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So there is an argument that happiness only exists if it has suffering as a reference point. This is a conclusion that can be arrived at if you consider that the idea of everything existing in pairs and as opposites—the idea of Yin and Yang—is fundamental to existence; in this argument, happiness and suffering (I’ll say joy and pain hereafter as they’re shorter words) are not considered to be exceptions to this rule of Yin-Yang opposites, but rather are just another manifestation of Yin and Yang—albeit the most fundamental manifestation of Yin-Yang, as what experience could ever there be in Duality without shades of joy and pain? The argument is that joy can never be separated from pain because joy and pain define each other; they are a pair of opposites, like North and South; they refer to each other to give themselves meaning; without one the other ceases to exist. If all you ever saw was the colour blue then before long you would forget entirely what the other colours were, and the idea of colours, along with the colour blue itself, would then cease to be; considering, say, the greatest joy to be the colour blue in this analogy, the greatest pain as red, and all the degrees of pain and joy in-between—‘rather pleased’, ‘fine’, ‘bit off today’, ‘pretty annoyed’, etc.—being represented by the other colours. [*I know red and blue aren’t directly opposite each other on the colour-wheel, I guess cyan and orange are really, but it suffices for this post.] What’s more, in Eastern thought itself it’s considered that opposites give rise to each other in rotation: mess gives birth to cleanliness, which then becomes messy again; night to day, to night; pressure to expansion, closing into pressure once more; and so on. In this argument it is assumed that joy and pain behave in the same way: the most perfect heaven can become a hell of tedium and constriction if you stay there for too long; and the most violent hell can be inured to and got used to with enough time, until it even becomes a place of amusement and intrigue. Also, in this argument it is assumed that any and all levels of joy—even the very highest, most ultimate, degree of it imaginable—are still just ‘joy’, that all degrees of joy are as valid as each other; there is no splitting of hairs in this argument regarding the possibility of some greatest happiness existing ‘outside the bounds’ of ‘joy’—such a notion doesn’t make any sense from this point of view. I should note here that in this argument while all degrees of joy are considered as ‘valid’, it is accepted that not all beings will gain the same degree of joy from the same stimulus: a TV soap-opera may delight some people while be anathema to others, and meditation may be enormously relaxing and revitalising for some while incredible boring and dull for others; but this point is universally agreed upon by most, I think. There is the further matter of how ‘refined’ each degree of joy (or pain) is, and this actually comes relatively close to agreeing with the concept of an ultimate happiness actually, but stops short enough to still disagree with it considerably—but it is a tangent for another time. The notion of attainment of ‘perpetual-bliss’ is common throughout Eastern spiritual-practices and philosophy: it can be found in yoga, in Buddhist philosophy, and in Daoism (the attainment of Dao), going by various names (I’ve cited some of them in the tags of this post). It is the notion that, with diligence etc. , a person can transcend the plane of Duality and merge with the Non-Dual, whereat awaits perfect bliss and harmony for them, which they may abide in forever after. If we accept the argument that joy and pain are essentially dualistic opposites, then how can we sever them, throw out one, keep the other and then escape into Non-Duality with it? How can we smuggle a dualistic entity—i.e. joy—into the realm of Non-Duality? Wouldn’t Non-Duality be devoid of all experience whatsoever—blanker than blank—as all experiences in existence, including all forms of joy and pain, belong to Duality? even ‘experience’ itself can be thought of as being a dualistic opposite to ‘non-experience’ (though non-experience is impossible to comprehend). Rather than, say, Sahasraha (see Tantric yoga stuff) being an experience of the Non-Dual, isn’t it more apt to consider it as an experience of boundlessness, of formlessness, of unity, of mergence, of the infinite? which qualities are still within the realm of Duality, and therefore the Sahasraha experience itself could still be considered as a dualistic experience. In addition, if the happiness of Nirvana—said to be beyond the ‘illusory’ joys of Samsara—resides in the incomprehensible realm of the Non-Dual, then how can anything—including ‘illusory’ joys of Samsara—be compared to it? If it is beyond all things, how can those who tell of it liken it to anything at all, including to ‘illusory’ joy? How can they say “you know what ‘nice feelings’ are, right? Well Nirvana is ‘nice feelings’ times 100!” when Nirvana is supposed to be completely unlike anything that can be experienced in Duality, including pleasure and pain; so surely, then, there is no way to say that Nirvana is ‘nice’, as ‘nice’ is ‘dual’ and Nirvana ‘non-dual’; and yet, are we not in Eastern spiritual-practices encouraged to seek Nirvana for it being supposedly ‘nice’? So how would you counter this argument and uphold the notion of attainable ‘perpetual-bliss’? Have you met anyone who claimed to have attained it? If so, what made you believe them? If that person was indeed sincere in their claim to that experience, how did that person know themselves that they were not just experiencing a very long ‘high’? Also, how could that person have been operating in Duality if they had entered Non-Duality? If you believe in it after having read or heard about it, what that you have read or heard counters this argument? If both the experience itself and any attempt to explain the experience are beyond logic—due to ‘logic’ being tethered to Duality, and ‘ultimate attainment’ residing beyond Duality in Non-Duality—then how do you know about it in the first place and how are you able to talk about it or think about it—as knowledge, thought and speech all belong to the great despot of Duality—? If it is an intuition of yours that it is real, are you really willing to surrender your whole life in an attempt to attain something based on a gut-feeling? If you deduce its existence by extrapolation of your own life experiences—spiritual ones included—how do you do so?: what about your own experiences hints at the possible attainment of ‘perpetual-bliss’? There is a further argument against the notion of ‘perpetual-bliss’ which concerns itself with permanence-impermanence and with beginnings and ends and ‘ultimate attainments’, and though the argument in this post touches on this—through considering how opposites continually roll and transform into one another, and through questioning the true nature of an Enlightenment experience such as Sahasraha a couple paragraphs above—it’s divergent enough to leave it out here. As an aside, I am not debating here that great spiritual-experiences exist—they certainly do—; neither am I debating the immortality of the soul nor of consciousness—it certainly is—; neither am I denying enlightenment when considered as the notion of a progression through higher and higher levels of awareness, ability and intelligence; this is just an argument against the idea of the existence and attainment of ‘perpetual-bliss’.

Hello, I would like to introduce myself properly by giving my related background in regards to internal alchemy, which is what i am about... I started out with the religion of my parents until early teenage years, became agnostic as it didnt matter to me and later on picked up interest in Christendom. Not having any preconceived notions about anything Christian by external teachings... and reading the book on my own, I came to other conclusions than those that are mainstream. My understanding or interpretation has evolved multiple times, after which I took a step back and realized that relying on interpretation, understanding, knowledge or reasoning is not enough and can be misleading. That was the main point that made me stop trying to reach God with the intellect, but start walking the path of the mystic (experiencing God > knowing God). One day, I had a very interesting experience, which changed everything. I sat on my bed or I was lying, I dont know and had a moment where I totally surrendered to "God", giving up my life, basically, saying its all yours and meaning it and fully giving up... As I was lying there, my body started to burn hot. Internal waves of goosebumps emerged that came in waves, stronger and stronger, and overtook my entire body. If I was to describe it, I would say my body was in blazing, overwhelming, invisible fire, which did not burn me, but which I could sense! At that moment, I had no clue what was happening, but nowadays, I think I know... anyway, as it was happening, I was thinking of God's embrace, of verses like "God is a burning fire" which does not burn, things of that nature, which intensified the whole experience... IIRC, it kept going for 2-3 minutes, give or take and then i went to sleep. I never paid more attention or taught to it, but nowadays, I think it was a key event in my energetic unfolding - i think it started it all. Anyway, I evolved from Christianity by becoming a perennialist, due to my mystical/esoteric approach to the bible. I discovered non-duality, first in the bible, then noticed how other traditions, mainly buddhism (secretly) and advaita vedanta (openly) are teaching the same thing. I realized that "God" is not personal, but rather impersonal and more than that, that God's identity, which I knew was "ineffable" - somethign that did not make much sense to me, was beyond concepts, language or reason, making me understand the ineffible-ness of God's identity. It transcends the intellect or speech, the Tao that can be talked or written about, is not the real Tao... The buddhists call it the void or emptiness.. The evolution of my understanding has been happening in multiple strands, in parallel. The main strand or framework I was working with, was alchemical Christianity (occultism), but I was open minded so I was pursuing other maps or frameworks like budhism and yoga (of patanjali) to better understand what they were all pointing at. As a perennialist, I view God as a mountain-top, with different starting points having different paths (potentially-) all leading to the same top, or trying to, at least. From Christendom, I understood that the way to God is by "Christ" alone - which is an occultish way to say that celibacy is sine-quo-non. This knowledge has been esoterically distilled from a few things...: - the allegory of the fall of Adam & Eve, who "ate" from the forbidden "tree" placed in the "midst of the garden". ther is a verse that says one should come to a conclusion on a matter by taking multiple witnesses in court cases, but esoterically speaking, this is referring to textual interpretation - so, there is another place (Proverbs 30:20) which says "the whore eats and wipes her mouth and says she has done nothing wrong", showing and indicating that "eating" = sex, making the allegory of Adam & Eve all about sex, as they also "ate".. making the forbidden tree the genitelia, the garden the center of the human body etc. - allegory of Christ's crcufixition - being crucified at the age of "33" in "golgotha" is code for the spine, which has 33 vertebrates and the human skull: "golgotha" literally means "place of skull" - the word "Christ" means anointing or oil, in the original, its "cristos" - this is the same "oil" of the parable of the 10 virgins, all of whom seek to enter the "kindgom of God" (deciphered: samadhi/jhana), 5 wise having "oil" in their lantern, 5 foolish who dont have "oil" and cant enter during the dark night (meditation) - the Christ (anointing, oil, essence, "jing"), which came from above ("Most High" / "God" - aka the brain, pituary/pineal) must also go up the same way it came down - by being accepted (celibacy) and not rejected (sexual indulgence) - "to know" meaning to have sex and the saying "know thyself" occultishly referring to self-frucitication (internal alchemy).. Equipped with this knowledge, I practiced mainly 2 things: - meditation - celibacy (both of which are simply non-doings, now that I think about it - I did not "do" those things, I rather stopped "doing" in both instances xD the yoke of Christ is easy after all...) The form of meditation I practiced was what Buddha described in the anapana-sati sutta. Awareness of the breath. By "breath", I mean the false breath - the mechanism by which we suck in air. These days, my main interpretation for "breath" in occult or spiritual ancient texts is Chi automatically, because you can breath chi as well. Sooner or later, I discovered that I can voluntarily cause piloerection, in short - create goosebumps voluntarily with my breath. I now understand this as chi-control. Initially I did not understand the significance of it and ignored it, but thanks to articles I found here and elsewhere, correlating it with the other knowledge I have, I think its the key to all of it.. The comment I am referring to is this one: Having spent some time here and having read about xing and ming (a 60+ page pdf called "Destiny, Vital Force, or Existence? On the Meanings of Ming in Daoist Internal Alchemy and Its Relation to Xing or Human Nature by Fabrizio Pregadio"), I think I now have somewhat of a better understanding of what the process is really all about. (I am still not hipp to the taoist lingo, but i am trying xD) And I find myself more leaning towards Taoism or rather, internal alchemy (neidan) than any other framework, as its the most straight forward and the one that makes most sense to me personally, assuming you know what the cryptic elements mean. All spiritual texts are cryptic, but if you have a little bit of progress or related knowledge to compare it to, you can usually make sense of it... or delude yourself you are undersanding them, lol xD Here is my current understanding ,which is ever-evolving: - Meditation (false xing exercise, post-heaven xing?) creates true ming (chi movement, awareness of chi, voluntary piloerection), when the body and mind are completely and 100% relaxed (no movement: physical stillness and 0 muscle tension + no thoughts) - True Ming & its exercise (chi-gong, taichi, external movements but paying 80% attention to the movement of the chi internally, not the physical form or movement) is what charges the battery at the core of the human system and allows for true xing (jhanic absoprtion, samadhi, emptiness) to occur The anapanasati sutta is ingenious in the way, that it contains both elements. You progress from the breath of air to the breath of chi all naturally. Once you do celibacy or become a monk and then completely relax the body and mind for a while, you feel start feeling the pulsations of chi in your body (mainly abdomen), which are exponentially intensified through celibacy.. and sooner or later, acquire control over them. You start feeling light-orgasmic sensations in your abdomen when you fully relax and meditate! This is the bliss of the secluded monks, Buddha talked about, who were entering Jhana! When the breath is traced down, which naturally occurs, as you can not focus your attention to the nose-tip as mainstream buddhist teachers teach, because you have let go of all control (even awareness) to achieve stillness, bodily and mentally, awareness itself will natural latch on to the breath and follow it down to the belly. in the belly, when the breath is slow (long), heat sensations will start to form near the belly button and it will heat up. this natural xing-approach can be simulated by a ming approach of doing reverse breathing and intentionally moving chi (voluntary piloerection) to the belly region. visualizing energy moving in from your limbs like electricity down into your belly helps a lot. 2 different approaches, but the same effect. i think once this center is charged sufficiently, it spills over to higher regions which is when supernatural phenomena are gonna start occurring around you, usually unintentionally and without control... perhaps you can gain control, but I am not that far yet and I am not really interested, tbh... i could not make sense of it either, it seems that certain physical phenomena occur, when there is a "delta" in awareness, say you are at 50% of stillness or emptiness (random number) and then you drop to 49% or jump to 51% abruptly for whatever reason, this has a ripple effect on physical reality. this is the best way I can describe it and I could not induce it by will, it happens on its own or is out of control... i could not attribute it to anything else, because its hard to "think" while not thinking or being completely still.. so when the phenomena occur, it rips me out of emptiness completely when i try to make sense of it, completely stopping the whole process! i think thinking (mental movements) are too coarse for supernatural phenomena - you have to have a super subtle mind with super subtle movements during stillness, to (probably) intentionally induce these things. and even then, how would you do that, when you have to let go of all things to reach such levels of stilness (non-doing)? how to do while not doing? i have no idea... its super complex and I have no one to really talk to about these things, except perhaps you guys! I believe that dual-cultivation is necessary and complementary to each other, cultivating both energy (chi movement) + stillness (100% body/mind relaxation, no wavering at all, no movement of any sort). Christ may have been a taoist, btw., having said what he said in the gospel of Thomas verse 50, in regards to where we come from: > (50) Jesus says: > (1) “If they say to you: ‘Where do you come from?’ (then) say to them: ‘We have come from the light, the place where the light has come into being > by itself, has established [itself] and has appeared in their image.’ > (2) If they say to you: ‘Is it you?’ (then) say: ‘We are his children, and we are the elect of the living Father.’ > (3) If they ask you: ‘What is the sign of your Father among you?’ (then) say to them: ‘It is movement and repose.’” Movement (ming) and repose (stillness) or yang and yin, etc.. The Tao (stillness, void, emptiness, nothingness) spontaneously created unity (golden elixier, the unification of yin and yang) which split into duality (yin and yang), which procreated the 3rd (mother+father=child) and from this process came all the things (10.000 things)... so its about uniting duality, merging movement with stillness, action in non-action, doing in non-doing or non-doing in doing - i think this is what wuwei refers to, ultimately. effortless action is born, when both yin and yang merged into one. no one can do this, except the exalted ones, the taoist immortals, the boddhisattvas, the saints, etc. etc. intentionally. in regards to internal alchemy, I think this refers to controlling energy while being in stillness. its kinda paradoxical, how is there a "doing" (yang, chi-control) in "non-doing" (meditation, yin). i think the answer is: spontaneity - its a natural phenomenon, its not you, who does anything, it is something which follows a certain law and happens on its own on the path of cultivation. i think this is what has been depicted in the yin and yang symbol, where there is a dot of the opposite in each one of them. yang has a dot of yin and yin has a dot of yang, as they both complement each other and one induces the other. they are tightly knit together, one could argue they are the two sides of the same coin... And Jesus also talked about how to create the golden elixier, allthough cryptically, in verse 106, for example: > (106) Jesus says: > (1) “When you make the two into one, you will become sons of man. > (2) And when you say ‘Mountain, move away,’ it will move away.” (sons of man is a title for offspring of the perfect one, the first "man" aka Adam, who was 100% perfect before the fall) Anyway, there are many traditions and many esoteric sayings, which I have not referenced outright, which point at this general direction. The muslims "pray" (repetition of words; mantra meditation) by placing their hands on their belly buttons and doing a few stretching movements.. i think its a veiled form of internal alchemy! In general, the abrahamic flavors seem to use the formula: celibacy + xing practice (or non-practice, lol, letting go, non-doing). I think this is called xing before ming in taoism. Xing before ming, in true christendom, evolves into xing with ming at the same time, once ming becomes doable due to xing cultivation - as one other daobummer once pointed out in a completely different context but still related: "how can a pianist play the piano, if he has no hands? he first needs to cultivate and have hands.. hence the higher teachings are secret or only given to those who qualify.." something along those lines - which makes sens in this context as well - how can you do ming work, if you are not aware of your chi and can not move it. So I am of the "xing before ming" school, allthough nowadays I practice both at the same time, beceause I "grew hands", so to speak.. ---- I am grateful for this community, there are many nuggets of wisdom and lots of interesting discussions. I am happy to be able to be part of it, allthough I am one who prefers personal, direct experience over theories, its still nice to have a few ideas or different POVs... and more importantly, likeminded people!

https://zmm.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Faith-Mind-Poem.pdf A wonderful translation that is accessible and eloquent without sacrificing or deviating from meaning or essence. Hope you guys enjoy 😊

John Wheeler on our true nature A song about Being, that which is always present Enjoy!

The world we see is completely internal. It's a simulation created by the brain from the sensory stimulation it receives. So the "external" reality that we live in does not look, sound, smell, taste, or feel like anything. It's a field of information. Does this mean that we live in the matrix?

Hello, How does all of this Neidan/Neigong/Qigong/Energy stuff relate to Non-Dual Truths/Enlightenment? Enlightenment as explained, and axiomatically acknowledged/intuited by myself (and many others), in (some/most) Zen/Advaita/Self-Inquiry/Jnana Yoga approaches is seeing realising what is True, is seeing through the illusion of Self, realising no-self, etc (I could go on and/or make it more specific, but, if you know self-inquiry, you know the jist of what I'm talking about). I have heard/read that these insights/seeing through the illusions/bullshit/labels/separations, etc, leads to a purifying of energy in itself as a sort of side effect. Through bouts of extreme insight I have felt something akin to this. How does this approach of inquiry and realisation relate (if at all) to Neidan/Neigong/Qigong/Energy stuff, according to you? As I have mentioned before, I am relatively new to Taoist/Chinese terminology but I have heard the phrase of Ghost level of realisation tossed about, or something, when referring to this approach, as if it's inferior, but, to me, realisation of Truth, of no self, of pure awareness, of pure being and non-being, everything/nothing seems to be self evidently final. From my preliminary reading it seems that the aim of energy work is to maintain the memories of this incarnation and then go about your business, just like someone who's enlightened on earth, but, as an immortal forever. So, someone who DOESN'T do this stuff that realises no self, what's supposed to happen to them? They just cease to be and rejoin Tao/One/Brahman/Totality completely? Superior and inferior aren't really the words I like to use, but they're all I have here. This ceasing to be/becoming one with Tao seems simultaneously superior and inferior. Superior in its sense of ultimate letting go and finality, ultimate Truth. Inferior in terms of utility and not being able to go on helping others, BUT, the cosmos/karma/one/Tao/Brahman, etc, does this, provides exactly what we need to wake up all the time anyway, so, we don't really need teachers in some regards. Also, there're reports about ascended masters, etc, who seem to have practiced this self inquiry approach themselves but are then still travelling around the different planes of existence/that are still contactable, implying that they don't just fade away or cease to be, but they are still going about their business, not identified with their form, but, also still able to operate. Anyway. Your thoughts on this would be interesting.

When I was last posting here, many of you were asking me when my book would be available to purchase. I have been busy with that project and it is now available at Amazon and on Kindle. I made an effort to present many of the pith instructions that I have received from mainly Dzogchen masters, Mahamudra masters and Zen masters, so that anyone could experience the "shift" into Enlightened Mind easily and in a relatively short time. The material is presented in generic language without the need to know anything about Buddhism nor the Tibetan teachings. To learn more about the book please visit my website: www.wayoflight.net Please share your feedback or comments! Jackson