de_paradise

would you please elaborate on what exactly you do.

Surrender can be used as a cultivation stepping stone because its an automatic diminishment of your ego. I'm not talking about surrendering but stealthily harboring bad feelings, but really work on purging that out by creating a feeling of surrender whenever the thoughts might come up. The things you can surrender to are limitless, and I discovered a most valuable meditation the other day, which is to surrender to the sound of the ticking clock. (surrender to time imperative) Not all situations in your life need to be used as an exercise in surrender. You need to assert yourself when its important. Like in that parable of the snake hissing. Sometimes faking anger is a good way to get control of the times when anger might control you. Act angry but inside you dont really care that much. Somtimes the other person only understands anger and its appropriate. Most situations we dont need to be angry or pull and ugly face and can be used as a cultivation opportunity. I'd like to add that I agree with Scotty in that if you do qigong or have a larger energy influence, then you have a responsibility to yourself and others to avoid negative emotions including anger.

I tend to believe that there are ultra subtle threads that link action and reaction, that are as if tallied up, similar to the concept of karma. It makes sense, but I cannot prove this. But what I can prove to myself is this, positive emotions, thought-states, dreams, positive intentions, and external behavior all affect my energy body. Tendancies and habits can be either helpful to or hindering to the energy flow in my body, its speed, its efficacity in removing the toxins, knots, etc. So one doesnt need to bother with the concept of merit, just deal with obeservable cause-effect. I believe that from the point of view of the universe, practise of cultivation is merit, as if you were doing something good. Evolution is the direction of the universe. Again merit seems kind of a clunky way to cognize things, when you can just say, I'm going the way the universe is going.

no, "that poor Lomaximo's" biggest failure was not to ask my advice which is the gold standard of advice, and so much so that I wonder why Kundalini shakti doesnt ask for it, even though the evolutionary force has access to all information, I cant help but wonder if Lomaxmo will end up in a mental instution foaming at the mouth with a mind full of thorazine for not asking me.

I got the book after I saw that post on the general forum. I had had a rare lucid dream last week and I decided to ask my lineage ancestor for advice, and the reply was a radio-like voice to get a book on dreaming. So I thought that perhaps this was the book to get. Its pretty good, as you say, in a step by step expanation of dream yoga, preparation practises, and what to do inside of dreams. Alot of this I was practising already, but its good to have a coherent teaching on the subject, not like those wishy washy new agerly type. Another thing is sleep yoga, which I didnt know existed, or read and forgot. This is maintaining the clear light of rigpa during the entire night of sleeping. Thats certainly a goal. Once you have that, after you die you can go from bardo into the clear light. I havent really tried the method yet, using the tigle visualizations, the black hong, and the tibetan A.

My approach would be more cure is better, and to keep it simple. If the problem is "dead jing", then that is relatively gross, fluid problem, and taken out of the body through detoxing organs and blood and arteries, colon, etc. How about a 6 month program of herbal detox? How about dancing as downward flow, an incorporation of bushman shaking and dancing to modern music. Like be that guy who's dancing kind of like a nut in the night club by himself for hours. Or dance alone in your basement for a few hours.

ah, I misunderstood your intent with the dust wiping characterization. I havent read books on Zen since I was in college, and cant remember about the Zen schools and the schism. In any case, good for you.

No, your point of view has some pieces that are not valid for the context. The dust wiper thingy was a criticism lodged to a monk that practised hours and hours year after year in a kind of monkey way, but your practises are not much in comparison, more like YMCA with a few bits, some good. This "dont try too hard or you'll never make progress" was seized upon by westerners and used out of context so that they can feel better about themselves for not practising well or much. Its a obviously a popular belief among the new agers who think that things "just happen" I have heard that one common impediment of 20 somethings to make progress is a high ego-centricity. The countermeasures to this is practises that shift the nexus away from you. This could be simple behavior practises, such as going out of your way to do well to others, generosity, etc. "Surrender" as a contemplation works wonders. I hope that you look into this angle of making spiritual progress. The buddhists have many practises aimed at dismantling the ego.

It sounds like some kind of initial de-blocking chi channels type of stage of (kundalini) (some kind of energetic awakening akin to kundalini). For me the inital stages were by far the wierdest and kind of shocking, and what you've described seems pretty standard in the initial k-awakening type of stuff. Dont fight the force, ha ha.

I feel hunger in a way thats much reduced than in the years before. I think its due to relatively more open energy channels, plus I spent about a year as raw vegan with the odd fast days. So in my case it was just a result of practise and and diet, nothing special. My eye still on attempting bigu in a serious way, its just so inconvenient to reduce one's carbs to a level where you cannot do what you want to do in life. Its also a freaky big leap, no matter how much one plans and learns about it.

Yet another last post by Cam.

Thanks MPG, good suggestions. I've watched Wims videos in the past, I wonder if there has been examples of rapid healing not related to cold or the tummo, or if rapid healing of wounds and sickness is part of the tummo attainment. Yesterday I fell into a reverie lucid dream meditation state where I was moving qi in my body in a more enhanced way than I was able to in the past, and actually healed myself mentally in that state. In fact the interesting part was the dream body was also the physical (qi body), where normally the dream body is quite seperate or just some mental construct that seems physical. Perhaps the enhanced ability was caused by the necessity of the accident. I do have my own teacher and lineage but I'm sure Spring Forest is good. For the discussion of White wolf and letting Buddhas into your body, I remember a time when I was concerned about this. It is similar to allowing Jesus into your heart, etc, or some other deity. Most of this type of meditation is to build an idea of an enlightened or perfected person, deity in your mental space so that you have some kind of reference to go towards. You dont need to have the buddha move inside you at all, you can have him outside sitting nearby, etc. If your mind tasked with feeling the traits of the buddha, that buddha is inside your mind already. No need to take it so literally, but you can if you want, because its easier to build a construct in your mind when you have some stated traits and facts. But really, you are trying in this type of meditation to feel the enlightened state, dharmakaya, the emptiness "body" of these beings. If you were to make an image of yourself as enlightened or a bodiless being in a higher plane of existence, and since we all have memories or access to that type of feeling somewhere, then you dont need a Buddha. I find using Buddha work better because they are free from all the thoughts and feelings of our present unenlightened selves that might bog a person down when trying to form a good model.

Thanks Kate. I appreciate it. I just noticed that none of us directly answered the OP's question as to how visualizations work. There's more than one answer to this. Visualizations are inherently one-pointed focus activity. So whether you visualize a deity or a pack of gum, you are going to increase your qi flow just by that action of one pointed focus. That in itself is a good thing, a meditation. As far as visualization of places on your own body, you will stir the qi, or enliven the qi with your mind at the place you are think of. (feel it if it more effective that way) More complicated to explain is making things happen by kind of manifesting the action or a similar type of action, such as thinking of healing a body part, or thinking of flowing cleansing water,etc. This is where it gets pretty interesting. Can your hallucinations become reality? Indeed, yes, but much depends upon the skill and level of the practitioner. We always speak of intent as being the key driver, not the pictures that guide the intent. Our mind works with pictures, much of it is so fast and beneath our conscious mind, so there's argueably always elements of visualization in anything we do. Yet, to understand how to have your healing hallucinations become real healing modality, we use the word intent. Thats the basics. The next level is to understand which type and how of the visualizations, the character of the consciousness when one visualizes. Its something one has to do on one's own because its all a bit fidgety to explain beyond a basic level, or may not translate to the next person.

Funny you should post. I was hit off my motorbike by a speeding truck the other day and am doing this self-qi-healing regeneratino meditation. The mantra is "healing-regenerate" I am testing for a powerful way of doing this.There's the route of visualization of regeneration, maybe like Claire Bennett wounds and stuff zipping up. The other route is a bit more etheric, where you try to get more into the qi body, or "emptiness" of a deity, instead of tackling the problem head on, since these will generate more healing qi than just picturing in you mind the problems going away. I think it will all work, even the mantra because the words generate ideas and picture below your conscious mind, that serve to keep a healing flow going. It probably come down to how long you can do this type of medtiation and the intesity or feel that you can attach to the visualization. For me, in alot of pain and not at all feeling lovey-angel, its hard to attach good feelings to a meditation, so I just go with more of a nuts and bolts Claire Bennett style vizualize with mantra.

Being in the "now", or keeping one's attention to the moment: not future, not past (and not on this forum, and what you would like to say in response to posts). There is a utility in dragging your mind to the future, then the past, then back to the present, and letting it rest, just like an artist applies lighter colors to highlight a dark color beside it, seems to work out better. The method is pretty well known to everyone due to Eckart Tolle, but since Eckart was not an alchemist but just a spontaneous awakened individual who cross referenced his experience with writings of sages, he probably cannot comment on the experience of us in the trenches who make gradual progress. What I've noticed is this ability to be present in the moment is contingent upon how much energy or prana you are conducting. Therefore, the more advanced you are in clearing your channels and chakras, the more energy you can conduct, the better your consciousness can sit still in the present. Now anyone can put their attention on the present, but unless you are conducting energy there is a kind of grasping, a kind of painfulness involved, just like meditating while blocking thoughts causes a kind of pain. This doesnt stop new-agey people from advising to all to "just be in the now" They have likely had a taste of this larger consciouness being in the now, versus just a grasping to the now. Unfortunately they rarely mention that you have to have wide open channels and be conducting lots of energy for it to work out. Meditation is a relatively easier way to acheive a "now" state because you can gradually increase your qi flow. In fact there really isnt much different from this and anapana "breath following" meditation except your attention is just slightly towards "staying in the now" and not "following breath" Some may find it easier, some may find it better to follow breath. I find it easier because one needs to loosen and let go as one's energy rises, (in the mind), you can't stay locked down, you have to loosen up as your conscious mind goes deeper, or that kind of mental pain will persist. Thoughts come up in form of pictures, desires, plans, bits of conversation. The counteracting method that works is to "desire nothing" For example, a picture of some desire of a nice apartment by the sea comes up, and you can counteract it by simply thinking that you dont want it, that you want nothing. In any case, if anyone wants to add to the conversation, feel free. This is not meant to be the pontification of an expert, just some practise notes.

You dont need to be enlightened, or have a tamed mind to be able to be of use to others, materially or energetically. Is meditating for the benefit of others a worthwile cultivation method? Yes, of course it is, but the acutal results on others are hard to measure. The question of best meditation to change the world may just be the most important subject ever in man's history, certainly not one to gloss over. Ascended beings probably debate this, who doesnt want man to wake out of our selfish and self destructive ways sooner rather than later?

In general physical practises, qigong practises cultivate the body, that can lead to various siddhis, and also advance one towards non-duality. Mind only practises, such as sitting meditation are a more direct way to the final goal of liberation.

I agree with the main analysis that you had an awakening experience, and that now there's "karma" or deeper issues resolving themselves. You are at the stage of intensifying your practise and desire to reach the higher spiritual levels, it's a kind of milestone where perhaps you can re-align your lifestyle and values to include more spiritual practise. The experience in the Jade Emperors temple is auspicious and perhaps gives you a clue to the past and future that you can follow a Taoist path or practises and doors will open for you at the right time. I would check out Kunlun neigong or Jenny Lamb, since this practise is origin Taoist. Besides Kunlun, I think you will fall into stride with some kind of meditation. You can also go to a Chinese temple or make an altar, and burn incense to the Jade Emperor with the your questions. This may seem really odd if you are not Chinese, but given the experience you had, there is alot of logic to keeping this relationship going. I had a similar experience to you due to deep trance hypnosis, gave me a kind of short term enlightened state. It was only after I had taken steps to meditate several hours each day, avoid losing jing (ejaculation), and became familiar with the reality of the alchemy path, that energetic things started to happen on a more day to day level and Kundalini awaken. There's many meditations out there, and each teacher has his/her preference, and you can find them. Alot of what one needs to do to make progress is to avoid what not to do, avoid time wasting, avoid pointless thoughts, etc. It is getting down to business, focus.

They are just characterizations, sketches of a map of a larger territory, meant to help you understand something one, in the end, needs to feel in order to understand, all with the objective to get to a higher level of cultivation. An analogy is a complex map of a human biology made by university professors, but simplified to teach 9th graders, and then further simplified to teach young kids so they know how to care for their bodies in basic ways. If you take the simple sketch maps for kids as objective maps, you are going to be sniffing at the finger pointing at the moon. When you use a computer, you dont first need to understand software programming and IC chips and hardware manufacture, you just need to click on icons. Just click on the icons. The real work of cultivation is finding the right icons to click on, then click them.

that was great, just the right amount of detail, and neat music too. I could feel the energy.

By world, you mean the human population? I can only guess, as I am only a pin drop of blindess. I think the meditation has to have a strong-wide influence that can efficiently affect someone else. Maybe affecting 10 people with intent is the same as affecting a million because mind is not limited, or it may be better to affect 10 or even just 1 person with all your intent, than to spread so thin. The latter carries a certain logic, but I am told the former is the case too. Maybe the meditation has to do with the number of participants, such as those world group meditation experiments, or maybe you can rustle together a group of attained individuals with a larger power and get better results. Off the top of my head they type of meditation would have to do with healing or pure love-kindness. You cant go wrong with that. But then again, I percieve the greatest problem of people today is programmed insatiable greed, such that even billionaires feel lack inside. So what could counteract that? Something specific, or a vaguer, broader raising of energy level in human population. I dunno. Worthwhile to spend time musing.

Just a quick analysis of Steve's response on "resistance". In my mind, what he's communicating is a feeling-state. Like when you have made up your mind to be accepting, non-responsive. You can recognize the people who are like that right away, their eyes are not darting around, scared at noises, and calculating in their minds how they can benefit from each and every situation. These people, calm, maybe we know them as tolerant, good self esteem as they are not so reactive to small negative incidents, but perhaps vibe out on positive incidents like children and dogs, just for the fun of it. If you are not used to acting like this, you can find a model and wear the behavior like a suit of clothing. Can you see that this is a more developed and complete visualization, because it includes kinasthetics of body and inner feelings, bouncing the behavior out in the world. Then other people's mirror nuerons get engaged, and so on.

For sending qi through an area, you can imagine the area empty like a seive, and the qi pours straight through, like playing with a garden hose spout spraying straight though, or a sandblast air blaster, in and to the other side and continuing. The other part of the question, the ego, is a big can of worms, where feeling-states, not visualizations are more effective, like gratitude, loving. Theres a whole boatloat of those feeling states that allow qi to go through blockages easier.