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Hello, my name is Melanie, I'm 26, a fine arts graduate currently I do mostly drawing and painting, a house wife to a wonderful woman, and a transitioned transgender. Part of why I found Taoism is because of its non discriminatory nature. My jing got very messed up from hrt but I have slowly learned how to restore that, my qi and shen are fine but always a work in progress. I meditate almost daily and alternate the kind of meditation I do based on what feels right that day. My top three books are, Winnie the Pooh (although I associate Pooh bear with Buddha more then a Taoist figure) Tao Te Ching (of course) Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep Other books in my library are Jade Emperor's Mind Seal Classic Seven Taoist Masters Chronicles of Tao and a few other scattered books on Taoism and Buddhism My favorite tea is Magic Moon from a small shop in Michigan but unfortunately I don't have much left to share because I moved to a very small Texas town that doesn't sell loose leaf tea. I also really enjoy Jasmine tea. I unfortunately only speak English and I've never had the chance to study Tai Chi although I always wanted to. Other then that it is my great pleasure to meet you all and be a part of your group. Thank you.

Hi K Thanks for your comments, they always seem to have a soothing effect on me. Yes, I will keep at it. It is a sad and sorry thing to have to expose something that you once thought was authentic, in support of the truth and universal principles of yoga, when in fact the only truth found there was Yogani's truth. I will never forget Yogani's argument in support of mantra repetition versus breath meditation. He said, once the breathing stops you have nothing left to focus on, whereas if you are doing mantra repetition and the breathing stops, you can still do the mantra!!! Not only did he not understand that Buddha's Anapanasati is not soley about the breath, but he didn't understand that with breath meditation eventually nimittas (signs) appear, which you then switch your attention to. And, when you focus on the nimitta and penetrate it, it takes you to samadhi/jhana. The other point is that you can only do so much of mantra repetition before the medulla tires and tries to shut off, whereas, like Alan Wallace says, you can meditate for hours on the breath. The other point is that mantra repetition is the mind effortfully creating a form, creating a thought or a subvocalization. It takes effort. That effort can prevent you from going deeper. When the nimitta appears, it does so naturally, without effort. The same goes for the breathing. Breathing occurs on it's own so you can remain a passive observer. Mantra repetition activates the lower tan tien and sends out spurts of chi/prana/winds. The two techniques are totally different. That is why Alan Wallace says that you can't use mantra to still the mind ala shamatha. And, it's very hard to overload while doing breath meditation because the out-breath is a natural vent for excess energy. I know you weren't looking for any lessons on Anapanasati, sorry.. How did people solve spiritual differences in the past? They went to war. They killed millions of people in the name of their religion. Stupid to have to die only to be reborn and have to go through growing up all over again, isn't it? Here, I will sing you a song.. in the key of B: Row row row your boat, gently down the stream, Merrily, merrily merrily merrily, Life is but a dream.. TI

Interesting. The definition I know (which actually suits the term "lucid" very well) is that it's when the dream 'feels' just like reality. Which would mean that there is still a difference to waking reality: the fact that you act like automatic in a situation that doesn't have to be realistic, but you accept everything happening as real. Which is kind of the opposite of said absolute classic definition. Frustrating how society often turns things into their opposites. (which could be called perversion)

Jeramiah - I also get a very different feeling when doing MHP. It is best described as a profound peace that envelops me and I just don't want to end the meditation. As for your dream, that is *really* interesting. I also had an interesting experience after a strong session of FP. This happened about two months ago. After I finished the session I went into my kitchen and sat down at the kitchen table. Suddenly it felt as if the entire world was rocking. Not violently but in a slow and very powerful, measured, almost pleasant rhythm. My brain, trying to make sense out of this caused me to look down at my chair because the only explanation I could think of was the legs of the chair must be uneven causing it to rock. Of course, all four legs of the chair were firmly on the tile floor. And I live in Florida so it was not an earthquake. :-). Besides, my wife was standing fairly close to me and she could not feel this. I concluded that this powerful rocking sensation was a rhythmic energy resulting from my one hour of Flying Phoenix. It lasted a Little more than a minute and then I ate something and it disappeared. I think with the practice of FP these metaphysical type experiences are not so uncommon. I say this, and I am a very logical guy. Good practicing! Fu dog

nice to meet you as well. I've been working with people who are disabled for 10 years now, and of the older generations there are some with scary stories about the asylums of yester-year. Not that long ago in the big picture. Those dreams that I've shared I haven't thought about until just this last few month I started looking into taoist alchemy, qi gong, and such types of things a little closer, then reading briefly about some of the abilities of the claimed masters and the training and body movements used in various types of meditation, I was flooded with the memories of those dreams. Definitely got me to start working from the book "taoist yoga alchemy and immortality" and I'm having experiences that relate to what I've read so that's interesting. I need to find a teacher of this type of stuff in the Seattle area. Also, I'm a avid lucid dreamer and I'm curious (I've read a book on Tibetan dream yoga but did not find it to be fruitful) if there are any mixes of these paths... Dreaming, and Taoist Alchemy(Nei-gong better said?)

Thank you for the swift reply, Sir! Much appreciated. Will definately dream up more questions, lol.

I read through those essays a few times - very, very interesting! They basically seem to get at exactly what I'm seeking, however, which is moderation and being in tune with myself. I think that if I continue my present practices moderation will eventually come into other areas of my life. I had a wet dream last night, which puts me back at square one again. It is the first one I have had in many, many months, perhaps years - I think this is a (good) sign that my body is revitalizing itself. With continued practice of the energy dispersion methods, will the frequency of these dreams diminish? The urge tp masturbate for me is definitely starting to be overridden by the positive characteristics I notice in my own personality whilst practicing retention. It really does redefine the concept of "getting off!" Thanks once again!

The absolutely classic definition of lucid dreaming is when you become both aware of that you are in a dream, and subsequently start to act consciously in the dream. Astral travel utilizes a displacement of consciousness - often into a body of prana - and one then explores other planes, even this one in realtime. Mandrake

So I have been listening to John Lennon and he sings, "The dream is over." I ask him, "What's left when the dream is over?" but get no reply but then I remembered that he had just said, "That's reality."

one more... ; ) '...As reported in "Memories, Dreams, Reflections", the dead now visit Jung, demanding his attention and his blood. They were restless, they said, because they were seekers who had not found what they had sought. To teach them, Philemon appears and preaches seven sermons to them on what they had not learned while alive: the nature of individuation, the superiority of experience over belief, the presence of Abraxas, a god-image that unites all conceivable opposites, and the folly of substituting divine multiplicity with a single overarching God: "In doing so you produce the torment of incomprehension, and mutilate the creation whose nature and aim is differentiation. How can you be true to your own nature when you try to turn the many into the one?" The soul and the crowned son had both emphasized connection to the earth. To Jung Philemon explains what we would now interpret as the ecological dimension of human failure: These dead have given names to all beings, the beings in the air, on the earth and in the water. They have weighted and counted things...What did they do with the admirable tree? What happened to the sacred frog? Did they see his golden eye? ...Did they do penance for the sacred ore that they dug up from the belly of the earth? No, they named, weighed, numbered, and apportioned all things. They did whatever pleased them...Yet the time has come when things speak." Things of the earth that bear witness to human mistreatment of the earth, as the new field of terrapsychology records. Furthermore, had men atoned for the ox and the trees and the frogs, (Philemon went on), they would not have lifted their hand against each other. Social, psychological, and ecological destruction emerge together; for as we now know almost a hundred years after Philemon's words to Jung, alienation from self and alienation from nature represent two sides of one dire pathology. In a later visit, the old Wise One prophecies a return to sense and sanity: The earth became green and fruitful again from the blood of the sacrifice, flowers sprouted, the waves crash into the sand, a silver cloud lies at the foot of the mountain...The stones speak and the grass whispers. With that he kisses the earth and disappears. Later, Jung's soul--or was it actually Sophia now, more goddess than psychic function?--returns from realms above to explain the cosmology of the Seven Sermons, the nature of Abraxas, and Jung's connection with that god through her. Through love, Jung comes to understand through this gnostic education, he can put on his true "stellar nature" ("the body of stars" in Gnostic terminology)... ...No new myths present themselves in the Red Book. Its discussions of the Self, a unitary concept Jung took from Nietzsche and elaborated, restrict themselves to ancient imagery like Abraxas, Jung's Gnostic code word for the felt union of the Christian God with Satan, higher and lower, crown and serpent, into a deeper and more comprehensive if mysterious whole. The rebirth of the divine that plunged Jung into hell renewed God-images repressed into cultural and personal unconsciousness by millennia of monotheistic religion and centuries of scientism. With them had gone the verdant nature imagery that sprouted in Jung's imaginal garments and took root in Philemon's sermons. What Jung did do was dream the sacred imagery onward, taking his own later advice by giving updated form to the fruits of direct experience. Furthermore, Jung pushed past literalistic interpretations of myth by grounding his encounters with the divine in internal experience. Literalism is the letter that kills the spirit, imagination the word that brings it back to life, revivifying the soul as consciously directed fantasy, at last unchained from dogma and doctrine, melts the crude vessels of religion down into storied spiritual experience. It makes sense that the Red Book would finally be published in a time of warfare and global crisis. The narcissism it depicts was not that of Jung alone, but of psychiatry and psychology, of modernity, of a civilization cut off from its natural roots--its "animal" as he put it. Where Faust the alchemist sold his soul to the devil in exchange for carnal frenzy and mechanized might, our world-girdling civilization has altered the elements, the atmosphere, and life itself through the anti-alchemy of mutating toxins and genetic manipulation. The type of ego consciousness responsible for all this cannot tolerate anything wild, uncomfortable, or imperfect; it must clean, cleanse, fix, and solve instead of allowing what arises to open up and move from within. Mired in its own attempts to work on, toward, around, and though, the Faustian ego remains walled off from inner and outer nature except in rare individuals who make their own heroic descent into the depths. For them, the Red Book tells the inside story of Jung's painful evolution as he sat with what pinched and bothered him long enough to let it share its soul. In the wound, he found, was the voice of the divine, ever calling into presence a more spacious and heartfelt relatedness to an animate world, one whose creatures, liquids, fires, and minerals speak on their own behalf to anyone with ears to hear.' Craig Chalquist, PhD http://www.chalquist.com/redbook.html

You say you're interested in this stuff. That's fine, but just realize that VERY FEW ppl get to work in professions where they get to express their interests. The vast majority of the anonymous masses go to work, do their boring 8 hours behind a desk pushing paper or whatever, go home, unwind, collect their paycheck, rinse, and repeat. They pursue interests in their free time, away from work. The few exceptions are VERY lucky, and many of them work for themselves with their own business. Sorry to shoot your bubble. You are obviously very enthusiastic about spiritual things, but the chances of you turning it into a paying career is extremely low. Sucks, but that's life. So my advice again, is to study a practical subject, and study your interests and business in your spare time. Dream about turning your hobby into your career only after you've found a real job. Otherwise you'll put all your eggs in one basket and you have nothing to fall back on when things (unfortunately) don't work out.

OldGreen, Astral travel is something that helped me not to be afraid of death, I have met relatives and friends who had died, thats one thing that has made a difference to my life. I have also had experiences with people/spirits/entities who taught me things, about my work, my meditations and healing. So, once it is no longer a novelty it can lead to other experiences. No, it is not a trick but it certainly is an enjoyable experience. Sloppy, mmm, do you mean that I do not know what a lucid dream is or that I have never had one? My answer was in consideration that my definition may be different to others, which is why I asked for comments. If I take my own experiences of lucid dreaming into account, then the answer is, no, it is not lucid dreaming. I hope that has helped clear this up.

"Did Jung give rebirth to a new God-image in his soul? No new myths present themselves in the Red Book. Its discussions of the Self, a unitary concept Jung took from Nietzsche and elaborated, restrict themselves to ancient imagery like Abraxas, Jung's Gnostic code word for the felt union of the Christian God with Satan, higher and lower, crown and serpent, into a deeper and more comprehensive if mysterious whole. The rebirth of the divine that plunged Jung into hell renewed God-images repressed into cultural and personal unconsciousness by millennia of monotheistic religion and centuries of scientism. With them had gone the verdant nature imagery that sprouted in Jung's imaginal garments and took root in Philemon's sermons. What Jung did do was dream the sacred imagery onward, taking his own later advice by giving updated form to the fruits of direct experience. Furthermore, Jung pushed past literalistic interpretations of myth by grounding his encounters with the divine in internal experience. Literalism is the letter that kills the spirit, imagination the word that brings it back to life, revivifying the soul as consciously directed fantasy, at last unchained from dogma and doctrine, melts the crude vessels of religion down into storied spiritual experience. It makes sense that the Red Book would finally be published in a time of warfare and global crisis. The narcissism it depicts was not that of Jung alone, but of psychiatry and psychology, of modernity, of a civilization cut off from its natural roots--its "animal" as he put it. Where Faust the alchemist sold his soul to the devil in exchange for carnal frenzy and mechanized might, our world-girdling civilization has altered the elements, the atmosphere, and life itself through the anti-alchemy of mutating toxins and genetic manipulation. The type of ego consciousness responsible for all this cannot tolerate anything wild, uncomfortable, or imperfect; it must clean, cleanse, fix, and solve instead of allowing what arises to open up and move from within. Mired in its own attempts to work on, toward, around, and though, the Faustian ego remains walled off from inner and outer nature except in rare individuals who make their own heroic descent into the depths. For them, the Red Book tells the inside story of Jung's painful evolution as he sat with what pinched and bothered him long enough to let it share its soul. In the wound, he found, was the voice of the divine, ever calling into presence a more spacious and heartfelt relatedness to an animate world, one whose creatures, liquids, fires, and minerals speak on their own behalf to anyone with ears to hear..." http://www.chalquist.com/redbook.html

I think I know what you mean. Lucid dreaming is like you were a spectator watching the event which was taken place in the dream. Astral travel is like you are actually participating the action yourself in the dream.

Much of my practice is a form of "mindfulness of relaxation", or a kind of mindfulness of something where progressive relaxation is the secondary purpose. The thing is, one is mainly on the threshold of consciousness, while not falling into dream consciousness. The idea is that the bar moves as one gets more used to sitting on the line between conscious and dream. Eventually it becomes easier to maintain a state of conscious awareness. Yogis do fall asleep ocassionally, and pop back up. Its not sinful. Its easy to get back into a meditation state from there even though the sleep temporarily ruins the high energy flow of deep meditation. The advantage to this type of meditation versus a stronger clinging to alertness is a quicker entry to a deeper state, because one's mind is looser, and thus a greater amount of energy flows. I think the disadvantage is that its easy to cheat oneself or one's teacher and think that sleep is meditation.

The Dark Goddess Returns An Interview with Marion Woodman by Michael Bertrand MB: Your book is called Dancing in the Flames: The Dark Goddess in the Transformation of Consciousness. I think that there's a lot of people who don't know what or who the Dark Goddess is. Why are we dealing with this image at this time? MW: Well, we're dealing with it because so many men and women are having dreams with a dark female figure, often bigger than lifesize and chocolate coloured, and they don't know what to make of this figure in their dreams. I think it's exceedingly important that she should be recognized because she's a transformative energy. In the book we're trying to trace that Dark Goddess back to Isis in Egypt or to the Dark Goddesses that were brought over into Europe when the crusaders went to Africa. What did those Dark Goddesses mean in the medieval period especially in contrast with the chaste, pure White Goddess up on the pedestal--what is the difference in the energy represented by those two images? The Dark Goddess has to do with the Earth, the humus, the humility, the human. She has to do with sexuality, with the sheer joy of the body, with fecundity and the lusciousness of the Earth and with the love that can honour the imperfections in the human being. Whereas the White Goddess tends to make people idealize themselves and therefore develop a huge shadow, the Black Goddess, through her sense of humour and immense love for humanity, helps us to accept our imperfections. Not only that, she helps us to see that a lot of things that we may have considered shameful in ourselves are not shameful at all. MB: So she's very accepting. MW: Of human beings, yes. She's very accepting, but in loving and honouring her we can accept our humanity. This is what is at the root of so many addictions and so much shame and guilt in our society. People cannot accept their humanity. They cannot forgive themselves for being human. If this figure comes into a dream and is kind to you or takes you in her arms and holds you, it is such a shocking shift of energy that I've known people who've radically changed after such a dream. It's not orthodox Christianity, but on the other hand in Europe many churches do have a Dark Goddess or Black Goddess right within the church walls. I've never seen one in Canada or the States, but they're not uncommon in Europe and they have been beloved for centuries. MB: Well, this accepting energy that allows us to be human is different than the all-encompassing Mother Goddess energy, I gather? MW: Yes, because she's not only mother. She does have a child always with her and that child is a god. We have to remember that. She is a madonna, but also, certainly throughout the middle ages, people worshipped her in their sexuality, in childbirth. They prayed to her that they would have children in marriage--very much related to sexuality. MB: So, one of the things that leads to transformation is this great acceptance of our humanity, and that's . . . MW: Yes, that's right. You see she's also a Goddess of chaos. Chaos is darkness. In India, for example, they call her Kali. We all know the pictures of Kali with the skulls around her neck and dancing on a dead corpse and carrying the knife and the cupful of blood and the head she's carrying--she has four arms and she carries the head and the cup underneath it with the blood. This figure is beloved in India because she lives in the moment. They will spend weeks in an Indian village creating a mud statue of her. They work very very hard to make her as beautiful as possible. Then on her day they celebrate and they sing and they dance and they carry the statue through the streets and when the day is over they throw it in the water. It's gone in a minute. That's their acceptance of death and the realization that life and death are two sides of one coin. That is something we have yet to learn in our culture. In our culture death is taboo and we don't really believe that new life comes out of death. So, we're very liable, when we lose our job or our marriage or our partner in death, to think that our life is over and we tend to get caught in dead imagery. Whereas with the honouring of the Dark Goddess we can accept life and death, rebirth, as part of an ongoing pattern. MB: When you say honouring or worshipping what do you really think we here in the West, in Canada, now in 1996, need to do to make that happen and why do we need to do it? MW: Well, we're faced with the breakdown of our old civilization, I think, and the institutions are collapsing. The morals and ethics that I valued throughout most of my life are not valued now. Our own country is collapsing because we cannot see anything but the opposites. The feminine perspective, the Dark Goddess perspective, would hold the opposites as paradox, not as oppositions. Death and life are simply the paradoxical reality. It seems to me that if we cannot move to that place, if we stay with our either/or patriarchal vision, our country is going to break apart. At a planetary level what possible hope is there of ever bringing anything together? How can we live on this planet if we don't develop a both/and vision. The other thing that's so important with this Goddess is her honouring of matter and her love of the Earth, this humus, this humility, the Oneness of every living thing, that we the animals and plants are all part of her. So, in honoring her you can't take a buzz saw and go out and start sawing down every tree you feel like massacring. You can't bear to see the sap weeping down the side of it, because you're cutting down part of yourself. That may sound exaggerated, but we have lost the unitary vision on which this planet depends. We are a global village now and we have no idea how to deal with that. MB: And to make it even more impossible to deal with these huge changes, much of the local has broken down. There are moves to amalgamate towns and school boards into greater and greater areas, to make society even more impersonal. There's such a huge tendency to go against what needs to happen instead of, for instance, honouring the local. MW: And honouring the individual. There's a huge move on the part of corporations to simply fire a third of their employees. What are those people going to do? There aren't going to be jobs for them because machines are going to be able to do those jobs. So, we're going through an immense transformation. I think it's even bigger than the industrial revolution. We have no idea where we're going. All we know is what we're losing. Our leaders don't know where we're going, obviously. So we're dependent on our own imagery to guide us. The BlackGoddess isassociated withchaos, but peoplewho don't go intochaos never findtheir owncreativity. MB: You see the Dark Goddess imagery emerging in dreams trying to tell us something that we need to have in our individuals lives. You're saying we need to move beyond both matriarchy and patriarchy. MW: That's right. A matriarchy was never brought to consciousness in the world, and I don't think patriarchy was very conscious either, but certainly patriarchy has become a controlling, power-over principle, and that cannot work any longer on this little planet. It will only destroy both the tyrant and the victim. MB: Many people, if they let this awareness in at all, know that everything is being destroyed and they are, I think, quite shattered and brought up short about what to do. MW: That's right. I think they're falling back into addictive behaviour as a result. They find it very hard to face the reality of what's happening. MB: Eat, drink and be merry. MW: Well, or even just depression, drinking or drugs. I think many people are isolating themselves because they are so frightened and with a patriarchal vision, for good reason, because they are losing their homes and jobs and identities that made them who they thought they were. The feminine principle will look to the being of the person, not to the persona or the doing. It will honour the beingness. This, of course, is where so many people feel empty. MB: Because they don't have a sense of their beingness? MW: No, they don't. They will say to you that they can't go home at night because the apartment is empty. I say, "But you're there", but to them that means emptiness, nobody there. Now that is tragic, for a person to experience themselves as nobody. We've lost the feminine you see and now that our structures are collapsing where is the beingness and where are the values of the feminine that could take hold now and make it possible for people to live in a different way? That's what this book is about. MB: And those values are the ones of honouring body, Earth, self? MW: Body, Earth and also honouring paradox. That's extemely important. If you get into either I have a job or I don't, and you've lost it, then you've got nothing but despair. Either I do or don't have my wife, there again despair if you've lost her. But, if you can accept paradox you can say, "Well, yes maybe I have lost this but maybe there's something else in my destiny here and maybe I can find the light in the darkness. Maybe there's another job that would be creative and if I go into this chaos I'll find the creative seeds." You see, the Black Goddess is associated with chaos, but people who don't go into chaos never find their own creativity. They follow the train tracks. They follow the collective values. They may never find themselves, but if the train takes off and starts going through the bush, they'd better find something else or they're going to die. MB: You're basically saying that in order for human beings to survive the only choice we're being offered--and I guess that's the paradox in the situation--is that we find ourselves so we will act in a way that is in accordance with the energy of what you call the Dark Goddess. MW: Yes, I would say it's the laws of the universal feminine. Now, we're not talking about the universal masculine at this point, but they are in union. The two go together. We're focusing on the feminine because it has been so lost for 2000 years. But the masculine that has also been so damaged and so profoundly emotionally wounded by the patriarchy is now beginning to come forward. When those two energies start working together it is so exciting in an individual. It's going to happen culturally, I think, as well, ultimately. I think the people who will become the leaders in the new century will have a balance of those energies. Otherwise they won't be able to hold this country together, for example. We are so disparate now that we have to find our unity in our diversity. That takes masculine and feminine union to bring that about. MB: The words masculine and feminine, like Goddess, are quite loaded, not necessarily understood. MW: In the lecture, I will carefully define what I mean by those terms. It's a whole different way of thinking. The feminine is interested in process, in living right here in the now. The Kali is here right now, she's thrown in the water, she's gone. You have to live in the moment. People who have lived through an addiction or faced death through an illness (and I think many people are facing that now with the immune systems that are breaking down), have to live in the now, right here, because there is no future. It just makes life so exquisite when you have today and maybe not tomorrow. Then you begin to see what you do have. That's the present tense feminine. It's based on matter and matter does not live forever. It is subject to life, death and rebirth.

There is so much information about the higher chakras, or energy centres, that I thought to 'put out there' some of my experience with the other chakras. There are many students of chi who make the mistake of pushing chi / energy into their head centres before they have developed the ability to discharge excess chi back out of it. They get themselves into all sorts of trouble which could be prevented by safe practices, but the lure of the wonders of the higher chakras is sometimes just too luring. Firstly, there is no difference between astral travel from the head centres than the dan tien than the base chakra, once you are 'out there' thats it, it doesn't matter how or where or why. Simple How to... I start with deep physical relaxation, then abdominal breathing. I bring my mind down to my navel and then centre the breath behind it, in the dan tien. The next step is to go even deeper into a relaxed state, deeper and deeper until you can lose consciousness. On the way to these deeper states I bring my awareness to my Base Chakra. The Base Chakra is located, in the male, at the Million Dollar Point, between the scrotum and the anus. For a woman it is the G-Spot, just inside the vagina and to its front on the bone wall. I place my awareness at the Base chakra, imagining a beam of light, warm and buzzing, which flows from beyond my feet (and I am lying down on my bed), and connected to the Earth. It is about the diameter of a ping pong ball for me. By this stage I am quite relaxed, deeply relaxed actually, almost asleep, and I imagine this light beam being drawn up into my Base Chakra and into my dan tien. There its roars into the furnace and pours warmth into my abdomen. As I slip deeper into the unconscious state at this stage, I will be wavering on the edge of consciousness and unconsciousness. When I tip over into the unconscious, into my dream world, I am able, not all the time, but sometimes, to be able to jump or enter the dream I have dropped into. By this time the beam of energy into my Base Chakra is warm, even hot, and buzzing, and I can float about the landscape on a beam of light, from my Base Chakra. I can bounce around, and I can fly, with that beam of light blazing behind me like Astro Boys feet. It is a joyful experience and much the same as any other astral travel experience. Sometimes I will shift to dan tien movement, being drawn by the dan tien, or the head chakras will be open, automatically, and I can move via that as well. I am no longer limited by my Base Chakra, it is just a means to get in there, a safe means. This practice is simple, and very very safe. One way to practice is by doing PC crunches (pelvic floor exercises) maybe up to 50 crunches at a time during the day, you will sensitise your base chakra to chi. Both men and women can do these, just tighten up your base chakra, you will feel it when you tighten up your abdomen and vagina / penis muscles. It does NOT induce excess sexual urges, in fact it is not all that sexual at all, unless you want to, and add lots of chi to it. Then it feels nice, warm and humming with energy but does not necessarily induce a desire for sex (thank goodness). I suppose if you over worked it then you could, but it is not much more sexual than the dan tien. Anyway, I welcome comments and your experiences, maybe this will help those students of the spirit, to explore other means of spiritual projection. Astralc

Hi, I was reading some posts at the AYP forum and I came accross these posts which are discussing the fact that during AYP's Deep Meditation (which is almost identical to TM) they are experiencing periods of dullness, laxity and perhaps even sleep. link: http://www.aypsite.o...?TOPIC_ID=11715 Doctor Who, posts: So, AumNatural asks if Doctor Who uses back support: I guess he forgot that part of the DM instructions that say to rest your back on the chair (or the wall). I believe that resting your back makes it easier to fall asleep, which is all that you are really doing in DM. Then, Bodhi Tree comments with similar observations.. They really don't know that during DM they are 'cat napping' which is referred to as an undesirable state known as 'laxity' or dullness, which is something to avoid in Buddhist Shamatha practice.. More about this later.. Then, Carson posts that these blackouts can happen for months! So, then, after no intervention by Yogani, or anyone else to set them straight, Doctor Who actually thanks them: The reason they are seeing visions or landscapes is because they are passing through the dream state after which they are slowly succumbing to laxity and falling asleep. The reason I bring all of this up is because, not only did I have the same experiences after I finally learned how to do TM or DM properly, but I was reading about laxity in Alan Wallace's books and he says, not only should laxity be avoided but prolonged laxity can cause a person to become unintelligent. In Alan Wallace's book called "The Attention Revolution", he says this about laxity: Dr. Wallace goes on to say: The last point of interest with reference to the DM practice of mantra repetition is found in Alan Wallace's book called "Stilling the Mind" wherein he says: Granted, Dr Wallace is referring to the normal usage of the mantra, as in conventional mantra repetition and AYP uses the mantra like a hypnogogic tool to access deep sleep. As to whether or not it takes you beyond deep sleep, is a mystery and yet to be proven by TM or DM meditators. Dr Wallace does say that any act of settling consciousness will lead to the substrate consciousness, from which all form arises and dissolves back into. But he also mentions that Primordial Consciousness lies further beyond.. I am concerned about the AYP meditators. Hopefully they will read this post and become a little wiser. TI

to anamatva: I was able to download that book online. It's interesting that Tao teachings address sex as something as natural as eating (which is one of the comparisons made), and doesn't make it seem "out of the ordinary" or "dirty". Rather, the goal seems to be to improve health and "vitality" instead of merely indulging one's self. Needless to say this is difficult with masturbation because, as suggested earlier, there is no feedback of energy from a partner that can occur. As of now I've abstained completely for 2 days. Obviously not ejaculating at all is not a good idea, but I would prefer to reach ejaculation through masturbation as opposed to a wet dream. Do you think that as an occasional thing, practicing ejaculation control would be harmful to me? I might not try it until I am more familiar with the energy diversion practices. I feel like I over-intellectualize all this sometimes. Still, would there be potential benefits to being aware of all of this at a young age?

taoiseasy, i totally agree dhiggs, why not just try to stop masturbating? if you can't, you're addicted. one more reason to give it up. masturbation is a very depleting, self-defeating activity, and although changing habits can be stressful and challenging, i recommend just trying it and seeing what happens. Don't do it for a day, if you can pull that off, try 2 days. Just keep going. When you can make it a week, shoot for 2 weeks. If you want, i'd say just do it until you have a wet dream, but that can take some building up to for some. i also totally agree with the idea of studying some entry-level energy work, like taiji or qigong or taking up yoga or something similar. Apply your sensual side and love of pleasure to something that will give you long term benefit and increase the quality of life, unlike masturbation and if you take the advice of quitting masturbation, make a careful note of your energies and mental state each day. I have no doubt that as you begin to conserve your life energy you will become more vital and energized in a general way good luck to you!

I base it on the experience of my entire life. The words I use are indeed an intuitive guess or creative guidance of the imagination. I do use analogies, because I don't care about reality. It is meaningless to me, such as the words you read in my post. It is the message that I am offering. Not the words. I can even disproove and discredit all that I wrote in my post. I like it better this way. I like to think of it as code language. The words are pretty damn fake. Just like dreams are pretty damn fake, because the conscious mind tries to make the best of the nighttime experiences with what its got. This results in what appears to be dreams full of "nonsense." this is like unto such a dream. You do not doubt my post, just like you do not doubt a nonsensical dream. You just disregard it or interpret the meaning of it.

Hi, During last night's meditation I was practising Alan Wallace's stage nine shamantha technique and I discovered how to stop the breath. I don't mean holding the breath, or filling up with air until you no longer feel the need to breathe. I'm talking about simply stopping the breath with no need to breathe, no urge to breath. And, at the same time, a mysterious surge of fine energy comes out and seems to support the life function. The technique that I was practising was this: 1) Sit in a meditative posture, with eyes closed. 2) Focus on the empty space before the face ( I extended it out about 1 foot) 3) After a while, turn your attention fully backwards and focus on whom is perceiving. I started the meditation and focused on the space, noticed my breathing which was somewhat rapid and just relaxed my face. My breathing rate increased somewhat but that is normal. After a few seconds, I turned my attention directly backwards into the back of the head, to try to sense the watcher, or the perceiver. As I did this I noticed that my breathing slowed down quite a bit. Now, I have done many hours of 'being in the self' or 'just being' and I think I am pretty good at isolating the 'ego' or the sense of small sense which resided in the back of the head around the medulla area. This time, I had a pretty good sense of 'me', and there was some golden light around 'me'. I moved my attention back out to the space in front of my face. My breathing resumed it's normal pace. I moved my attention backwards towards the self again. Well, I've always thought that God was looking through my eyes, so perhaps it isn't the self.. I don't know. Regardless, my breathing slowed right down and stopped!!! WHAT WAS THAT? I had no urge to breathe at all. I quickly brought my attention back towards the space in front of my face and my breathing resumed. I moved my attention back inwards to that spot, where the medulla is and my breathing stopped again. I went back and forth and I realized that when I was focusing outwards, the breathing occurs. When I was focused on the "i", my breathing stopped. There was no urge to breathe. There was no feeling of suffocation, or urgency. It was quite freaky and at the same time, awesome. Then I noticed that when I was focusing inwards there was a fine current of energy coming out from the medulla and progressing into my head. I thought to myself, I have discovered Yogananda's secret about the medulla being the mouth of God! I sat in the breathless state for 10 seconds or so and then decided to end it and go to bed. The whole meditation lasted only 10 minutes. I didn't want to push it nor overload anything.. Well, I could not sleep. I was so energized!!! Unbelievable. I could see the purple and green pulsing lights, many visions, the dream worlds, planes, nimittas; it was like my consciousness was on fire. This kept me up until around 5:00 am at which time I finally managed to fall asleep. Today, I have lots of heat in the head, upper body and arms. I feel like I am sunburned inside. Despite getting only 2 hours of sleep, I still feel pretty good. Now for the questions: 1) If I stay in the breathless state too long by focusing on that spot in the medulla (or that area), will I die? Is this a dangerous practice? 2) Is the energy that comes out of the medulla the energy that Yogananda talks about, from the mouth of God? 3) Is there mention of this phenomenon in Taosim or Buddism? 3) Have you ever experienced breathlessness by centering on the medulla? If so, for how long? Any comments will be surely appreciated. I feel like I've discovered the key to how the yogis who remain breathless for days, buried in air tight boxes underground, do it. TI

The seemingly fluid nature of the 'ego' construct is in actuality raw consciousness itself reflecting the 'free will' of the heart-singularity. Take a look at your hands while they're behind your head... The mind is completely luminescent. Within the heart-singularity is the spark of paradoxical potential (ten thousand things) which gives birth to the entire universe the moment it 'touches' raw consciousness (the 1 goes through 0, resulting in the sound of a circle's radius, OM). The form of the heart-singularity is affected by the 'free will' of the initial reflection (The full-spectrum sound of 'you' making a full circuit through space/time, the total sum of all cause-and-effect for that particular universe). Since that 'free will', though engulfed in it's past-times, has complete access to the full radius of potential (the whole of the circle's radius), the essence of consciousness... is acting. Gives a whole new dimension to phrases like 'divine play' eh? If such a thing were true, self-recognition would be closely intertwined with evolution and the resultant place of the individual self within the universal web. Of course, it's all dream logic and what-not. It was fun to write, though... left a sweet taste at the roof of my mind. Fun to think about!

I think I do know what you mean :-) ... and if need be I would seek to validate if that I think to be corresponds to what be... so that in fact what I thought to be corresponded to what be... though most of the time I will just take it for granted... and flow with it... if you know what I mean :-) the reason I asked 'Are you sure about not being imprisoned' stems from a little cartoon I drew a while back in which the belief of freedom is used to keep some imprisoned... you know the saying 'the truth will set you free'... To know the truth one must choose to bind oneself to the truth... if one is free from truth one is imprisoned by delusion... in a way I like to say we are forced to believe while free to choose what to believe... similarly we are forced to choose while free to choose what to do... we each judge everything and each thing some do it nicely :-) the illusion of choosing not to choose just complicates things... the same with judging not to judge... it still is a judgement call one makes! this topic centers on a desire for a different reality... escaping this dream seeking another dream rather than transforming this one... I expect positive change I realize that it may take a while and me doing some things (and not doing other things) as well as the participation of others for it to happen... and eventually it will happen... it may seem a bit magical to some though its rather quite natural... My desire for a different reality focuses on transforming this reality now and here to make it better...