BaguaKicksAss

After reading the entire thread, I've gotten quite curious. How come Taoism is the only religion, spiritual or magical practice (that I know of), where newbies/uninitiated should not setup an altar? What makes it different? I understand that the altar wouldn't be the same or as strong, but why none at all? I also get that if you have someone with a LOT of natural talent, then things can wake up and go wrong, however other religions don't seem to be as wary for some reason. What is it that usually goes wrong with the Taoist altars if they aren't setup properly? There is one thing which is completely different than the tradition I have been practicing for a time, and that is the eating of the food after leaving it out for the ancestors. I was taught to never do this for reasons of not wanting to join them, their energy being in the food and so forth. Is it pretty much standard with Taists to eat the food afterwards? I have seen ancestor altars setup in other traditions though where folks have ended up with the wrong spirits, some random moochers coming in for the free food so to speak, pretending to be the deceased family. So I can see why folks are careful, but never heard a don't do it before from other traditions. Also, I think there are two sorts of altars, those which are the religious ones where people honour their Deities, and the Deities pretty much own the altar and/or the entire temple room, and there are the altars which are more for bringing about peace, unity and certain energies, but not specific to worship. The second sort seems to be a newer thing from all I can tell. I come from an interesting perspective though, as I know very few people who do not have a home altar or two or entire temple room of some sort.

I'd recommend a local qigong, or even taichi teacher to sort a lot of the practice stuff out. This might save you $12K. 1. Take salt baths 3 days in a row. Dunking your head and so forth. Not epsom salts, sea salt. Burn incense right after and "bathe" yourself in the smoke. This gets rid of about 70% of these sorts of problems! 2. Salt water and incense your house too. 3. Call in your favorite Deity as much as possible. Ask said Deity to get rid of the spirit/s for you. 4. Get to the root of why you allow said spirit/s to bother you. Sure you could go pay someone to get rid of the spirit, but if you don't get rid of your subconscious parts of yourself that allowed it in the first place, it is likely that another will just come along in the future.

You have a local Taoist temple? Might cost a lot less. Or hey I think Catholic churches do such stuff for free. If it is in fact an entity.

The link on that first poll doesn't work btw.

Baguazhang .

Doesn't sound like entity troubles from that description, sounds like qigong went wrong. Also do keep in mind that in some cases we can create our own entities out of our internal crap. I have seen this before with someone. I strongly recommend a qigong healer/expert to help you get stuff sorted. Someone who's seen a few hundred or a few thousand similar cases can help a lot.

I have met many genuine teachers who have mentioned no such thing. One cannot comment on another path unless they have been in it. And yes, there is such thing in the ATRs. It is never about the path, it is about the person. Each person follows their path/s differently.

When talking about shapeshifters, it brings to mind some old books. I don't recall the exact titles right now and boy google is not helping thanks to the popularity of werewolves, vampires and the like. Older books with written accounts of people changing shape. Then there is the whole changeling thing. Now we consider it all just myth, but they did not back in say before the 1900's. While there was a few of them eating bread mold (ergotamine) I'm pretty sure it wasn't all that widespread.

Avoiding your phone calls... I recommend some allowing yourself to move on work.

I have seen animals shapeshift, from a sort of animal I'd never seen before to a cat, and from a squirrel to a human looking child. Yes there was more than one of us who saw the squirrel, no we were not on drugs. No it was not the having a vision sort of thing where a person morphs for a split second and back either, we heard the physical footsteps of the child looking person who then suddenly vanished after staring at us. Also wasn't just a part manifestation of a spirit either, was completely solid from all we could tell. You get to see some odd stuff when you get out of the city sometimes. Most people don't talk about it due to everyone yelling "bullshit"; I have barely ever brought such things up before.

Also, the breakup wasn't because "you weren't divorced with a piece of paper yet", it was more likely from her perspective something like "he isn't serious enough to move on from his ex" or "he wasn't honest enough to tell me that day 1" or something along those lines. So addressing whatever the underlying emotions were that led to the breakup would be best, also letting her know that you are a different person today than you were back than. Er, also check to make sure she is still single before buying plane tickets .

Definitely phone her first, or start with email if she was pretty pissed last you talked with her. Did you really go all this time with no contact whatsoever? (OK so maybe it's just me that has my ex on fb lolol). Definitely don't just show up in person; from most women's perspective this would come off as creepy and stalker like.

Sure, physical works 10x stronger and faster than astral. Or you can combine both. I have a slight book bias in that I have yet to read a magical book that I find decent, aside from Agrippa of course . Candles, light one for your Deity, light the other for whichever spirit is helping you out with this.

Basically you choose a signifier card for yourself (or the other person if you want to get all fancy about things), and you place that upon your altar. Then you take the card, start with major arcana for the first few years, and you place that card of what you want to bring about (say the magician card) overtop and perpendicular of your first card. Now they are forming an equilateral cross. If you want to get all fancy about things you can setup your temple with things which represent that card. Then you set a candle or two going on the project, stating clearly and explicitly what you want out of it. You can also of course call upon a specific Deity or angel or whatever to help you with this. Also perhaps a specific incense if you are into the correspondence thing. Leave the cards on the altar for a few days, or a week. I don't recommend longer than a week as it can bring imbalance. If you come up with the crazy idea of doing the entire major arcana, one after another, one week each... be prepared for a very interesting and uhm enlightening couple of years. Also keep in mind that each card has a positive and negative aspect. So state your intentions clearly, but also know that sometimes what we may see as negative comes about to help us along our path.

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Actually I should go into more detail, my last reply was pretty short, and the meaning likely lost. Unfortunately learning astral projection won't help with stopping natural disasters (as far as I know). That would fall more under connecting with the natural elements and the earth and so forth. Also, just because an earthquake happens, does not mean it is wrong in the big picture of things. It is horrible that many people die, however if you were able to stop it for some reason, then maybe something worse would happen as the earth needed to release pressure in another way. Or perhaps we wouldn't be as worried about our environment if such things didn't happen. I have seen far too many folks with some natural talent mess with things that they view as "broken", which weren't. Often one is not experienced enough, or connected with the source enough to know what needs healing or helping and what does not. Now astral projection to discover the deeper mysteries of the universe can work, then when you get back you can ground yourself by helping spread the word with various environmental causes (as just one example), or traveling to a place of a natural disaster and giving aide to the folks there, or perhaps collecting food and clothing from everyone in your community and shipping it to the folks who need it...

I guess it could be possible that a pile of us did this sort of thing in many past lives. If so then that would be a LOT of people though! Perhaps we all get to see how we do with power this time around. I have seen some pretty nasty folks with a few supernatural abilities, which makes me wonder.... is it from perhaps many lifetimes of practice, or many lifetimes of spiritual meditation and so forth? Then there are some folks who feel everyone has the potential (in this lifetime), just that we have to get rid of all our crap (and disbelief) in the way).

http://www.stnicholascenter.org/pages/who-is-st-nicholas/ Just sayin' .

This could be a few things... your psyche/subconscious working stuff out, you traveling about, or you being attacked and those are the pictures your spirit gave to you to explain things. I'm guessing random out of body roaming. Basically, not everyone on the astral (or wherever you are traveling to) is friendly. Have you ever taken the greyhound bus? Ever notice how whatever town you end up in, the bus station is always in the worst part of town? I find that random astral travels are sort of like that LOL. Why is it happening? Because you don't have solid enough protections back at home, or wearing some sort of amulet, or have a protective spirit to watch your back. Also, you haven't laid out ground rules with that part of your self yet.

OBE is any out of body experience as far as I know. Lucid dreaming is when you become aware in your dreams and can influence them and/or act how you like, instead of just being a passive observer. Astral projection is the projection and out of body travel onto either the astral or other planes. It can be in the here and now (time and place) or it can be some odd out of context and not very useful astral journey. Also people do OBE when they sleep. I had to set things up so I didn't do this, as I was waking up tired far too often. I'd recommend setting some ground rules if it happens quite often. I mean telling that part of yourself what it can and cannot do. Also good ol' protections back at home (in case you don't have any). Edit: be careful with that whole sex with random spirits in dreams thing. It may be more real than you realize.

Uhm, more meditation, less airbenders and dragon ball Z .

ChiForce wrote: Hmmm, this has gotten me to wondering... yes I know many beleive this way, and it makes sense... however I have seen many folks who could do some really odd stuff who were most definitely not enlightened (as far as I could tell). It seems that practicing certain things a LOT can lead to abilities, but only working on oneself can lead towards anything resembling enlightenment. I have not necessarily seen these coincide all the time. Then there are the folks who are just born with some funky abilities as well.

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Lifetimes? Most of the stuff he's listed only takes about 10 years of daily practice to get half decent at. Perhaps sooner with a really good teacher. Of course for the greater good and to help others is the primary goal, but how many start out this way? How many younger than 20 start out that way?

That is one thing an in person teacher (or well any teacher that is any good for that matter) helps with, is making sure you keep grounded, no matter what your practice is. I can see why you would be more than a little hesitant to do altar work again! I find that when I'm pissed at the spirits for not helping me with such and such, asking them why they didn't help leads to some great insights. At least due to the homelessness any ATR folks would be much more likely to give you the time of day over most white folks who have never had to worry about all that much in their lives, you know compared with say earthquakes and missing many meals and no decent hospitals Going through hell, and coming out of it stronger changes a person. If you made it through that just fine, you can pretty much get through anything. I have found that time and time again folks who have not had many hardships make for pretty weak magicians! They also will often quit as soon as a test or two from the path comes along. With altar work, you can always just stick with setting one up, just to put out candles and enhance the practical side of things. This still helps the spirit connection thing, and gives you more of a taste of the path. On a side note, I noticed some posts from peple who practice the various ATR paths here on these forums. Try a search maybe and see if you can contact some folks.