Begin cultivating.

[Pranaman]

These are my suggestions to prepare yourself for Taoist arts without having a teacher to guide you.

 

1. Get exercise. This is just plain old healthy, which is a goal for taoist practice. Get every which kind of exercise.... aerobic, anaerobic, static, dynamic.... Push yourself regularly. The discipline and pain tolerance will help when your future teacher asks you to do zhan zhuang for 20 minutes or meditate for an hour. Set a goal and intend on reaching it, say... 100 pushups, 50 pullups, 200 sit-ups. Sweat a lot and make sure your work makes you breath hard for more oxygen. The energetic benefits of exercise are to be experienced. Confidence gained will benefit you in all areas of life. Also, raising your heart beat for 20mins improves your BDNF which supports living brain cells and is highly active in promoting new neuro-connections.

 

Exercise + meditation + intention = fast growth.

 

2. Listen to Eckhart Tolle, or Adyashanti, or someone else who guides people to the present moment, so you can be "in the experience, not above the experience". A very natural and universal part of being a Yogi or one with the Tao.

 

Does anyone else have any suggestions for teacherless seekers of the truth?

[Aetherous]

Exercise (running is good). Awareness watching awareness/abandon release meditation. Slow down in your life and relax.

[Uncle Screwtape]

I genuinely believe that if you cultivate a close relationship with the I Ching to the point of absorbing her hexagrams into yourself, you cannot have a greater teacher.

 

Richard

[Eric23]

Meditate. Find some time to sit in quiet and stillness.

[DaoChild]

Above All, Two things:

 

(You will see these mentioned ad nauseum throughout Taoist texts):

 

Truthfully "all" you need to do is

 

A) Cultivate Your Mind -- Make your thoughts tranquil, e.g. you see objectively, you don't react to thing, you come from a perspective of stillness

 

B ) Promote Virtuous Actions

 

Many of the texts will mention one of those two in every passage.. the Nei yeh for example.

 

 

 

In MY life, I believed the magical formula for longevity is as follows:

 

Stillness & Movement. That's my motto.

Edited June 30, 2009 by DaoChild

[CarsonZi]

Does anyone else have any suggestions for teacherless seekers of the truth?

 

http://www.aypsite.org/

 

IMO the ultimate "teacherless" system.

 

Love,

Carson

[iadnon]

 

http://www.aypsite.org/

 

IMO the ultimate "teacherless" system.

 

Love,

Carson

 

Thanks for the site!

[contrivedname!]

a text i would recommend is:

 

The Cycle of Day and Night: Where One Proceeds Along the Path of the Primordial Yoga : An Essential Tibetan Text on the Practice of Dzogchen by Namkhai Norbu

 

i only partially read a friend's copy, and then ordered it on my own, will probably get it tomorrow. this text cuts right through a lot mind chatter (if you read it with the proper focus) and emphasizes non-attachment. this literally "blew my mind" in a sense when i read it; very "sudden". this is of course my preception after just scratching the surface and not digesting it for a long period.

 

i believe you can apply Mr. Screwtape's "absorbing into self" w/ spiritual teachings in general. someone here made a comment about "hardcoding" a practice on your mind to the point where you "forget it". i feel like i am being obscure here, what i am trying to say is that once one has absorbed a teaching/practice/spiritual path they manifest it both consciously and subconsciously without effort. by without effort i dont mean the person does nothing, i mean that they spontaneously manifest the teaching rather than having to contrive it; sort of like "meditation in action".

 

for people interested in daoism, my personal favorite is chuang tzu. it is always nice to have spiritual concepts presented in a humorous way .

 

another important pointe i would stress would be to have "spiritual friends", friends also interested in spiritual development whom you progress with rather than some high and mighty guru who you look up to like a parent figure. (that comment isnt intended to "bash" guru's). often one of the best "gurus" can be your own reflection in a still pond...

 

@ scotty: NO it is Beer not Tea!!!!!

 

oh and a nice thing about the first text i mentioned is that the translator renders pretty much all of the terms for those of us who cant remember all of those damn sanskrit terms

[de_paradise]

For people not into overt spiritual stuff, exercise and Tolle are great suggestions.

 

NLP is too. Even Tony Robbins. NLP is covertly spiritual practise because it goes by the assumptions that the ego, or personality, is plastic, and gives a whole crapload of techniques that help shift a person's ego-self, and that shifting creates a space where spiritual "truth" arises, not unlike the goal of orthodox Buddhism.