in my experience, from what I have observed, there are different degrees of embodiment. One may incarnate as low as the crown, which means being absorbed in Samadhi 24/7 and not even being aware of a body or that you have one. Then you can descend a little lower to the third eye, which is aware of the body, but in a very detached sort of way. The deeper the consciousness descends into the body, the greater the essence is merged and grounded into the lower levels, resulting in more consciousness and presence on the physical plane. Typically emotions are felt on energetic layers lower than the heart, so if your living in the upper chakras only then emotions will not be completely experienced – of course you still have some presence on emotional levels otherwise you would not be able to function. Being embodied is the difference between watching a movie on a TV screen and being an active participant. I understand that your viewing in the body, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that you fully experiencing the body and its feelings. This is more or less what I was talking about. Opening a chakra tends to significantly increase its kshetram (radiating area) which exerts a gravitational pull on the consciousness towards that area. That is why working with the crown or the third eye too soon can result in one feeling a little spacey if one is not thoroughly grounded beforehand. The higher the building, the deeper the foundations must be. At some point you really have to drill deep into the earth and use pile foundations (or something similar), otherwise you’ll just float away like a balloon . A tree that is uprooted will wither and die and grounding is our natural state of being. It provides an anchor or sorts, which keeps the consciousness deeply rooted, embodied and functioning on all the levels simultaneously. Then one can shuttle through the levels like an elevator or usually experience multiple levels simultaneously. There are multiple forms of grounding, however, in my opinion being 'vertical' with a deep connection to the earth and sky is the most natural and powerful. Developing the Dan Tien’s 'energetic weight' also helps in keeping the energy down.

There is nothing wrong with having a silent mind and no emotions. Some people say that love feels like nothing when your being it, others get flung into the witness state for months at a time. It feels peaceful, right? Applying acceptance, surrender and trusting that everything is unfolding as it should may be a better approach to adopt than resistance. I only mentioned nailing yourself to the ground, via grounding and soul meditations, to facilitate integration with the physical and emotional levels. The meditations on their own (or some other form of grounding if you prefer), when done properly would help to accomplish this. I didn’t mean that you needed to find someone to do a soul retrieval, although you can try that if you wish. Why not use your silent mind to penetrate the inner deep power of pure consciousness?

Signs of being out of the body are that your libido takes a hike. You still have one, but you don’t feel it and you feel like a grey alien. People spend time out of body (OOB) for a lot of different reasons, such as: Avoiding painful emotions, fear, trauma, lust etc by meditating on the crown or 3rd eye chakra. The emotions are still there. The witness state is also technically an (OBE). Switching “witness” feels unemotional, non-judgemental and the mind becomes silent. It is not really a bad thing and may actually be beneficial in providing insights and detachment. However, you may not want to live there! You can’t process your karma from outside the body. The emotions need to be fully experienced for the release to take place. Not suppressed or avoided, which simply creates a cocoon around the content which get perpetuated. One of the simplest ways to get back in touch with the body is to simply practice being aware of the breath and practicing grounding. I recommend Angelique’s grounding and soul meditations. That will get you back in touch with the body. To get the full benefit out of the grounding meditation, you have to do it many times a day for 1-2 months, until the state becomes permanent and your feet "tingle" all the time. Grounding Meditation: http://kundalini-teacher.com/meditations/grounding.php Soul Meditation http://kundalini-teacher.com/meditations/soul.php I hope this helps Emptyhand And Thingol answered: 'What of your quest, and of your vow?' But Beren said: 'It is fulfilled. Even now a Silmaril is in my hand.' Then Thingol said: 'Show it to me!' And Beren put forth his empty left hand, slowly opening its fingers; but it was empty. Then he held up his right arm; and from that hour he named himself Camlost, the Empty-handed. (Silmarillion, JRRT)

What you describe as nervous system burnout is familiar to me. I experienced 2 doses of that between 2007 - 2008 each lasting about six months long. That too was triggered by very excessive spiritual practices . In my experience, purification of the nadis and rebuilding the nervous system actually consumes a lot of physical resources and can place the system under significant stress. Its unpleasant for sure, but there’s no way around it that I know of if you want to progress spiritually. However, there can be other contributing factors to this which can add to the symptoms. I found that these can be divided into several groups: Diet, physical end environmental toxins, stress and overload. Food sensitives – grains, dairy and fructose usually being the main culprits. The right diet for the body is important, not only in making sure to get the right nutrition to support spiritual growth, but also getting rid of foods which can add to the increasing the amount of impurities and toxins that the body has to deal with. The nervous system needs some essential materials to repair and rebuild itself. Essential fatty acids are the most essential ingredient to help protect the nerves from free radical damage and rebuild the system. A few table spoons of flaxseed oil each day may help in this regard. Calcium and magnesium supplementation is also recommended. Some environments are just toxic and if your sensitive and empathetic – your literally like a sponge that soaks up shit wherever you go. This further overloads the impure nadis with crap when they’re trying to purify. When I was in that phase, sometimes just going into solitude or in very isolated places was sufficient to bring about immediate relief. The other contributing factor is stress, which is also related to the environment and lifestyle - translating into adrenal burnout and chronic fatigue. If your symptoms are persistent, it may be worth getting your adrenal glands checked. The best solution here is to reduce stress and find a suitable environment that is supportive. However there are also supplements which can help, but these are more like a crutch. The last one is overload. Obviously, If you overdo some practices, you can end up driving too much power into the system and that can fry your nervous system causing some damage or radical detoxing. Its best to be as slow and deliberate as needed. Speed isn’t rewarded.

Hi all, I would like to organise a Yi Gong seminar in Australia with Sifu Jenny Lamb later this year. See her website below: http://www.easterninternalarts.org/ "Yi Gong is one of the highest Taoist Maoshan esoteric practices. Its system includes two aspects, spiritual and physical. The spiritual aspects have not been revealed to the public. The physical aspects include three levels, the spontaneous adjustment, celestial master points the way, and great water fall." In order to make her visit viable we need to see how many people would be interested in attending. I'm personally based in Melbourne, but we can have the seminar any place that would be most convenient for all. Please let me know if you are interested by either replying to this message or email me including your preferred city: Regards Robin

Just a reminder that the Yi Gong Seminar will be proceeding with the following details: When: October 8th/9th, 2011 (Saturday/Sunday) 9am - 4:30pm (w/1hr lunch break) Loction: Melbourne (TBD Australia) Cost-$300 For registration email me your full name: The seminar is filling up quick and I just realised that I hadn't heard anything back from the tao bums group. Let me know if you are still interested. Regards Robin

By the way the cost of the seminar is $300 You can download the flyer here: http://www.easterninternalarts.org/images/Aus%20Oct%202011.html

Thanks to all you Bums for your positive responses, Melbourne it is then! Jenny has agreed to the following date and time: When: October 8th/9th, 2011 (Saturday/Sunday) 9am - 4:30pm (w/1hr lunch break) Loction: Melbourne (TBD Australia) For registration please contact (preferably by email, sooner than later since i need to know numbers in order to choose a venue, I can also send you the official flyer with more detailed information). Looking forward to meeting you all there, this is going to be great

Isn't the bliss supposed to be transmuted into emptiness somehow?

Path, I found an old review of the Yi Gong seminar on Tao Bums that may interest you: http://www.thetaobums.com/index.php?/topic/13826-review-of-jenny-lambs-yi-gong-seminar/ I'm assumming that people attending wouldn't have done it before and are there to learn...