tao mist

TLB, All I know is that my soul rocks whenever I enter L.A. When I first was there in 1987 my friend picked me up at the airport. I had flown in from Phoenix. I put my head out the window of his car in order to scream for joy because of how good it felt. This was so out of character for me. I later found out the source of my attraction to everything about L.A. except for the traffic and vanity. And I bet you are right about Sifu Terry saying that FP rocks wherever it is done! Speaking of which, this afternoon I remained in Monk Holding a Peach for a bit of a prolonged period of time and made sure to only touch my finger tips together very gently. I could feel the start of some slight quivering and then I shut it down so as not to reenact the Northridge quake! Steve

Hi TLB, You can't go wrong with eating at La Salsa in L.A. I have experienced so much great energy when vacationing in L.A., I can't imagine what it would be like to do Flying Phoenix Chi Kung there? Especially where Route 66 ends at the Santa Monica Park.

Hello Sifu Terry: Last night I was quite tired as I could not fall asleep during my after work nap. When I did my FP session that night I decided to hold Monk Holding a Pearl for at least 10 minutes or longer. That immediately took away all of my tiredness for the rest of the night. I then did the deep sleep meditation on vol. 7. But close to bedtime I watched an online clip of GM Doo Wai demonstrating Monk Holding a Pearl in the sitting meditation verison; so stupidly I did that right before bed and the energy from that must have overode the energy from the deep sleep med on vol. 7 because it the took me a long time to fall asleep which is unusual these days. This morning I woke up really tired but that immediately vanished once I did my morning FP meditations. I decided to end the FP session doing 5 min. of the seated version Monk Holding a Pearl. That makes for a great restful meditation to slow down the thoughts while being energized in a subtle way. But I learned to not hold any Pearls at night! Steve

Sifu Terry, For the past 5 weeks at least I have been having premonitions in the form of daydreaming about someone or something and then it soon turns into reality. Mostly with thinking of someone and then the phone rings. Most of us have that once in awhile anyway, but this is happening frequently now with the people that I am closest to. Yesterday I was thinking of my friend and then the phone rang one minute later and I asked her what took her so long to respond! But in the past few weeks when I would hope this woman would call me, the phone rang within seconds of having those thoughts and it was her. Multiple episodes of this. Yesterday I was for no known reason daydreaming about another friend maybe calling to tell me she needed a new computer. Today this same person called to say that her daughter recently bought her a new computer! So my thinking is that Flying Phoenix Chi Kung is opening psychic centers? If so, do you know which meditations on volumes one and two are prone to do this, or is it as I suspect, a synergetic effect from the culmination of all the energy from FP having this psychic influence? It feels so natural when it happens, not like any unusual psychic happening at all. I wonder if I should start daydreaming about winning the lottery so that I can relocate to my beloved Los Angeles? Steve

Hi TLB, The energy from TM is great for the pets. But it is a loss of energy for the meditator! Maharishi was not prone to elaborate on those kind of things. I think this warning was given during the 3 days of checking following initiation or I heard it while on teacher training courses. From my personal experience this would not be noticed as any kind of loss from the meditator who petted the pet soon after meditation. I did not heed the advice that much as I let my dog in the same room with me whenever I meditated. This would certainly take place on a more subtle level beyond ordinary perception. I now recall that we taught people to not have their pets in the same room while we meditated so that they would not disturb us and take us out of that deep state of relaxation beyond thoughts, satori, mukti, Oneness, sat chit ananada, etc,take your pick. But later we did hear that the dogs and cats could rob of us of that valuable subtle energy produced during those states of tranquil mind and body called Restful Alertness, Transcendental Consciousness, a fourth state of consciousness scientifically verified via a unique pattern of brain waves which I have seen for myself at the Americal Psychological Association Convention when they hooked up my TM friend and fellow psychologist to an EEG machine. I would love to see the EEG of Sifu Terry during FP. Steve

Hi TLB: yes, I owned 2 Gosami books and read very little of them and soon gave them away. I think it was just too heady for me. I want to comment on your cats reacting to the energy they sense from FP. I believe I have shared this already with Sifu Terry perhaps via email. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi who brought Transcendental Meditation to the West kept getting reports from people who did TM that their dogs and cats loved to be in the same room when they meditated. I know that my dog in the 1970's had to be shaken at times to wake her up after I finished meditating since she went into this unusually deep slumber. Maharishi eventually created research based on these experiences and found that one person doing TM creates brainwave coherence in 99 other people who don't even meditate. He called it the One Percent Effect and major replicated research documented this on a large scale, even sending groups of TMers into current war zones and then documenting that the wars decreased when they increased the usual number of meditation sessions per day. We were told not to pet our dogs and cats right after meditating because some of that energy would transfer directly to the pet! I suspect the furry ones are not seeking affection, but the direct energy from these subtle energy methods such as FP and deep meditation. My dog knew the word meditation and would race ahead of me to the bedroom when I told her let's go meditate. I have been enjoying reading about Taoist meditation via "The Secret of the Golden Flower." I would have no clue what it is describing if it was not for my experiences from TM and the genius level of teaching from Maharishi. It is an amazing book that I read at least 30 yrs ago but it is so much more understandable reading it now. Tonite I will order Evan-Wentz book since if Sifu Terry recommends it,then I know it is going to be a trip! I have several of the books from Sifu's recommended reading list and they are treasures. Just one more reason to be grateful for how much Sifu Terry continues to give to us. Steve

Hi TLB, I enjoyed reading about what you are seeking from Flying Phoenix as my path is spiritual and the 2 vedic masters that I have had both point in the same direction, energy. Enlightenment is based on energy enlivening certain parts of the brain. That energy is blocked from the stress of daily living, hence a world of unenlightened souls settling for substitutes for the natural bliss from the deep relaxation needed to get rid of the energy blocks/stress/karma. The vacuum state in quantum physics is that state of perfect rest, the ground state which is the source of material existence. Sounds like the Tao to me. I was recently taught that enlightenment is a matter of subtraction. Releasing the stress to purify the nervous system which is designed to automatically produce enlightenment/bliss 24/7. So I do TM meditation and FP chi kung for removing energy blocks. I was recently reading this thread from the beginning for the second time and noticed Sifu Terry talking about his masters stressing the need for quiet sitting. So yesterday I came out of my last FP sitting meditation with the 3 breaths and then opened my eyes for awhile sitting in that relaxed/energized state for a minute and then decided to stay in that state by doing quiet sitting by just closing my eyes for several minutes. It resulted in a really nice state of restful alertness. The body and mind are very relaxed but you are awake. This is the 4th major state of consciousness. So I discovered yet another use for FP and I consider that feeling/state of consciousness to be a spiritual experience. In sum, for me FP produces a meditation state of mind/body if I just sit with eyes closed after doing my FP meditations. Steve

Hello Sifu Terry, I get fascinated by what you call the tangible effects of Flying Phoenix Chi Kung. I noticed some other tangible effects going on when I began doing Wind Above the Clouds on vol. one. When we circle our arms and bring them in toward the neck it is the same movement that is also done for Bending the Bow on vol. one. However, I find that the sensation of subtle energy moving the arms in this motion for Wind Above the Clouds has such a "thicker" feel to it which automatically slows down the arm movements as they close in toward one another. Bending the Bow has a much lighter feel to the same motion. I have experienced this every time I do these 2 meditations. Realizing that we all have different sensations/experiences due to the condition of our mind/body, it is still enjoyable to notice this subtle difference between the meditations. Further proof to a doubting Thomas like myself that something really is happening, and something good, I might add! And how the experiences do change! For quite awhile I did not look forward to doing Bending the Bow when it came up in my rotation of meditations because it seemed to put a bit of a strain on some of the body parts, knees, mainly. But lately BTB has become an almost effortless, free flowing movement which no longer causes any discomfort whatsoever. I used to wish that this meditation would hurry up and finish. Now I it feels like I can go on doing this one for as long as my time allows. This is teaching me to have the attitude of "just do it" with all of these meditations as progress and comfort is assured with practice. It is a process guided by Nature. After all, FP comes from the taoist tradition so how could it be anything other than natural? Steve

Sifu Terry: Sad news about Sifu Lew. He was just out here on the east coast, Long Island, in May teaching. Just like last year his workshop was filled before I could enroll. As I mentioned before, I heard of Sifu Lew from one of his early students, Michael Milner, who to this day still practices and teaches Sifu Lew's methods each week after he learned it over 40 yrs ago and of all the energy healing methods he has been involved with, he believes Sifu Lew's methods to be close to the top. To live to age 94 is an achievement, but to still be actively teaching at that age is quite an achievement. I bow to his legacy. Steve

My apologies to you. I just used your post as an opportunity to share a basic teaching. I did not have the impression that you were tampering with tradition or were ungrateful for anything. I should have prefaced my remarks stating that my warning is in case there are people out there combining things instead of spacing out different methods. In fact, it probably is better if I remain the student that I am and just let the Sifu and other experienced people do the teaching! I think I will stick with questions and testimonials. So thanks for bringing this to my attention. Steve

Wow Jeramiah! You just parapharased one of the teachings from Maharishi almost verbatim. When he was training us to be teachers he shared with us that he had made all the mistakes already so we did not need to duplicate that. He called it maintaining the purity of the teaching. You just follow the method of the teacher and then your students will be learning correctly. This is why the lineage of chi kung masters needs to be unbroken and why the true teachers are called masters. They have mastered the method. How many of us so far can claim that we have even truly mastered one Flying Phoenix meditation on volume one or two? Those of you who have done so please come and teach me!

Thank you Fu Dog for your reply and for all that you have posted. Your diligence and shared experiences from Flying Phoenix are truly inspirational. You are a disciple. But to answer your reply, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi said it all best. He trained us, his teachers of Transcendental Meditation, to neither add or subtract from the teachings of all mighty Nature. We are merely the mouthpieces of Nature as cognized by the vedic tradition. With the passing of my master I have come to embrace the teachings of China'a internal energy cultivation arts and I only see similarities. Earlier this week I woke up with a sore throat and that always means cold symptoms will manifest the next day. So I did what I always do, I did my Flying Phoenix but added more of it and each day the sore throat/swollen lymph gland was less bothersome. It is now the end of the week and not one symptom of a cold has manifested and the sore throat is gone and what remains is just a bit of the gland thing. Just one more tangible experience of Flying Phoenix Celestial Healing Chi Kung which certainly was appropriately named! Thanks once again Sifu Terry!

Without a traditional master-disciple relationship the unsurrendered thinking part of the unawakened mind, known as ego, will usually come up with reasons to do things differently. When I don't know squat about something that is new to me, I am stumbling around in the dark and am grateful for the light that the master gives to light the way on the path. In India that master is called guru for good reason. That sanskrit word translates as something like dispeller of darkness. Chi Kung is from the Taoist tradition which teaches to surrender to what is, the harmony of Nature, and opposes putting our human will against what is. My guru taught us a meditation technique and the meditation program which was how to do the technique. Those that did the meditation but added to or substracted what went with the meditation were considered to be doing the method but not the program and thus were not expected to gain maximum benefits.

Thank you Sifu Terry for that inspiring reply for the benchmark of Flying Phoenix Chi Kung. This reminds me of what one of Sifu Lew K. Share's students told me about the authentic way he was taught to do the Mircocosmic Orbit from Master Lew. He has been practicing this now for over 40 years as he studied as a teen in Los Angeles with Master Lew. Michael Milner told me that when he and I do Transcendenal Meditation we transcend thinking. But when he does this style of MCO, I forget the Chinese name you guys call it, you transcend the thinking and the body. So when you said we will get to the point of doing FP without feeling the body doing it, this reminds me of what transcending is like. Maharishi of TM at first called TM "The Big Automatic" because it is done effortlessly. So I think doing FP effortlessly as the body almost moves on its own must be like this. I understand this guideline and I will work at this until I reach that state. This is why I no longer own a television. Steve