de_paradise

A curious factoid I was reminded just now is that I often get a rush of bliss when I clip my nails or get my hair cut, like some kind of anesthesia gets into the circulation.

Yes, "softens" is a good way to put it. This type of calculating mind has a cutting sharpness, and in fact ego is quite painful to do in comparison to letting it go. Anything that breaks the regular thinking habits and cast them into a less important light will do the trick. Some people might need some practise and feeling around (mentally) to find that space.

The display of what your doing can affect others, even if you do not speak. Some guy doing some qigong in the park, doing some yoga or meditation. Woop de doo. Its something. Lately I've taken up practising yoga routine in the the park at the chateau, its fairly empty in the morning but theres always some people around. Today, I went up at a later time just to walk around, and saw in the exact same spot as I practise a guy who apparently was pretty beginner, was doing yoga. I dont know if it was coincidence, but lets just assume he saw me and decided, cool, people do yoga here and its a good thing to do. I was listening to a video where Robert Thurman was explaining how monks and monasitics were counterbalances to militarism. France has been getting pretty mititaristic again, police are everywhere cracking down. There is an answer, something you can do to help create a space, it may not be what you say, but what you do.

Why do we buy into it? We collude with this linear x causes y magic pill type coveting? Kunlun isnt a magic pill, going to Asia to get a guru isnt a magic pill, there is no magic pill qigong to help you get over your chronic anger, or feel the spark to play with your kid? A "complete system" of enlightenment may work for some, not for others, hence it is no magic pill either. In the aggragate, we chip away, grind, grunt, keep an open mind to new solutions or possible remedies, or behaviors that we can adapt to advance our path. Then we are hit with another doozie that makes makes us realize it isnt so easy to progress. Then grind and grunt, and muddle through. Many times, when I give some advice on this forum, I am hit later with some kind of sitution that makes me think I am in no position to give advice. But I do want to thank those that post their problems and queries as it gives some new angle to chew on and try to find and answer to, and even if my posts are not helping anyone, and just another fake-out of my ego to gain esteem. In any case, it helps me think of spiritual path, in this mundane, Age of spiritual darkness. As to magic pills, these are only for the simplistic mind to consume and believe in. Its easier to communicate that way. Girl A is sold on the idea that a lipstick can help her attract a man and live happily every after, we are sold on a number of things, we want them to be true for us. We are used to being sold like that, and formulating our speach like that, spreading that same magic pill type belief. It just may be that the lipstick is the deal clincher, who knows. But in most cases, just a pipe dream.

Thanks for the analysis deci, the motivation is certainly key, and at the same time quite difficult to explain or communicate.

I tried and found the answer was "no"

No particular practise Ive done gets bliss each time, but some practices cause bliss to arise at certain stages. Thoughts are the most consistant, like gratitute, love, merging with the whole. But the energies brought on by thoughts are not always felt strong enough for bliss, or to be some kind of antidote to whatever state your biochemistry is giving you at the moment. Chi building exercise and then running through the emotions and thoughts I mentioned is a better system to get bliss.

Ah yes, Christians give foregiveness a bad name, but in my opinion its one of the few things they got right. If a person wants to be legit and do it for himself, he can find the proper neural pathways and ensuing peptide showers to wash away the "hate" habits.

My personal views and experience is more to do with consciousness than thought, because preceding thought is consiousness, and while thought can be traced to physical locations, consciousness has a more etheric location. So according to the Buddhist model as I understand, there is the Alaya seed consciousness, which is a kind of neverending fountain of spewing data, and heavily related to one's karma or karmic seeds. In my own experience, once, I had a very unusual experience of travelling through my own mind, seeing the machine working. It was a vast expanse of row upon row of globes, and as I thought something, on each globe there would be a picture of something related to that thought, as if all the relations and iterations were presented on the globes. So if I thought "duck", there would instantly be thousands of pictures of ducks and things related to ducks. And for some reason, I would favour one globe over another, it would fit, and then the chain would continue. I suppose there is much more to it than this, but this is about as deep as Ive gotten.

Forgiveness dissolves hate. Hate is an ego-centric type emotion, and you can shift the nexus of importance from your own lily self to elsewhere through forgiveness. This can be practised throughout the day by constantly reminding yourself to forgive, for example the therapist who, is after all just doing a job, trying to help, is using his/her training to her best knowlege. Forgive, forgive this easy, simple and Oprah-sounding method, because Im just a spiritual seeker trying to help another seeker. But it requires a bit of vigilance, to catch yourself in the act of hating, or judging with an eye to self-seeking aims, and to find the way out to dissolve it. Stop yourself, just stop it. It takes work, and no therapist can do it for you, and they dont have to live with your karma.

Vispassana is measured in Samadhi states, but it takes so long to reach a first low level samadhi state, that you will get no satisfaction if you want to feed your curiosity *now*. You can keep in mind that if you are doing the breath-watching meditation, you will always be making progress. Its very difficult to screw up, and I think thats why the Buddha recommended this meditation. You can sometimes measure your meditation progress in terms of heart opening, and freedom from ego, but for this you have to note behavior in your own states and over a long period of time. Progress is slow as molasses, and I think most people quit meditation over the frustration of not knowing if they are making progress. If you have a vegan or fruitarian diet you will become more sensitive to energies, and will be more aware of changing stages in your meditation. So you can guage the micro stages better if you detox your body and feed the cells regenerating fresh fruit and vegetables.

The mountains of China and Taiwan are sparsely populated as the vast open unpopulated regions, so even if you argue that masters only hang out in unpopulated areas, you will find that there is enough of that in even dense populated countries. So perhaps the title is only meant to catch attention and not logic. I was living near Hualien a pretty populous city, avoiding everyone because I meditate alot, but I bought my vegetables from a Buddhist lady because she was nice and she sold wild greens and stuff without pesticides. She lived in a little monestery on a nearby hill after the Tailu River near Moon Lake, and I went there one day because I was curious about who was doing the vegetables business. I spent a few hours there, it was very modest, a ramshackle place in the forest with a few ladies doing cooking. They also had a recycling thing, and that made the grounds kind of junky looking. But I could feel the authenticity of the energy. The master never did come down to meet me, I guessed it was because perhaps not wanting to meet every polluted individual that came around the bend. But she did scan me from where she was, and I scannned back, and it was nice, all the while the monestery lady was telling me about Buddhism and her personal story. She said the master could see all your past and future lives, and if you believe that it is true, to be able to do that is really high level, a living Buddha. So there you go, a roadmap even. **note: the instructions are not literal, just mean to say that you should meditate, eat a satvic diet and things will come to you.

Taiwan is a good place to learn Buddhism, because there are many sects and places, and they are open to foreigners. Almost all of the Taoism is the folk-religion type, not the cultivation type. I have a strong attachment to Taiwan regardless of the "ism". You find that the entire society will instill certain values of patience, non-violence, diligence, filiality. I think the Taoists try to blend in, or keep their secrets, so its not a bunch of strangely-clad people on a mountain, like perhaps in Wudang. I have been travelling China for many years, from when it was a very harsh place even to visit, till now, and have accumulated too many memories of stressful situations, which I think biases my opinion of China. Its full of amazing people.

Generally, the ability to eloquently go on at length about spiritual topics, and it sounds genuine, rings true for the listener (as Tolle can do) means that he has the attainment, not just faking it. While my criticisms of Tolle are the same as mentioned, that he pretty much copies Taoism and Buddhism, and paraphrases it, waters it down for safe western mass consumption, and that theres no hardcore practises that will actually help, I myself enjoy listening to Tolle. I also tend to recommend his books to those beginners, even to those people who think they merit a more heady author, like some famous Indian mystic, and maybe think that Tolle is only Campbells Soup. Why? Because your typical Westerner is really messed up, depressed or completely ego-driven, and/or heading in the wrong direction to the 8 worldly dharmas. It takes alot of gentle reprogramming to get a reset in direction towards spirituality, and Tolle is very good at this.

Not bad at all. I would like to hear how you set them to music. (I dabble myself in writing songs, and for me the hardest bit is the setting to music.) I am reminded of the Collective Soul song "Heaven let your light shine down" To Manitou: excessive meditation doesnt exist IMO, because this psychological term "escape" may be true enough for the main run of society, but if you are cultivating earnestly, or so to speak, aligning your desires with those of the Tao, it is not escapist. That the activities of "escape" or cultivation overlap is just coincidental.

Materialism wins in China. But that is neither here nor there. Its an entire lifetime study in sociology just to scratch the surface. Finger pointing is an insidious trap of your ego. Start with the man in the mirror, as the MJ song.

I havent read Semple's books but when he posts on this forum it seems very coherent and genuine. Studying qi if you mean by book learning about the facets of qi, has not brought me to deeper levels, only first hand experiential knowlege can do that. There are some good pointers here and there though. Its great that you meditate for 2 hours a day. If you mean getting beyond relaxed into some kind of special Samadhi state, just forget about that. With experience you can dissect what "relaxed" means, and how your states change and evolve over time. Its not about the words, words can be misleading because they are agglomerative approxiamations of pretty hard to describe first hand experiences. Being extremely relaxed even more, while still maintaining some kind of awareness, is the goal; not trying to reach some state that Buddhist monks may reach after years of meditations. Your heat in the chest experience might be some stirrings of the etheric body. Its very small in terms of importance or meaning, except that its some kind of proof of progress that might help you along.

Juice fasting pretty straight forward. Personally I wouldnt do the self-administered coffee aenima, but a colonic irrigation by a pro outifit is fine. In the clinics they do coffee colonics, but only after you've had an experience and done a water colonic. And you dont do them 3x per day, but once a week or 2. This guy seems a little hardcore. So I would buck the peer pressure of getting coffee splashed up your anus.

Hey thanks! I was a bit lazy to write the entire sadhana, but the pre and after bits about the giving away flesh and then the turning to dust are important in augmenting the utility of the meditation. Also for those reading and wanting to try this meditation, try to have the clearest best image of a white skeleton you can find online (not a grey skeleton on white background) or a plastic replica in a halloween shop. This you should have in front of you, and you can peek at it, then close your eyes, and find the bones on your body. The way I do it is fairly slowly, bone by bone, and I redo the bones several times. Theres also tricks to visualizing if you are not good at it, like mentally shining a flashlight over the bones. The visualization of the white bones, which is where most of time and effort is spent, is meant to release some kind of qi from the marrow and bones. This is absolutely what it does to me, and when I do this meditation my qi cycles like a freight train, my sexual potency goes up to like when I was 16 years old. I havent got samadhi aspects shortly after, but what happens is the qi rises so strong that often there is arising of a blissful energetic state. This is why I think that if the OP has some kind of energetic blockage due to uneven Kundalini cleaning energies, then he can do this to balance himself. In any case its good to do to further his progress.

I think you've hit on something really important. Children are so compelling to watch because they are easily awed in that delighted way, and if you see an adult who is enthusiastic or awed about something it is equally compelling, because we can share for a moment that joy, call it energy transfer or mirror neurons, call it sympathy. The jaded person who gets excited about nothing is conversely a drain to be around. I think we can actually tweak our own behavior to be more awed at things, even if its acting out in some sense, in another sense its not. Its reprogramming ones behavior to include awe, that joyful kind of awe. Kind of like the Tony Robbins in one of his books mentions to include words like amazing and incredible in your speech, and try to feel them, and it will catch on. The state of awe is closer to the Tao, one is humbled, ones ego is less, one experiences a state larger than themselves, and theres a joy involved.

I think the "white skeleton" or white bone vizualization meditation would do wonders for increasing yang qi. Several years into Kundalini, the really tough, crude stages should be behind you, so it makes me wonder about some kind of blockage, or perhaps this is due to the divorce strain or some other variable. The meditation is simply, have a good picture or skeleton replica nearby, and then shut your eyes and go bone by bone visualizing your skeleton as white and shining. I believe that one starts with left big toe. This meditation is witten up in the meditationexpert website. Have you considered the detox/fasting angle? Could help. Herbal detox. I am personally into raw fruits and vegetables and they have really cleaned alot of the gunk off my body, from slightly dough-boyish to slightly lean and sinewy. So perhaps some technique or piece of advice that the posters mention can help solve the indicated problems, or perhaps not, perhaps taking your mind off the problems is the best solution by engaging in life, like group activity or sports or hobbies or travel. Ulitmately you will find a way through.

"Tilda" brand Basmati. Its premium from India. High quality Thai rice is also good!

You seem like a sincere seeker, so Im sure you'll find something groovy, as all these mentioned things will do the trick. You can go extremely far, just on the "sitting and forgetting" practise alone. People throw around cool sounding words sometimes as if they have half a clue what they actually mean, just because they read it somewhere, and being so few things to label, they like to label and sort and cognize. My path is one of practise and locating what works, and doing that. Over time it develops or changes, knowing that it is "flying blind" to a certain extent, but having to have a guru master hawkishly imposing some system on me does not appeal at all. So the exploration that you are doing never really ends, and one finds something to settle into, noone will appear to you like the wizard of OZ and say that you must do this or must do that to gain the result. Kunlun is pretty interesting, but I never considered stopping my other practises, which are more Buddhist wisdom path in nature, or mind-only type of meditations, but also qi practise linked to another school entirely. It can be fearful when theres all these warnings on the Taobums, like you always get warned that you will be malnourished if you go vegan, or you will lack protein or this or that thing. When you cross the threshold and survive and notice you are healthier than most people, then you realize it was smoke and cognitive noise.

Hi. Very interesting remarks. I am developing my qigong voice, so to speak, as an adjunct to my healing skill. I was was wondering if you are having your students make visualizations for what you are talking about, the surround sound, the melody lines. Thanks.

My unofficial method to get something going and some bliss: Imagine that moment where a woman is about to orgasm, you when her back is arched back, eyes rolled back a little, and she's in this moment of blissful surrender and reception. If you can imagine that moment, whether you are a man or woman, and put yourself into that state, that feeling, and enjoy that moment yourself as a a woman about to orgasm, or well on the path of orgasming, and just letting go to that feeling. Allow yourself to lose any inhibitions that keep your from that state, and just think of the times you have seen or felt this ecstasy. Keep the kunlun posture while you are doing this. Forget about being a guy or macho or whatever you are, and just enter the orgasmic sensation, of that letting go and reception. And you can feel the bliss rising from your lower chakras, and it may circulate around your body. Just allow the natural movements within the Kunlun posture flow with the whole orgasm symphony.