konchog uma

you're right mantra doesnt get rid of thoughts, just replaces them. it takes time to achieve no thought, but its time well spent. I like to imagine that my mind is the sky and that thoughts and thoughtforms, when they arise, are clouds. I just let the wind take them away until the sky is clear again, and then i sit in the emptiness of space and awareness, a clear sky full of light. If you do that meditation with sincerity your thoughts will diminish over time, and your awareness will increase. also, don't get lost trying to imagine a sun and scenery, those are thought forms. just imagine the emptiness of space, and your thoughts become clouds. thats all.

its confusing, and it will be until you stop thinking linearly and logically about the mystical concepts presented therein! Its also fragmented, since many monasteries were razed to the ground in the cultural revolution, and many traditions splintered off and many died altogether. Some of the texts that the masters held are now published for the light of dao to continue in the world, and some of the practices are taught to outsiders. So there is a watering down of the integrity of the knowledge, which is oral tradition dating back to the shamanic era when matriarchal lifestyle held sway. That is gone now, so there is nothing to do about it being fragmented, it just is. It makes sense when you study it, and for 3 cents, eva wong's book will help you sort it all out. my daoist recommendation for a beginning student: Chronicles of Tao: The Secret Life of a Taoist Master http://www.amazon.com/Chronicles-Tao-Secret-Taoist-Master/dp/0062502190/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1322499051&sr=8-2 1.40 and up! get one, its a fun read. Then you can get involved in discussions about whether its true or absolute fantasy (its that wild!)

haha a super secret emoticon!! its so secret its invisible. you can only see it with your third eye!! first order of business, taking over the world. then, disbanding our organization, since having an organization that runs the world is very un-dao. thirdly, reveling in the ungodly chaos that arises when we take over the world and abdicate our duties. I'm gonna take this class https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=D4-A-9MvEzg just to be on the safe side!!

thank you very much, if you remember, you helped me find my qigong teacher. So thank you very much for that as well. Best to you Rainbow Vein.

i am glad to see the change makes me happy for you bless you

i think of jing as the physical life essence which is kidneys/marrow/semen/cerebrospinal fluid in short. I know its more, like hormones etc, and that some people think of the whole physical being as jing, but i just think of it as the concentrated essence if that answers your question. when i say i have opened my circuits, i say that because i don't have to do meditations or use effort to guide excess semen up my spine, or into my dan tian, anymore. It just happens naturally. I don't get blueballs. The day after sex is an awesome energy day, not an "oh god WHY won't i just masturbate?!" day.. .. So i consider that work more or less done. my lower is pretty alive. it hums and buzzes when its full. I have found the yang point in the middle of it, and can rotate it or stop it at will. I breathe with it constantly, without effort or intention, although i do not incorporate the perineum into each and every breath. So i am still working on deeping my breath but i have been a natural belly breather for years, which i find enables my energy flow, and the jing to qi alchemy. My middle dantian, is something that i can point to, right there behind my heart, but as to my experience of it, i have not worked with it, so i don't really have a lot of time logged with it. My teachers agree its a reservoir of feelings, so in that way i can say "oh sure i have one of those right there" and i guess thats why they say "my heart is lonely" or "happy in my heart" etc. I can relate to all that with personal experience so i guess that is the MDT. My upper, i have even less experience with. I regularly charge my 3 dan tians by imagining them soaking up white, radiant qi from all around. When i relate to heaven qi, i get feelings in my UDT (like LDT for earth qi). I hope that answers your question. are you just curious? are you wondering if i have actually done these things i say i have, or have mistaken the mark? or is this going somewhere? it doesnt have to mind you, im just curious...

well there is a lot of practice in between each stage, and it is not so much a psychological exercise, or way of looking at things, it is an actual alchemy of self. So when the spirit merges with the dao, a person begins to become one with the way, and when they have, they are a different person than when they were not merged. Their mind might open to omnisciently know things that pertain to them, or what they were wondering about.. celestial masters might start talking to them... knowledge of what a plant was for, medicinally, might come to that person when they touched the plant... it is, i am sure, different for everyone according to their nature. Its less an acknowledgement and more a change of person and self that takes place. Like the energy i had before i opened the circuits that allow my jing to become qi is quantitatively and qualitatively different than the energy i have now.

it is a silver goblet with celtic knotwork on the side, a square bottom, no handles. The stem is thick. It feels good, ancestral, i pick it up and admire it and then realize that its probably someone elses (ironic right?) and put it down and keep walking it is a gold key, not too big, not too small, with three rings on the end you hold, and a simple set of teeth. it is not on a chain. my feelings are not really noticable. I thought it would be more ornate but i am not disappointed, it has a nice feel. i put it down, aware that it might be a test from the forest spirits to see if i would just take it without asking. it is a crystal clear lake with fish and turtles and frogs, it is lined with pine trees and hills, there are mountains in teh distance. I disrobe and go swimming with joy! it is an old stone cottage with a shingle roof covered with moss. It looks very warm and cozy. There are lights on in the windows and smoke coming out the chimney. there is a stream and a little stone bridge nearby. It would make a freudian analyst think that i put together too many jigsaw puzzles as a child, but a jungian one would know better It makes me feel like i should knock on the door and see who lives there, but it also makes me feel like i shouldn't at the same time. I admire it for a while and walk on. it has sharpish stones in it, like old stones that have worn to sharp points in places or more like crags so to speak. It is wet in the cracks. There is no mortar, just stones. I felt like i wanted to get away from it, it gave me the not so good feelings. My actions were to stand and look at it for a while, thinking "could i possible take a stone out and get through?" of course i could its MY visualization, but i didn't, in line with the purpose of hte exercise. I just kept walking.

shattering the void and crushing the emptiness might be translations of the same line.. its a classic daoist neidan line. As to exactly why they phrased it like that, i am not sure. Perhaps in an attempt to stop internalists from dwelling in the bliss of emptiness and not progressing further into union with dao. Maybe they mean do away with the concept of emptiness or void. That is my best guess. At all times, I, like Scotty, have no idea what i am talking about either. as to what it refers to, i think it means going beyond the beyond and letting the sublime source of things fill the emptiness. But like so many, i can not speak about merging with the dao because i have not done that yet. Hahahah an aside: i remember hearing about a talk daoist master Hua Ching Ni gave during which a young kid in his early twenties asked him "since i have joined with the way, what do i do now?" to which master Ni replied "stop masturbating!"

hahaha practice! traditionally, the next step in the alchemy is refining shen to emptiness then refining emtiness to dao, or as the beloved Dr Yang likes to put it, "crushing the emptiness!" when i sit in emptiness sitting, i think of it as refining, because i like to think to myself "what is more subtle than emptiness?" instead of "lets CRUSH this emptiness!!" but thats just me

you don't have the have the one official answer, i am going to talk to my teachers about it, so its okay. i RReally appreciate what you have to say, and it resonates as very useful. Thank you Scotty! talking about it is not pointless btw, even if its just a finger pointing to something, it still guides the way. If we didn't need to talk about stuff i guess we wouldn't!! I look forward to visualizing an anthropomorphic representation of my shen btw!! awesome

its a name for the point at the center of the upper dan tian, the yin within yang. i guess it would sit right in the middle of the diencephalon, at the bottom of the corpus callosum.

thanks trunk

uh bloodywarrior, i fear that you are um decreasing the quality of conversation here buddy. on the upside, i am having a hard time stopping my laughter! thank you so much!!! many blessings!

Yeah i have two right now, although they arent Daoist Masters in any official sense they have the way in their hearts. And youre right about the quietly... my qigong teacher can't tell all his stories to the whole class thats for sure. But its okay, i am more than fulfilled right now with what i am doing.

thanks for the laugh!!! :D youre gonna get banned before your account is 24 hours old! hahaha do you think i give a shit what you think about me? HAHAHA grow up and learn some manners.

reported for offensive content.

oh the lolz thats a great way to get a sincere reponse btw! I will have to try that technique.

cool, thanks! a lot of the buddhist work i do involves shen by another name, and a lot of the alchemy i have already accomplished, like some of the refinement from jing to qi, has taken root and blossomed. Like i said in another thread, i'm on or around day 50 since my last ejaculation, and its not even an issue. I just broke an 8 day fast tonight, but while i was meditating this week, i felt compelled to discover the steps to help along the alchemy of qi to shen. If its anything like the alchemy of jing to qi, yes it happens on its own, but there are definitely things one can do to enable the process!! So i have a grasp on shen as a concept, and i have qi to work with, but i am wondering how does one work with shen? Does one visualize it? Does one just refine the qi to subtlety and shen is naturally what happens? Does one feel shen? Or is it more than one IS shen and its like water to a fish? [edit: i also wonder is there an alchemy that takes place at the MDT that i should focus on in meditation?] My qigong teacher says jing qi and shen are just one thing really like water makes steam and ice too, so maybe its just a matter of refining it to subtlety and letting it become consciousness essence. I don't know. Hmm. Well that wasn't directed at you HE as much as at everyone else here, in an attempt to help you help me. I am still waiting to talk to my qigong teacher, and probably just work in an auxiliary sense from books, but i haven't been able to yet, and won't til wednesday. I'll post what he says here!

it makes sense to gather and store qi, and to get rid of stagnant qi. Why not do both? I incorporate both into my own sets, and i wouldn't want to have to choose between one or the other. Although for a close down, i usually gather the abundance to my dantian or bone marrow, depending on the set. Welcome!

is that the mud pill point? yang jwing ming helped me find that.

nevermind i figured it out. hahah thats awesome i guess for some people, negative attention is better than no attention at all

first of all, youre the one who started it, and then didnt answer her question at all. second of all, tin foil hats DO help, thats why people wear them. how do i ignore this guy? i've never done that, can someone tell me how?

i totally agree taomeow another +1 thats one of the main reasons that daoism is so valuable to me, because it stretches back thousands of years to a more shamanistic and feminine-oriented way of life, and contains the essence of the primordial that was destroyed by later imperialistic thought. Not many traditions of the world today can match the longevity of daoist practices. Native american shamanism comes close, but to even work with a shaman at all is a rare gift for an american, or anyone else. I got to work with Lewis Mehl Madrona for a while, sweating with him and learning from him pretty regularly while he lived in my city, but i wasn't his apprentice!! and he didn't teach me advanced meditations like one can learn in books about daoism nowadays. aww well thats enough about that. Thanks for your perspective.

Tatsumaru, Mood and food are very closely related. Could your diet benefit from more fresh fruits and vegetables? Less refined sugars? Most people's could. Perhaps you are eating in a way that isn't nurturing beneficial feelings. The benefits of meditation are not realized in a couple days, and one only attains seemingly unheard of abilities after years of dedicated practice under a master. The benefits of meditation can be realized in a couple months, sometimes subtly in a couple weeks. But abandon your desire for immediate gratification when it comes to meditation. It is like filling a cup with sand one grain per day, just do it every day and in time the cup will be full. Don't expect to attain to unheard of levels or see "something happening", just sit. Something will happen, but you won't see it because it will happen so slowly. Then you will look back at where you were 6 months ago and you will realize "oh wow i am a lot more calm and centered with better feelings!" Energy stagnation also contributes to many peoples feelings. Do you stretch regularly? Perhaps you would benefit from incorporating daily yoga practice into your regimen. I agree wholeheartedly with thelerner, that you should not worry about finding a master until you have built a foundation with a teacher and you feel like you are ready to move on. Whatever they offer in your area, start to study it. Yoga, meditation, taiji, martial arts, etc. Its all going to help you overcome the emotional stagnation you are describing. I am not a health professional or meditation teacher, but i play one on the internet! hahaahha