Marks of Glory

Found my place in Seward park. anyone from NY wanna go for some chinese food some day, I'm in.

Does anyone know places, or parks where people practice internal arts, qigong, standing meditation, etc... In New York?

Can you explain better my brother? ------- I was thinking in opening a new thread based only on the deep dissection and interpretation of "Taoist Yoga" book of Charles Luk. Chapter by chapter. Anyone interested in starting this Thread? ------ Since we are talking about death, maybe it's worth while mentioning that Nature ("True Nature") practices of cultivation oftranscendental Spirit actually resonates with Death. It is a practice of dissolving, of dissolution. That is why Shiva is the God worshipped by most Yogins, and Brahman the creator, the least, having only one temple in the whole of India! That's why Taoists in generally also cultivate "Life" It's a Xing Ming thing... Maybe it also relates to why the Romantics write so much about death in their pursue of the Ideal world (Ideal = the Tao, and the portal to the Tao is Death). Of course they do so intuitively.

The book I read is "Opening the dragon gate" as mentioned in my post. the 'mysterious female aperture' is mentioned in the tao teh ching. On Long Men Pai it is said that this "aperture" is found half way between the Heart (representing Heaven here) and the Navel / Kidneys (Representing Earth). i.e. the mysterious female aperture is localized on the solar plexus, on the stomach area. If I'm not mistaken there a stage on the practice in which the adept must hold his intent and qi higher than the navel but lower than the heart, until the qi will spontaneosly enter into this cavity. But I never understood When this should be done. Because the same source that I studyes mentioned earlier that the adept must hold his intent on the lower dantien until the Heat manifests and circulates the MCO. Anyway, coming back to the topic... My experience with what I think is most close to "minor death": There are two occasions in which I feel my breath completely ceasing. One of them I consider as being a pathological manifestation, maybe of exhausion of Yin, I'm still not sure. But my breathing gets very subtle and wants to cease. When laid down it tends to completely stop, accompanied by a sense of suffocation. This sense of suffocation indicates that this process is not a healthy outcome of the practice. I notice this happening when the air is very hot and stale and dry. If happening during the sleep it is accompanied by very vivid dreams with highly simbolic contents. The second experience there i spontaneous stopping of the breathing, but interestingly there is no feeling of suffocation, which is kind of awkward and strange in the moment. I Laying down while having this experience, it is accompanied by a sense o levitating out of my body, of feeling the presence of entities roaming in the room, and a extremely fearful mystery on the air. On these instances I feel afraid of not coming back. If, during this experience I neglect to lay down (due to the intensity of leaving the body), and stand up and walk around, my whole vision of the world and society crumbles down and I feel like I lost it. So I lay down for a while, walk for a while, laydown for a while, till it passes. This second experience first happened in a Ayahuasca Ritual, and then after intense meditation on a Vipassana 10 day retreat, after focusing on the crown baihui intensely there was a feeling of dissolving of the body into pixels like a waterfall from head to toe, accompanied by a spontaneous exhalation and suspension of breath, some hallucinations and the feeling of the HuiYin dissolving and getting soft.

Chapter 4 p. 56 "in cultivation refinement to this point (the mysterious female aperture) Wang Liping also experiences minor death several times." Doe anyone know what is meant by "minor death" ?

Captain and Luke, thanks for your points of view. The bad dreams are not the bad part, I actually am quite bald. Every time I "wake up" with night paralysis, instead of fighting it, I always continue relaxing into it more and more, until the experience becomes very, very intense. the bad part was my breath. But i think I know the cause. Its a combination of causes. First I do pretty intense breathing exercices, so I already am kind of starting to take control over the breathing process and change this aspect of the "brain". Secondly the intense practice during the days 24/7 But mainly... it's still kinda cold here, so all the heaters on the building are on, making the air dry... maybe the practice was causing my body to consume alot of water / body fluids for some reason... 3 days ago I woke up with my Lungs feeling irritated... probably because of the dry air together with an inner dehidration... my hands were feeling much more dry than usual, and my urine was very yellow.. signs of Heat... I was feeling stale and hot also... In TCM, dryness directly injures the Lungs. So I started drinking alot of water since since 2 days ago, and my breathing came back to normal... before going to bed I spilling water all over the sink, the over, under the bed and under the couch, heheh (I live in a bachelors unit), it's kinda working. Hey Marcus... just focus gently down there... on the whole area, the triangle formed by yout navel, your mingmen and your huiyin. I don't recommend visualizing anything... (forcing visualization is one thing... seeing or "feeling" / "sensing" light during meditation is another if it happens naturally, thats good, don't seek it) don't use to much force in you intent.. it must...ust must be gentle and natural, other wise you'll create a blockage there. when / if you start feeling some vibration downthere, make sure to keep it vibrating (with not a strong intent, and without any visualization) so that it does not stagnate. It's kinda like moving your ears... seems impossible, but when you get it.. you get it. practice standing or on a chair instead of sitting in the floor. get a god IMA teacher to correct your posture, it'll help connecting your whole body, especially the lower part, the LDT, the legs and feet. those are my opinions... follow your gut, not mine. My air ticket to China please. MoG

First of all thanks alot for the reply Rara. Yes, I can be mentally exhausted. over the last week I started a process that possibly will change the direction of my life, possibly I`ll transfer to a TCM college in the US. I`m pretty stressed picking up all the documents... My breath is so subtle that I can`t even percieve it properly. It`s not unpleasent, it`s kind of peaceful and silent. The bad part is going to sleep... I just went to bed and my breath started to stop again it`s very frightening, so I got up to avoid sleeping = ( I don`t want to go through that again.. it feels like dying. There`s a part of me that thinks that it is a part of a process, that I should accept this whole experience. who knows..

Hey all, maybe some of you guys can help me out interpreting this whole experience. I've been practicing Tien Tao Chi Kung lately, and I`m following Roger Hagood's advice of gently focusing on the lower dantien throughout the day. Two nights ago I laid to sleep at night and focused on my dantien till I got to sleep. after spending a whole day focusing on the dantien it's almost sure that a night it'll be vibrating full of chi, and so it was. All of a sudden my whole body was paralized (the all common night paralysis). But this time it was different, all my surrounding was vibrating and I was slowly falling as if I was sinking in the deep sea. I had a desperate feeling with it. Suddently I was in a very vivid dream, but the details were not that important. I woke up all of a sudden, in one violent grasp of air, as if the whole dream happened whilst my lungs were empty. ------------ Next night, same procedure, went to sleep and focused on my LDT till night closed my eyes. I started dreaming... In this dream I was in a soccer field... there was a wrestling team with powerfull men training and being led by a coach... I passed by in admiration, laid down on the grass at a distance of their training. There I entered the "whole body paralysis" again. Yes I was within the dream this time. The paralysis was intense with all the vibration sensations over my body., is was particularly intense in my LDantien, this focus point then rose spontaneosly to my crown, where it started to emanate a sound as if of a waterfall. I was freaking out, very scared. Why was that sound emanating from my crown where my intent got stuck? I suddently woke up from the paralysis, I but I still was in the dream... I woke up still in the soccer field thanks to the coach of the wrestling team who was directing water at my body with a hose in an attempt to "wake me up". Apparently the sound emanating from my crown point was nothing less than the sound of the water striking it from his hose. The whole fighter team stood around me, looking at me in shock and fear. "Geese" said one of them "I surely didn`t want to be in your skin". I told them all how I admired how they represented courage and strength. Then I really woke up from this dream, in my bed... also with a sudden grasp of air, as if it all happened while my lungs were empty. During the whole morning my respiration was very gentle, almost nonexistent, may be too gentle, I don'y know. ----- But all those experiences freaked me out, it`s too terrifying. I don`t know if it was triggered because the air here is too dry or if it`s because of over practicing qigong. but if it was due to over practicing chikung it would probably be an Excess symptom in traditional chinese medicine, and my breath was actually very, very gentle, which actually looks more of a deficiency symptom. or maybe it has to do with shen.. I don`t know! But I surelly would really want to know why it is happening and what is happening energetically. I had it before, but it passed away gradually, even though I continued practicing. ----------- Doen anyone have more information about this phenomena? Anyone knows how to interpret dreams? That would be great too... Thanks alot my brothers. ----------- When it happened I was sleeping under alot of covers, and the weather is getting hot in Canada, the sun hits my apartment directly all day long, so there is alot of solar energy in the place. I passed the last 2 -3 days with this very gentle respiration, and feeling very warm on my skin.. warm and stuffy, almost stale, the air I`m breathing is feeling a little stale too. I`ll sleep with my windows open. for some reason I thing it can be related to the sun, the warmth and the dry weather.

Any one knows of good qigong teachers and traditional lineages on NYC? Longmen Pai. appreciated!

LDT It is a place central to the body in relation to all directions, up - down, front - back, left - right, so essential to produce central equilibrium. It is the mid point between heaven and earth, manteinind a RELAXED awareness of it helps standing on the midline between worlidy perception and high intuition (once again central equilibrium) It also brings vitality to the physical body, making it strong and healthy for a long time.

Cheers Effilang. I believe that som ethings are quite right about what you said. When practicing some yoga practices, such as Nadi Shodhana Pranayama with long periods of retention, on the right proportions, ofcourse, you start opening up higher chakras before the lower ones. But there are some problems with this.... you lose completely your roots, your shen disperses insanely and you cannot ground it easily (that is, only after you "burn um lots of past karmas / mental latencies" you are safe; which kind of reminds me of the "pure yang" state which taoists aim at cultivation). That is why, if you want to tread the path of Pranayama seriously, it is recomended that you withdraw yourself from society for a while. on my personal experience.. I started cultivating with pranayama... it opened alot my Shen.. I went insane for some time, it was terribible... then I started practicing Qigong, and straight away I started developing very strong Qi sensations.. probably because my shen was wide opened / deveoped... so it seems to be a little harder to hold my intent at my lower dantien, but as soon as i do it, energy starts rumbling straing away down here... kinda violently, probably because of my opened shen, i guess... it feels like compression, like and inverted triangle... about ejaculation... well... my practice started opening the shen.. which means that my energy body was in a mushroom like shape: Big at the top... no very grounded.... I found that, whenever I ejaculate, this patters accentuates; I get more balloon headed, less grounded... and i feel lots of cold, as if my vitality were out of my body (on top of my head), not cool.... I guess that it really is dangerous for people that cultivate too much shen and no Jing to ejaculate, if their body is weak, well... their vitality can escape their body in a way that could result in death. seems very plausible from my experiences, some times I would even have breath shortages, felt like dying... hoped this helped

I do not want to make propaganda of cigarette smoking, i myself was a heavy smoker same years ago, and quit but it is a fact that tobacco is widely used by "cultivators" of alot of differentent religions. For example Xamans, Hopi Xamans, and other xamans all over the world, and Voodoo, Candomble, Umbanda are a few I know about. It also appears alot on Gustav Meyrink`s classical Theosophical novel "The Golem". It is interesting to add too that J R R Tolkien, who started involving himself with the Occult and secret wisdom from a very young age used it alot on his pipe, and mentioned, very specifically, on "The Lord of The Rings", it`s importance. Of course, he did it indirectly. his quote on the beginning of the book goes more or less like this "I do not know precisely what herb they smoked but it surely was of the nicotiana family (...)" one of the uses probably is to hold back some anxiety attacks which are common on "kundalini" awakenings (dispersed Shen (?). Taoists instead learn how to hold their intent on their Lower Dantien, for example). this is my guess. But I think there are other reasons too, i think it is quite a powerful herb, that actually opens some gates. But not at all necessary, and very harmful. For it`s spiritual purposes, I sometimes give a few puffs on a pipe, without breathing it in, whilst in my closed room, so the smoke stays in the atmosphere and breathe I breathe it in not so concentrated, and meditate.

Actually, as soon as ou some it, it expands the alveoli... thus, when you are quitting you feel choked and as if you could not breathe properly, but it subdues in few days

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Amazing!