de_paradise

I agree with King's purity or filth in the mind, if somewhere statement. Yet many paths start with purifying the jing, of the body, and then the chi, of the body. First the body and energetic, then the mind. Thats why the Taoists list them in that order. As humans, we are perfectly equipped to be outstanding and beautiful creatures of the earth; but as potential immortals or potential buddhas, or some type of heavenly being, we do require some kind of purification process, known as a spiritual path. So there should be no aversion to yourself as a human. But if you look at yourself as a hypothetical pre-buddha, then you can look at your human impure self with some kind of aversion, because that would serve as a reminder to cultivate.

How about "purity challenged"? Don't shoot the messenger guys. How much longer do you think you have carrying around your festering corpse to love it so much? As much as I would like someone to send over a shen body to my house to debate the issue, I dont think one of us has reached this level of purity, and until then "filthy" is quite an apt descrption. And not to hijack this interesting thread with my little semantic sojourn, I would like to ask chichi to weigh in on this issue.

Chichi, its my understanding that in some schools, high level practioners have a tradition of solitary practise in the later stages to acheive the highest levels, and for this they have to avoid the filth of regular humans like us. So this is a reason for the hermits. Also, I understand that a certain kind of practioner that has attained a kind of unusual long life and avoided the decay of the body will also choose to avoid human contact, for much the same reason. But for teachers of medical qigong, "teachers", and "medical" imply a high degree of social interaction, not to mention if we are looking for a teacher who would be known and unrestricted by sect rules to teach to a foreigner that has airfare and a desire to learn esoteric knowlege. You say that you are doing healing already and have aquired siddhis, would you please explain these siddhis and say why you want to have more, or different from what you have, so that you want to find a new teacher to "support".

Wonderful. Pledging leveraged dollars that they printed from nothing is hardly "funding", the USA is so broke its not funny. The ponzi scheme just gets bigger, but they know if the dominos start falling in Europe, that it will not be long before the US collapses as well.

I agree with this one. As far as EUR/USD, its the dollar that is likely to plunge not the euro, because they are getting their house in order, wheras the US has much worse debt problems but still not facing them.

"One who expresses or promotes thoughtless praise; an adulator." Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/cheerleader#ixzz1641V74kb Do you not get the insincerity meaning?

I am pro-mod, and I lean towards the tougher side, and dont mind that they are sometimes biased towards people who bring alot to the table. This is because it sometimes takes only one nasty remark to spoil the soup, and there is always someone that wants to prove themselves in a game of one-upmanship by taking issue at some minor point or by goading. Good posters become good posters by contribution. This isnt high school debate club. Experiential knowlege is rare and if there were a non-confrontational environment, we would see people more willing to share, and more high level teachers take an interest. But it has come to the point that most sincere contributors are not thanked by attacked. If you are a public teacher, posting on the bums is taking your own reputation at risk due to lack of respect and mud-flinging by anonymous kids who are not bounded by anything but their own ego. "Cheerleader", while an innocuous term on the surface is calling the person insincere or a liar or sycophant. Cat isnt a student of KAP, but respects KAP, like me, for what they are doing, and that Glenn Morris was able to find the knowlege and create a school. Now if someone were to call you insincere, a liar, a sycophant, would you go to their level of name calling? Or would you try to logicially persuade them, when you know that their emotially driven, ego-driven arguement will just find another way to mud-sling, to vamp your energy. Or would you just call in the mods?

Darn, I thought this thread was going to be about enlightenment.

Remember that Shiva is known as Shiva the destroyer. At this point in history, we need a little more Shiva in our lives, less clinging to the status quo. What good is creating if its built on rotten values?

I read an ebook "immortal body of light" book by this guy, seemed like a load of baloney. I could be wrong though. Maybe Thoth did show him the in's and out's of the soul.

Well this doesnt sound like "stuck qi", more like the ethereal body growing and unblocking itself because, congrats, you certainly enlivened something we generally call kundalini. I dont think you should waste your time thinking about putting the genie back into the bottle or trying to find an ultrahigh master who possibly could. Though visits to qigong masters are recommeded just for some conversation, perhaps you can learn something. You dont sound like you are too mentally adjusted about the spiritual path yet, and that takes time and endurance to get through the panic, the dark nights etc, and to readjust to a new normal. You seem to be attempting the right things as far as grounding. You may find nothing works except surrender. There are lots of people here who know exactly what Im saying here, as in been there done that, have the memories logged in some journal that they no longer keep.

Funny I was just wanting to post something on this topic, just now as I was meditating. The short answer to your question is to have no thoughts but attempt to relax your mind more. Ok. Everyone knows the Buddha's instruction to just notice the thoughts, or allow them to rise and disappear without clinging. Normally a meditator reaches a thoughtless state if he is quite focused on one thing, but the problem with that is the mind is clamping down on that thing or on that nothingness projection (its not true emptyness, just some kind of mental aproxiamation) and its simply too tense. Im not saying that your problem is this, but that the way forward is to gently relax your mind still more, somewhat like you were drifting off to sleep. As you know, when you drift off to sleep, a whole new kind of thoughts start to pop up, not of the conscious variety, such as what you are going to make for dinner, but some kind of weird out-of-context type of thought that have zip to do with what your current situation is. These kind of thoughts are called vritti, and if you start thinking of how a plumber is talking to his customer, and customer answering back. Or, for example, someone you know is explaining something about their life, and perhaps there is an answer from the created context, or the context switches but its still nothing to do with your current situation of you as a meditator. This is how the body puts the conscious mind to sleep, and what you want to do is to utilize this natural function to help you go into a better meditational state. So you keep relaxing, but also have an awareness of the present situation, those strange out of context thoughts pop up, but you are not sucked into sleep, instead what happens is the qi body gets progressively energized. Its almost like switching gears, from qi2 to qi2 to qi3, etc. If a vritti thought pops up, your mind, because its so relaxed and near the subconscious level, you may even fall into the context a little, but when you realize whats happening and switch back to silent empty observation: BOOM! your body goes from q1 to qi2, or from qi3 to qi4 depending on how deep you already are. The longer you meditate on a long term basis, the body can create more and more "gears" which are progressively more effective.

Ralis is right about all those names, they are all great and facinating. Typically NLP is taught seminar style, like a university course condensed into a few days. I think the best way is to get the audio recordings of the overview course, the one I like is Chris Howard "NLP and Leadership Practitioner Training Course". Give it a listen, and see if its your cup of tea. Then you can go in whatever direction of your interests, be it languaging, meta-programs, hypnosis, Ericksonian, values, persuasion, NLP techniques, Bandler's stuff...

NLP can help spiritual development because it helps you analyse your personality actions, perceptions--the stuff that is so automatic and that you do not notice. In NLP, the idea is to give the person an expanded choice or field of choice so that they can reprogram parts of their personality for ones benefit. I have found that the spritual benefit side is that the knowing is the detaching. In the same way Buddhists somehow want you to detach from this or that behavior or craving or thought pattern, NLP is letting you do this with some pretty amazingly good information and methods. The question for some is how does Buddhist or NLP detaching from the Skandhas or ego aglomorations actually work to further spiritual development. Well, its the path of wisdom, where the energetic body tends to be enlivened, channels cleared, as the rigid programmed behaviors of the ego are parsed, analysed, chosen, discarded, etc. Its a path where the body follows the mind. Its by no coinicidence that NLPers somehow eventually find themselves on a spiritual path (me for example)

I've started growing my own wheatgrass. Initially it attracted me because its a superfood that can be cultivated indoors year-round. My body loves this stuff. Anyone else doing the wheatgrass thing?

Oh, I read wheat and barley grass were roughly the same, but that would be a bonus. Westerners are said to prefer wheat grass because its sweeter flavour, but barley is less sweet. Personally I dont need sweet. That article touts their wheatgrass gets 200 days of sun, but its well known that you must harvest the wheatgrass a few days after it comes up or it will lose the nutritional value. So their wheatgrass must be withering chaff by 200 days. Thats pretty insane. In any case, I sense a feeling of love kind of qi rush when I drink fresh wheatgrass juice, that is the extraordinary effect that made me want to post.

The hugging Amma is coming nearby for a talk or whatever she does. Is this worth going to?

Dude, take up surfing or body boarding, and you can make spiritual progress. I know plenty of surfers, and many are very spiritual people. Not a coincidence.

Its not so much different than being totally into tennis or bodybuilding fitness, or gardening. Its so rare to be a meditator, you know, each of my friends say to me that they dont know of or have heard of anyone who meditates like me. But I say, this stuff is real you know, siddhi, the liberation of the mind from the body. Given that its a fact that our typical material reality is but a small part of the bigger picture, I dont understand how anyone could not meditate like crazy. You know, eventually you just die, ususally the last few years of your life are write-offs as the body degrades--and thats lucky to not get killed in some freak accident. These people, stuck in the sandbox like kids, playing for shiny marbles. Hey kids, theres a way out of the sandbox. They say: Oh no, youre not fooling me, I want more shiny marbles, we like the sandbox and beyond the sandbox is alot of BS made up to control the masses. I spoke with a Nobel prize winning physicist after I attended a TED talk, he gave me the old clunker that belief in spirituality is merely some kind of need to know that theres some kind of afterlife. I told him no way, its the opposite, then I could spend all my time shagging women and making money and being a total hedonist. Brilliant mind, but a kid in the sandbox studying the sandbox.

Its an interesting question. I dont think its method, though method may have an effect in increasing the probablility of nailing the right head, so to speak, depending upon the method. Its likely something like "potential" which is a product of higher level or subtle biology, that was perhaps informed by the entire soul history as it passed from body to body, maybe not necesarily only human. So we are talking about a potential or coding that took quite a while to create to have certain characteristics if enlivened, and even to shape the biology of the flesh and blood body as it grew while the kundalini potential was mainly dormant.

I love tea too, especially the Gaoshan Tea from Alishan in Taiwan. But if you get an opportunity to try a shot of fresh pressed wheatgrass juice, try it, and maybe you'll see what Im all excited about. Not only that, wheatgrass is so easy to sprout and grow by yourself, and its ready to cut after a week. So that means you have your own independant supply of superfood. Can you grow tea by yourself? What other superfood can you plant year-round in your house, dont even need soil.

I second this. You know, many people do yoga, taichi and lots of excercise, and while its good, there is no comparison for the time efficiency if you really want to open your channels to sit down, and make yourself meditate. You may not understand how it all works, you may think that cool slow movements is somehow being very qi, but the mechanics of why mantra works in a way that is more efficient. Mantra is what I started with, and what I still like to do for long periods of time. This is because I tend to start talking to myself in other forms of meditation, and mantra automatically blocks that monkey mind, AND that allows qi to circulate in an efficient fashion. So please, get an egg timer, or download a timer for your computer, and just start. I seperate the wannabees from the real practitioners by how much or if they meditate. Guess what, the world is full of wannabees (isnt that from a song?) So hey hey do that pretty thing.

No comparison to tea, this is a superfood, extraordinarily nutrient rich. I love this video:

I dont have a juicer yet either, its on my Christmas list. With a blender, you just add water and then strain out the fibers later. It seems to work ok. @Gerard: No, not Taiwanese, but I really like their culture.

Very candid reply. I love it when people are honest on this forum. I think that this would fall into the general category of altering one's outside life to improve one's meditations. I certainly cut out alot, such as unnecessary work and socializing, and avoiding things that personally might disturb. I guess one has to look at ones own weak points and try to work around them too.