The dark side....

[z00se]

Instead of cultivating gentleness, kindness, love, openness & courage one could cultivate fear, anger, hate, worry & sadness

 

I've seen on mind body & kickarse moves (a martial arts documentry) that a guy could put fear into his opponent which made his opponent unable to attack him. He literally felt scared to attack!

 

The TCM constructive cycle can definately work with negative emotions too. I think everyone has felt anger take over from fear, and hatred boil with prolonged anger, and Worry easily turns into fear.The thing is i've also felt hatred turn into courage (a positive emotion). I've also felt sadness stop anger in its tracks within seconds (the controlling cycle).

 

Sometimes in certain situations the negative emotions are easier to cultivate, and can certainly be stronger - i believe. I mean it's easy to feel massive energy from anger, or do something from the heart (without thinking) in anger. It's harder to do something from the heart with love without thinking.

 

TCM tells us that prolonged "good" emotions are not good for us as are prolonged "bad" emotions. Being overly joyful harms the heart, etc. So it seems no health benefits come from being positive over being negative, as long as you don't get stuck in one emotion too long.

 

Love is definately very strong, and in tai chi you can feel the power of love even in your strikes, but when the animal instinct - raw brutality of hatred is pumping through your veins you're pretty hard to stop (Not just overcome by anger but actual hatred). The loss you make in cool-headedness love you make up for in hot-headed determination and continuous onslaught without a pause.

 

So yeah, without having purposefully cultivated negative energies i can't tell first hand what would happen, but i intend to try it out for just a couple of weeks to get some insight into it. Even just to become more aware of negative emotions and their workings within my body. To only cultivate positive emotions is hard work, continuously clearing out the bad emotions to positively charge your body. Perhaps to use both positive and negative emotions is better approach and more inline with the tao, since both types of emotions are natural and of the tao. Surely both positive and negative are useful.

 

Anyone's thoughts?

[Jetsun]

What I learned through practising Buddhist Chod is that often your negative emotions like anger and hate are covering up more vulnerable emotions like fear and sadness, so I wonder if some of those emotions are even natural, well anger is natural but I'm not sure about hate and bitterness which may just be twisted versions of anger and fear, so focusing on twisted emotions is not good I think.

 

In Chod you are taught to feed your demons but the key in that practice is to feed what your demons need rather than what they want which is a crucial difference, as you may contact a demon of hate who on the surface wants to destroy everything but when you investigate what it really needs it's often a softer emotion like reassurance and feed it that then it becomes your ally rather than your opponent. If you were to feed a demon of hate more hate you would never be able to conquer it so it's energy is on your side rather than potentially working against you.

[devoid]

Hi z00se,

 

Instilling fear in somebody is essentially to create an imagery / impression that you want that person to experience. Please note the difference between you being something and you projecting signals to somebody - in other words, you don't necessarily have to become what you would like to project. Instead, and in order to do that, you have to master the art of projecting such signals.

 

This can be done on many levels: the physical (body language, raising hair, showing teeth, narrowing of the eyes, sounds, etc.) the psychological (using manipulative tools and techniques such as intimidation, distractions, etc.) as well as perhaps on shen level (using concentrated, focussed intent).

 

Now, this is of course all easier said than done. It takes a lot of training to incorporate such aspects. The hardest part IMO is to become master of your own shen. To attain this you will certainly need to be able to dissolve and control any anger or emotions you may have, in order to succeed. The funny thing is that when you attain that level you will see that there is in fact no dark side - it is simply a set of tools / skills which can be used for both virtuosity as well as for malaise.

[Birch]

Do you mean fear and malaise in yourself or other people?

 

I definitely think it's worth looking at fear and malaise in yourself as these are so often avoided. Maybe once you've done that you won't want to intentionally do it to other people?

 

I find the TCM stuff pretty interesting. It discusses arising and maintenance of specific "emotions" and their effects on organs. So are you "angry" because you're "angry" or because your liver is out of whack?

 

If you are going to be kind to your kidneys, do you opt not to fear?

 

If you have a cold, is feeling "sad" via the lungs a necessity?

 

As far as I've read so far, actual "emotions" don't actually counter or "5E" each other while overall "mood" is definitely a source of influence over the whole human system. So while I've found emotional training (don't know what it's called) interesting, I'm not sure that they can be orchestrated to that point. Or if they are, gotta ask who's life one is living :-)

 

IME What I hate about qi-gong is that it very much re-localises emotions.

[z00se]

What I learned through practising Buddhist Chod is that often your negative emotions like anger and hate are covering up more vulnerable emotions like fear and sadness, so I wonder if some of those emotions are even natural, well anger is natural but I'm not sure about hate and bitterness which may just be twisted versions of anger and fear, so focusing on twisted emotions is not good I think.

 

You are right that anger and hate cover up fear and sadness, but its not necessarily a 'cover up' i think it's just a natural progression, thats how the TCM constructive cycle works.

 

 

Something else i've just sussed out in the last day is that i think the opposite of compassion (the fusing of all good emotions) is indifference (fusing of bad emotions) Both are totally balanced.

 

Also negative emotions can be strong, especially if the associated positive emotion was strong to begin with, and the change can be very fast. During intense meditation periods i find that it is easier to stay calm and relaxed and in a compassionate state, but if i want to become angry the strength of the anger is huge and can easily become uncontrollable as it starts to run wild. It's like cultivating good emotions is relaxing the organ, like a sponge soaking in all the water, then the negative emotion is like squeezing out the sponge. The more water in there to begin with the more you can squeeze out. Just as always squeezing with negative emotions will make the sponge dry and crack. Negative emotions get you material gain and positive emotions give everyone and everything else gain (ie. the view everyone is connected). Some people give away everything though that they finally have nothing, and that is not good. Of course then the material negative things will be attracted to them always too because they are charged full of positive energy, but this also is not a balance. Also though if the sponge becomes too full and never squeezed it could become stale with energy.

 

It's hard to have good emotions all the time because it naturally attracts the negative. Your body wants to be in balance a compassion/indifference state. So to do qigong constantly to get good emotions is alot of hard work.

 

Another point worth making is good women are easily attracted to bad men. Why? Because the positive and negative want to balance each other out. The difference of potential, or the difference between +ve and -ve wants to be balanced to zero. That also explains why very bad people aren't attractive to most people because even with someones positive energy, it's still not enough to balance the other person's negative energy. The balance can't be reached. Not unless someone has enough compassion to give all their positive to the negative... but yeah, thats what you will be attracting towards yourself - very strong negative energy.

 

So those who have reached the level of compassion NEED the negative and 'evil' people to balance them. Otherwise.... ?

[Sloppy Zhang]

Based on a couple of my past experiences, I've found that negative emotions are just not sustainable. Hatred for something either fizzles out, like suddenly you stop and ask yourself, "what is this really getting me?" and then all at once you let it go, or it literally breaks down your body- so you've got all that hate, and you want to channel into something like, say, your martial ability, but you are incapable of actually DOING anything with it, it's effectively useless in accomplishing your goals.

 

On top of that, hatred breaks down so many interpersonal relationships (especially if you go the above mentioned martial route and start beating the crap out of people, whether they deserve it or not), that unless you've got the means to be 100% self sufficient, you have essentially made your environment unlivable. The best you get is nobody wants to interact with you, and the worst you can be is everyone actively either hates you, or wants some kind of righteous revenge for your past despicable deeds.

 

As far as instilling negative emotions into other people, well that's not very sustainable either. Fear usually goes away with an improved understanding. So maybe you'll catch one or two people off guard with your fearsomeness. But as word spreads and people try to figure out what your tricks are, eventually they're going to figure out what your trick is, and that knowledge alone with dismiss most of the fear. Then you get back up to the above problems of the sustainability of negative emotions, and the level to which you are self reliant (can get shit done with your own power, no tricks, you vs. everyone else).

 

So forget abstract morality, a reliance on "dark side" stuff just is not PRACTICAL.

 

But you could conversely argue that excessive "good guy" stuff isn't reliable. Plenty of nice people get taken advantage of by not nice people. Plenty of times you give and give and give and everyone just selfishly takes and takes and takes and you get nothing from it.

 

So what do you do?

 

I'm still working on the answer to that myself. But keeping quiet, reserving judgment, and being observant of everything at all times goes a long way. You might see someone doing something, but not know their reasons for doing so, your first pass might be completely off the mark. You have no idea how relationships are going to change over time- a friend one day could be your enemy the next, and your enemy one day could prove to be a valuable friend down the road. Be respectful to your enemies, and choose your friends carefully. A mutually favorable relationship with a former enemy could be ruined because of the overtly brutal way you handled things in the past, and a friendship in which you were too open with someone could haunt you as they use what they know to exploit you and others.

 

As far as good women being attracted to bad men, and people who are attracted to opposites in general, I'm not so sure that those are the same thing.

 

As I have written in many of Non's threads, women, and people in general, are attracted to confidence. Each person has enough of their own problems, they don't want to hang out with someone who's always going to be a downer and emotionally dump on them. They want stability. So they seek confidence, as it's a reflection of "wholeness". At least, that's the THEORY.

 

In practice, there are a lot of insecure people who MASQUERADE as confident. The "bad boy" stereotype is one. Not a person anyone wants to be around for very long, but projects the confidence and capability of someone who is successful. Someone who can provide, and someone who can take you to new places (in the world, in a relationship, etc).

 

Of course, as many people find out, relationships with these people are not good in the long term. Might be a fling, might be a high school/college thing, might be a rebound thing. Marriage/long term partnership? Doubtful.

 

Now some people are very good at faking it, so a lot of people can get fooled for a long time. But eventually the curtain gets pulled back, and everyone sees how they really are. Maybe times are tough, maybe they betray you somehow (in a romantic relationship, this might be cheating on you, on a friendship, it might be betraying your confidence somehow). So you go on to the next guy.

 

The confidence is what people seek out. Now you can have TRUE confidence. The capability combined with the compassion. You don't have anything to prove to anyone because you are completely aware of who you are and who other people are, and what's really important in life. But again, some people are good at faking it, so especially for people who don't know they are looking for the confidence, though they subconsciously know when someone has "something" to them, it's hard to tell.

Edited March 27, 2011 by Sloppy Zhang

[Jetsun]

From my own experience I found the extreme negative emotions like hate and rage come about through energetic blockages or frustration of your own power, usually frustration of healthy anger and fear, so to cultivate those states would mean blocking your own energy which can only lead to weakness.

[z00se]

Based on a couple of my past experiences, I've found that negative emotions are just not sustainable. Hatred for something either fizzles out, like suddenly you stop and ask yourself, "what is this really getting me?" and then all at once you let it go, or it literally breaks down your body- so you've got all that hate, and you want to channel into something like, say, your martial ability, but you are incapable of actually DOING anything with it, it's effectively useless in accomplishing your goals.

 

On top of that, hatred breaks down so many interpersonal relationships (especially if you go the above mentioned martial route and start beating the crap out of people, whether they deserve it or not), that unless you've got the means to be 100% self sufficient, you have essentially made your environment unlivable. The best you get is nobody wants to interact with you, and the worst you can be is everyone actively either hates you, or wants some kind of righteous revenge for your past despicable deeds.

 

Yeah you are right i don't think it is sustainable either. I also agree with you with the relationship thing and also with the confidence thing, that is probably more correct than what i said. Also while cultivating bad emotions you feel crappy and it's really not a fun way to live. Not enjoyable at all.

 

From my own experience I found the extreme negative emotions like hate and rage come about through energetic blockages or frustration of your own power, usually frustration of healthy anger and fear, so to cultivate those states would mean blocking your own energy which can only lead to weakness.

 

Yeah hate and rage come from energetic blockages. You block the energy and dam it up, like a river to increase the pressure and power. Maintaining that state for a long time would lead to weakness but short bursts can lead to real life solutions and calmness after the storm. If the macrocosm is anything to learn by, the earth has short storms too.

 

Sometimes they can help. As you say the good guy thing doesn't work either all the time. Actually i don't think it works the majority of the time. Being overly nice and kind is looked upon suspiciously in the west - 'why are they being so nice?'. Or it's just asking to be taken advantage of. Infact it probably is just as damaging as being unkind and cold hearted. The thing i have noticed though is that sadness can control anger much better than courage/rightousness can (short term). Anger can make someone listen to you or change a situation much more effectively than kindness can. Blind hate/rage can let you continue to fight after you have stabbed, and i'm sure you will last longer than if you are in a state of love. In certain times the negative emotions are very effective.

 

I remember one time when i was in china and my boss told me he wasn't going to pay me my months wage untill i came back from holidays 2 months later! i had been cultivating average about 5-6 hours a day for quiet a while and was easily able to take it well in a state of compassion but i consiously chose not to, i chose to get angry, but once it started i even scared myself afterwards. I grabbed my boss around the throat started screaming at him in his face and slapping him gently around the face (hahaha funny now i remember it). He obviously got scared and agreed to pay me and i let him go, and the next day i went around to pick the money up and it was all fine. So yeah if i didn't get angry i may not have even ever recieved my months wage (the guy was dodgy as) and although everything would have been fine in my world of compassion, i don't think my wife would feel the same way.

 

But yeah as i said not having cultivated and learnt to play with my anger it went out of control. I think playing with negative energies could be part of overall internal growth.

[Jetsun]

I would be careful, hate when built up and dammed does gain great power and for someone like a bully victim it can end up empowering them to stop the abuse, but the danger is when it gets to that stage it can become indiscriminate as to where it lashes out, so you can easily end up hurting the people you care about most like your wife or children because when it gets to that level all it wants is an outlet and it doesn't care much what that is.. Plus it can create all sorts of problems for example what happens when you encounter a situation where you need a small amount of anger or force, you end up ripping the other persons head off with an inappropriate response. The mistake is to think that you will be able to control the hate if you dam it up.

 

But yeah anger is different and gets a negative rep in some circles but a healthy relationship to anger is necessary for growth in my view, and if you have a healthy anger there is not usually any use or purpose for hate

Edited March 28, 2011 by Jetsun

[alexandrov]

like cultivating good emotions is relaxing the organ, like a sponge soaking in all the water, then the negative emotion is like squeezing out the sponge. The more water in there to begin with the more you can squeeze out. Just as always squeezing with negative emotions will make the sponge dry and crack. Negative emotions get you material gain and positive emotions give everyone and everything else gain (ie. the view everyone is connected). Some people give away everything though that they finally have nothing, and that is not good. Of course then the material negative things will be attracted to them always too because they are charged full of positive energy, but this also is not a balance. Also though if the sponge becomes too full and never squeezed it could become stale with energy.

 

great insight yes i think too much of any emotion (especially if you are artificially trying to control or sustain certain emotions) can lead to stagnation and other serious problems

[GreytoWhite]

From my own experience I found the extreme negative emotions like hate and rage come about through energetic blockages or frustration of your own power, usually frustration of healthy anger and fear, so to cultivate those states would mean blocking your own energy which can only lead to weakness.

 

This is well said. From personal experience I can tell you that the negative has great power. I sacrificed much of my health for material gain in the past few years and still have much ahead of me on my recovery path. When my grandfather died a few years ago I sacrificed the religious practice I found the most solace in to drink away my worries and depression. This choice only deepened my troubles, I suffered a minor heart attack shortly after yet I was "enjoying" my life much more. It was an incompatibility of belief and action with the negative being my main conduit for power.

 

I again did something similar when I sacrificed my health for a job. I suffered a small stroke that led to many months of depression, aphasia, and much physical degeneration. The culture of the workplace was something I tried to emulate but when there was aggression against me and mine I came to see that I had made the wrong decision. Granted there were "external" factors involved in my health as well however in my practice I have found that the external alchemical is easier to control and the internal practice is much more effective for long term recovery.

 

Now someone who is psychopathic in nature may have an entirely different outcome and may well thrive physically, emotionally, and energetically from cultivation of destruction. I have done much lately to counter such actions that were taken against those I love. It is much easier for me to fight within my moral spectrum and use what I know for protection and healing. The proper use of just anger and hatred for evil is almost as powerful in my experience as the application of love. Granted the energy drain is there but I have much to atone and fatigue is a companion I know well.

[z00se]

Do you mean fear and malaise in yourself or other people?

 

I definitely think it's worth looking at fear and malaise in yourself as these are so often avoided. Maybe once you've done that you won't want to intentionally do it to other people?

 

I find the TCM stuff pretty interesting. It discusses arising and maintenance of specific "emotions" and their effects on organs. So are you "angry" because you're "angry" or because your liver is out of whack?

 

If you are going to be kind to your kidneys, do you opt not to fear?

 

If you have a cold, is feeling "sad" via the lungs a necessity?

 

As far as I've read so far, actual "emotions" don't actually counter or "5E" each other while overall "mood" is definitely a source of influence over the whole human system. So while I've found emotional training (don't know what it's called) interesting, I'm not sure that they can be orchestrated to that point. Or if they are, gotta ask who's life one is living :-)

 

IME What I hate about qi-gong is that it very much re-localises emotions.

First sorry kate i oversaw your reply i would have wanted to reply sooner but i missed it!

 

I just looked up malaise and it says...

1.

a condition of general bodily weakness or discomfort, often marking the onset of a disease.

2.

a vague or unfocused feeling of mental uneasiness, lethargy, or discomfort.

i wouldn't think fear is weakness, but it could be unease. Fear is quickly accompanied by lots of energy in my experience. I have/had a fobia of dogs and man when i used to see a dog i used to be revved up with so much energy i could hardly breath!

I think what you say is true, a feeling can not just come from a certain organ, but by using qigong you can get the main feeling from a certain organ and grab a handle on it.

 

And as to if i want to put fear into other people. Well i could think of some times where i would want to do it, but generally i wouldn't. Even though it's pointless to have tools you don't use, it's nice to have them incase you would like to. It's just up to the individual's character then.

[fizix]

Little known fact, savvy to the black magick/occultists and dark side energy masters; when you murder someone you gain heaps of energy (albeit negative, dark side energy, to manifest as anger, hate, fear...) as you are actually through karmic bonding absorbing/inheriting the karmic energy of the one who is murdered, and that includes subsequent karma traces manifested by the unconscious spirit through the intermediate post-death bardo realm, which undoubtedly so will be said emotions of anger, hate, fear given that most likely the victim was not a spiritual master liberated of ego and reactionary emotions (parallel of balanced chakras, blockage free purified chi meridians and Yang Shen development of the immortal fetus; karma dissolved with the anti-energy of the ego (emotional resultant) into non-dual rigpa Unity Oneness/Consciousness of the Clear Light). Subconsciously this energy rape/sapping is the subliminal motive of many serial killers; they are conscious of this increased height of (dark side) awareness... and yet there are many, like Hitler, who consciously knew of this dark side magick and acted intentionally as the karmic cause/source of the deaths of untold millions.... such impacts upon their ability to influence the masses in addition to other dark side siddhi's/powers subsequently developed as a result of murder/energy/soul rape... such as clairvoyance, clairaudience, telepathy, mass hypnotic influence, dark side entity/spirit communication/enlistment, hexing, among others.... yes the dark side is faster in progression to powers, but not as powerful as the light.... for the light is drawn within from infinite energy manifest love and in atonement will guide the warriors of the light to victory... the dark side is ubiquitous, all pervading, eternal and is an essential aspect of the paradigm, as the light cannot exist with the dark... yang cannot exist with yin, the complimentary opposites conception is a spoke to help balance the great eternal universal cosmic wheel of reality.

 

The balance is key.

 

2012 a new age will begin, we will see the acceleration of non-dual awareness among lay folk of the light.. however as the energies of the light side consciousness grow exponentially as the kundalini of the earth is uncoiled to magnify the electromagnetic fields of the planet which is corresponding to the sudden shift of human consciousness in polar potentialities, the dark side will grow as strong as the light.... as such balance is the Way, the necessity of occurrence in the great cosmic universal wheel of reality... thus multidimensional beings (essentially us in the future, literally..remember, even 20000 years into the future has already happened...in one dimension..) from the 6th dimension (our spirits' 9th stage of spiritual evolution in ascendancy to unity with the Great One Dreamer) will intervene upon behalf of the light (as misinterpreted in the book of Ra, the Law of One as well as Atlantean channels) and the so-called Harvest or "Rapture" (either or respective terms pending the energetic vibrational frequency outweighing of light versus dark among the human race) will initiate through the means of spiritual transcendence to the next higher vibrational realm/dimension through a soul-energy gravity well (by the MD benevolent light-beings) via the pineal gland a la the "third eye" the seat of the soul... pending individual energy makeup via vibrational frequency of correlating Yin and Yang energies a trial (however a trial, ascendancy is inevitable, provided the souls' nature of light) of karmic fortitude will ensue to burn the soul's remaining karma (unless one has broken the karmic bonds through fusion of the Yin and Yang energies, in which case one is an immortal Guardian of Heaven and such is his duty (heaven being an actual/highest vibrational reality - the final realm predating absolute unity with the One Source singularity infinity. Beautiful white light. The love. The wisdom. Unspeakable, unnameable, yet the sole invigorating absolute TRUTH.

 

 

 

 

The Tao.

 

Edited March 29, 2011 by fizix

[z00se]

This is well said. From personal experience I can tell you that the negative has great power. I sacrificed much of my health for material gain in the past few years and still have much ahead of me on my recovery path. When my grandfather died a few years ago I sacrificed the religious practice I found the most solace in to drink away my worries and depression. This choice only deepened my troubles, I suffered a minor heart attack shortly after yet I was "enjoying" my life much more. It was an incompatibility of belief and action with the negative being my main conduit for power.

 

I again did something similar when I sacrificed my health for a job. I suffered a small stroke that led to many months of depression, aphasia, and much physical degeneration. The culture of the workplace was something I tried to emulate but when there was aggression against me and mine I came to see that I had made the wrong decision. Granted there were "external" factors involved in my health as well however in my practice I have found that the external alchemical is easier to control and the internal practice is much more effective for long term recovery.

 

Now someone who is psychopathic in nature may have an entirely different outcome and may well thrive physically, emotionally, and energetically from cultivation of destruction. I have done much lately to counter such actions that were taken against those I love. It is much easier for me to fight within my moral spectrum and use what I know for protection and healing. The proper use of just anger and hatred for evil is almost as powerful in my experience as the application of love. Granted the energy drain is there but I have much to atone and fatigue is a companion I know well.

 

It's great to hear from someone who speaks from life experience. For even though i try my best to get myself the best health, because my own health has failed me in the past, i still feel the body is to be used to get what you want out of life. I especially agree with "The proper use of just anger and hatred for evil is almost as powerful in my experience as the application of love." And i think the proper use can be made more possible and accessable with cultivation.

 

I know hatred would overcome me if somebody killed my wife and my child. It would be blind hatred whereby even if i was stabbed and knocked and bashed, i would use every ounce of my remaining energy to avenge their death. It would be impossible to ignore. And i know this is still TAO.

 

I'm sure it's also possible that the power from negative emotions could take you over and you want more and more. But both sides of the coin are worth exploring. Some people have never 'gone crazy' after being treated like shit and it would especially benefit them.

[Maddie]

Back in when I was actively training in karate, one of the things our teacher told us to do was to try to get your opponent angry before fighting them, as this would throw off their focus. I found it to be true in sparing. If my opponent lost his cool in sparing, and I kept mine they became pretty easy to deal with.

Another time back when I was in basic traing for the army, we had pugel contests. These are large Q-tip looking objects that you pummel eachother with as part of bayonet training. Anyways the guy I was to go up against was huffing and puffing and saying how he was going to kick my ass ect... I just kept my martial arts training in mind, and focused on cultivating a calm and peaceful mind. When the drill sergant said go, he came out in the rage swinging every which way, which I was greatful for because it made him very easy to defeat.

My point is that I do not believe that negative emtions are more powerful than postive ones.

Edited March 29, 2011 by dmattwads