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Dear Dao Bums, My post will be in 5 parts: 1) Intro to General Framework of Hindu Sadhana 2) Hierarchy of Beings 3) My Own Lifelong Orientation Towards Sadhana Being Challenged 4) Yakshini Experiences 5) Questions for You 1) Intro to General Framework of Hindu Sadhana In tantric Hindu sadhana, you connect with higher beings outside yourself in order to develop yourself step by step, until you also become a higher being. This is done using the 5 elements: Mantra Japa (space/energy element, throat chakra), Puja / Prayer Ritual (all 5 elements, focus on air element, heart chakra) Fire Ritual / Havan (fire element, navel chakra) Tarpanam & Marjanam / Water & Butter Ritual (water element, genital chakra) Bhojanam / Feeding people (Earth element). In each tantra, different combinations of the 5 elements and specific ways of using them are prescribed in order to connect with a higher being. 2) Hierarchy of Beings There is a hierarchy of beings from low to high. The higher the being, the more difficult it is to connect with it. The lower the being, the easier it is to connect with. However, higher beings are more spiritually evolved and therefore more benign in nature. Lower beings are less spiritually evolved. They can still be extremely powerful, but their nature is more malevolent. The hierarchy is something like (more or less): Deva / Devi (Devata) - literally light being, normally called Gods & Godesses Gandharva - bird-person, associated with music Apsara - celestial beauty, associated with sensuality, sexuality, attraction & beauty, sometimes dance Naga - snake people, often teach yogis meditation & spirituality Yakshini - female nature spirits, often protecting the treaures of the Earth Atma/Soul of Deceased Human Beings (people like you and I who are passed away) Bhuta - restless souls of deceased human beings Preta - hungry ghosts, souls of deceased people even more disturbed than bhutas Pisach - flesh eating demons, evil 3) My Own Lifelong Orientation Towards Sadhana Being Challenged My entire life I approached spiritual practice as a means of religious/spiritual liberation/salvation, in this life and the next. This would be called Fana Fi Allah in sufism, Moksha in Hinduism, Nirvana in Buddhism, Salvation in Christianity, Ren-Tien-He-Yi in Daoism etc. Of course each might differ slightly in how they define their "ideal end state", but my goal was always to reach the "ideal end state" proposed by religion/spirituality. However, as you know, this takes a long time, it can even take several life times! In the past couple of years I've been confronted by the fact that many people never care about this ultimate goal, they just quickly want either spiritual powers or material success, and use spiritual/tantric means to acquire that. And they actually succeed! This made me realize the intelligence of Hinduisms 4 goals of life: dharma, artha, kama, moksha. It's much easier to pursue the ultimate goal when your material life & wealth is settled, as is your needs for love and pleasure. It's like you're building on top of a stable foundation. So this idea made me more open to consider adding this as temporary "side projects" on my spiritual journey, of course never stopping the daily effort towards the ultimate goal. 4) Yakshini Experiences Lately one of my family members got yakshini mantra diksha for acquiring wealth. They even said on the course "this is nothing about spiritual advancement, this is only focusing on acquiring material wealth as soon as possible through tantric means". A remark I would have considered blasphemous just a few months back! As part of the program my family member got yakshini diksha, and related to me that the yakshini energy is extremely different and noticeably distinct from devata energy. This person has performed decades & decades of serious hindu sadhana for reaching the ultimate goal, so they have a lot of experience. Quite literally my family member said "it feels very active, very dynamic, very powerful & emotional, but also quite volatile. It feels closer to a human being. It's full of love, lust, energy, vitality & passion, but it also has anger & jealousy in it". Compared to what he describes as devata energy "settled, balanced, peaceful, benign, loving, accepting, Divine". Hearing this experience made me wonder and become curious about the validity & power of sadhana on beings lower than Devata in order to obtain quicker results in particular matters. Then I read the Uddamareshvara Tantra about the sadhana & siddhi of 36 yakshinis. The required sadhanas are extremely easy compared to the serious hindu sadhana I've completed daily for 10.5 years now (mantra japa, mantra chanting with a rosary, as well as innumerable rituals for all 5 elements). Yakshini Sulochana & Kapalini can give the siddhi of astral travel & lucid dreaming with as little as 30.000 & 20.000 (respectively) mantra chants, ending with a fire ritual (havan). This really allured me, because that is an extremely small & easy thing to accomplish compared to what I've completed over the last decade. But something inside me is still holding back, because of the "fear" of worshipping something less than "the highest" and the fear of "going down the wrong track" on my spiritual journey. Hence some questions for you! 5) Questions for You What have you heard about yakshini sadhana? What have you experienced from yakshini sadhana? All the best!

Checking in on you folks has become a bit of a guilty pleasure...not really as helpful to my day to day practice as all that, but entertaining. Read this and had an impulse to post it. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/06/the-pearl-of-lao-tzu/559109/

Dear Dao Bums, I've come across Master Liu He. I think she seems very good. Does anyone have any personal experiences, stories or the like to share? About Liu He and her qigong. Be blessed

I have been reading about getting work through Barefoot Writers. I don't know anything about them and I am only a mediocre writer. So, I am interested in other peoples experiences, in all types of reading and writing adventures, hopes, failures, etc.

Greetings, one and all. I love reading stories about the Taoist immortals who catch arrows between their teeth, Christian saints who pacify and befriend animals, and other such things. I especially love the stories about Zheng San Feng. Does anybody have a yarn or two to weave about people, past and present, with awesome powers?

Nothing that we do in the course of our lives ever matters but the stories we've told and heard and read; of giants and of gods, deities, monsters, immortals, and heroes, for our reality is an all encompassing infinitesimal omniverse united; all that we know and say and do is real, true and full. the stories are the genuine, the material, merely a conveyance of the eternal perpetual story. We all exist. Hollywood is real. Marvel universe is real. The Kali Saga, Godslayer, Cosmic Council of Knowledge Specialists, Pegasus Unicorns, Sphinx, Mutant Ninjas, Genetically altered Lab Mice, and everything we ever heard in a story.... We are all mutually alive, real, with personhood, soul, spirit, and purpose. We can all contact the truth, interact with omniverses interconnected and overlapping. We can embrace more than the Dimensional space our bodies occupy, continue stories beyond eternity, create new stories from those left untold for ages... and every... single... person, place, thing, character, idea, and fiction... is factually really alive, no more, no less, than us... the gods... immortals... and corpses alike.