The Microcosmic Orbit

[Joolian]

24 minutes ago, freeform said:

 

I think different lineages have different ways of testing these things. There’s different signs for the front channel and the back. And I expect there are a number of physical changes that happen according to the degree of openness. 

 

I remember I found it quite shocking that the Dan Tien is a physical thing that you can feel and touch! These days I’m not shocked so easily  Qi gong is more like bodybuilding than I first imagined!

 

 

Interesting, thanks  I only feel it as a warm "field" yet... when breathing there it gets hotter though.

[freeform]

29 minutes ago, Joolian said:

Interesting, thanks  I only feel it as a warm "field" yet... when breathing there it gets hotter though.

 

Sounds like you’re moving in the right direction! I personally never could directly feel my Dan Tien - only experience it’s effects on the rest of the body (quite intense!). These days I can feel physical pressing, tugging, stretching movements going on down there. 

 

This is all besides the point though. Best not to focus on sensations. Sensations are created by the qi interacting with blockages. My approach is - if they’re there notice and move on with the training!

[Joolian]

Yes, you are right on that. Sometimes it is not so easy though - I somewhat "require" or want to see some signs, so that I know I am moving in the right direction

[voidisyinyang]

6 hours ago, freeform said:

 

Ok - I’m a bit confused. So you’re saying Spring Forest is a ‘thing’ not a ‘system’?

 

Or are you just offended that I’m not wholeheartedly praising Spring Forest?

 

If it’s the latter, then please excuse me. I don’t mean to offend anyone. I’ve not met Chunyi Lin, and so cannot comment on his system... or thing...(!?) 

 

As to his videos and recordings... I have no objection to that. I've met several teachers with genuine skill that have created online courses or videos as a source of income - knowing full well that it won’t result in any real development. But it’s certainly better use of time than watching tv or some other trivial activity. And it may well encourage that person to seek out a teacher. It’s a tricky life to spend your full time on training - and some income from videos is extremely helpful. I completely get that.

 

I do think it’s important for people to know that for anything beyond the very basics you need to work with a teacher directly. There’s no other way round it. Even these basics will need to be re-trained. 

 

I’ve personally wasted years on books and dvds. Then many more years on finding the right teachers. And I don’t want others to have their time wasted this way. These arts are very precious and shouldn’t be diluted by people learning things from videos and thinking they’ve got it!

 

 

Here's the deal: Yes Chunyi Lin is a very "wonderful" teacher. He did the 49 day cave meditation, in full lotus, no sleep the whole time - at Mt. Qingcheng. He said he levitated up 9 feet, spiraling, while in full lotus - next to a pine tree. He has ancestor spirits help him when he does his healings. He can see past lives.

 

And as for his pedagogical teaching - what I did was research the general principles involved. For example the "moving of yin and yang" exercise. You start out holding the hands with the right hand over the upper body and left hand over the lower body (navel and below). This is actually because for males - the left hand is yang (held against the yin) and right hand is yin (held against the yang). So now I understand the general alchemy secret to why the "moving of yin and yang" exercise works. Also the more you bend the knees then the more the sympathetic nervous system is activated - which then pushes to the extreme, causing a parasympathetic rebound. This stores up the qi - and flushes out the colon, converts the dopamine to serotonin, etc.

 

So my pdf - free goes into the details - https://www.docdroid.net/VERjba1/voidisyinyangblogspotcom-the-idiots-guide-to-taoist-alchemy-qigong-enlightenment-neidan-nei-kung-neigong-training-for-males.pdf

So once we understand the general principles of alchemy - the ANY "system" can be understood.

For example I discovered that Westerners are teachers of Santi Shi without understanding the principles of the Dragon and Tiger involved! So people are teaching other people to stand - without teaching them that the left hand energy is to be visualized connecting to the right foot and right hand to the left foot, etc.

https://www.pdf-archive.com/2017/04/10/idiot-s-guide-to-taoist-alchemy/

So for example why does Chunyi Lin switch the Om and Mua sounds in the Small Universe meditation - each point switches from Om and Mua - and yet in his explanation he says that OM is for energy going up the spine and Mua is energy going down the spine!? The answer is that the yin and yang energy are on different levels - it's from music harmonics .This is why there are 12 notes to the music scale and 12 harmonic nodes to the small universe practice. The Perfect Fifth as Perfect Fourth inverts from the opposite direction of infinity for each note - based on time/frequency complementary opposites.

You don't find this "system" in Western thinking. haha. Unless you really study Pythagorean philosophy.

 

[freeform]

2 hours ago, voidisyinyang said:

 

Here's the deal: Yes Chunyi Lin is a very "wonderful" teacher. He did the 49 day cave meditation, in full lotus, no sleep the whole time...

 

 

He sounds very accomplished. All the more reason to ditch the recordings and go study with him directly! 

 

As to the rest of your message... 

 

Im not sure why you need to try and translate the mechanics behind qigong into ‘sciencey sounding stuff’. Let’s face it - it’s not real science and it’s also not real qigong. You lose the point of both.

 

Do you feel that ‘science’ is more ‘real’? Do you feel that you need to uphold a certain air of intelligence to be taken seriously? I don’t really understand.

 

Why didn’t the enlightened sages who created the alchemical path and it’s offshoots (qigong, neigong etc) talk about parasympathetic rebounding and the 12 harmonic nodes? Shouldn’t we assume that they are far smarter than us and follow their advice instead of trying to be cleverer and re-invent the wheel?

 

[voidisyinyang]

On 8/1/2018 at 12:12 PM, freeform said:

 

He sounds very accomplished. All the more reason to ditch the recordings and go study with him directly! 

 

As to the rest of your message... 

 

Im not sure why you need to try and translate the mechanics behind qigong into ‘sciencey sounding stuff’. Let’s face it - it’s not real science and it’s also not real qigong. You lose the point of both.

 

Do you feel that ‘science’ is more ‘real’? Do you feel that you need to uphold a certain air of intelligence to be taken seriously? I don’t really understand.

 

Why didn’t the enlightened sages who created the alchemical path and it’s offshoots (qigong, neigong etc) talk about parasympathetic rebounding and the 12 harmonic nodes? Shouldn’t we assume that they are far smarter than us and follow their advice instead of trying to be cleverer and re-invent the wheel?

 

 

Your question is a good one. For me the answer is pedagogical - meaning from my direct experience of taking classes from qigong master Chunyi Lin, he said that in China you just strictly obeyed the master's orders - no matter what - you did not question the master. In fact to "ask a question" in China to the teacher is considered an insult - so it was an "adjustment" for him to answer questions here in the U.S. And he has joked about how he has become "Americanized."

 

So I was able to see that process of him "Before" he was "Americanized" and "After" he was "Americanized." haha.

So my take on this is that - another example is that the story was given how to heal a boy in China, then the boy had to be slapped - and not in front of the parents of course, but in the West a qigong master would not be allowed such "discretion" - and yet the instructions of how to do the healing are from spirit information signals from the Emptiness. And so even the qigong master can be "surprised" by the instructions or visions he receives or she receives - but learns from experience to trust the Emptiness.

 

And so for me, trying to learn what the actual "teachings" are is complicated - for example Chunyi shared in 2015 how in his experience he discovered that when people open their third eyes then they commonly overuse their psychic energy and so then the person gets fat because they have to now rely on food for their source to replenish their energy. He said he has seen this many times now. But at first when he came to the US he taught the motto, "the more you heal, the more you heal yourself." Now he doesn't say that anymore! So he has learned from experience. Another thing he told me is that he has learned - he at first told a person to practice as much as they wanted - so it would not be forced. But now he realizes that for serious conditions a person needs to meditate at least 4 hours a day. So again this is something he has learned from his experience in the West.

 

So then - having considered the differences between Western and traditional Chinese culture - then since we can not just strictly "follow" the orders of the teacher here in the West - then I was forced to research what are the general principles of the training.

Here is my take on it - first I did the training by following the teachers instructions and also the book Taoist Yoga: alchemy and immortality. But I was told on this website that the book was "too dangerous" and so I should not read it. Then I was told if I have questions for teaching then I should just "ask the teacher" or "given him a call"  - but to call the teacher here in the West is not cheap! I think now the rate is $140 for 10 minutes for a healing - and a healing requires that little to no talking should take place. So I stopped reading the book and I stopped "asking" the teacher (i.e. attending the classes) because I could not afford to cheap asking the questions. haha.

 

So then I figured based on the experiences I had - then if what I experienced is biologically real - and it was confirmed to be real by the teacher who said I had an "enlightenment experience" - and so then if it is biologically real then it also must be transculturally real, since modern humans have less DNA variation than one troupe of chimpanzees. O.K. so then I figured - if there are general principles of science involved - then there is no need to rely on the effects of one teacher or another teacher or even one culture or another culture! A big problem in parsing out the teachings - on this website for example - is people are quick to judge a "school" based on its teacher! Well to me this is like saying a baseball coach is fat and therefore he team must be terrible. haha. For example Falun Gong is described as the teacher being fake but the principles of the training being real and achieving results. So there is a mixture involved - since obviously Falun Gong throws in Western concepts. Zhong Gong, a school that Chunyi also trained in, also throws in WEstern concepts - but this is something I had to discover on my own.

 

So in other words the "qigong revolution" in China of the 1980s already had a lot of Westernization - I recommend Dr. David Palmer's book "Qigong Fever" for a fascinating overview of the role of qigong as a kind of "vanishing mediator" in the Westernization of China.

 

And so the point being that a person could simply "follow" the instructions of the teacher but since the teacher is teaching in the West then their instructions are limited and even in China, traditionally, a student of alchemy would study many texts and Chunyi himself said he read many meditation texts as well. So then finally I realized that Western science was limited in its understanding of Daoist alchemy yet at the same time I also realized that you have to really study Western science in order to validate Daoist alchemy. In other words because of my qigong enlightenment experience, I was able to focus my mind, by sitting in full lotus all day, and reading one scholarly text a day, to read an overview of WEstern science. I have since corresponded with many science professors - math, quantum physics, philosophy, etc. And so the "promotion" of Western science - those "promoters" are quick to dismiss Daoist alchemy as woo-woo New Age nonsense - the so-called "skeptics" - but what I realized is that their WEstern science is not advanced enough! It is because they do not understand Western science well enough that they are unable to understand Daoist alchemy, a study that really requires quantum biology and quantum relativity.

 

O.K. having said that - the qigong revolution in science also relied on turning to Western science. So for example the first qigong master to perform in the public in a big way - did so by doing qigong anesthesia - and

 

[freeform]

Ok Drew,

 

So if I understand you correctly, you’re saying that you couldn’t get enough information from Chunyi, so you had to look to other ways of explaining what’s going on objectively. Is that right?

 

There’s definitely some cultural differences with how things are taught in China and the West. It’s important to understand that in China there are two types of student - inner door and outer door.

 

Outer door students are the millions who take up qigong. The way they are taught is as you say just follow the instructions and get on with it. 

 

Some of these outer door students will start with some natural ability or stumble across a correct principle that would advance them faster past the foundations. 

 

They would then be picked and asked to join as an inner door student. This is when the principles, explanations and further transmissions would be given. There a lot of questions, answers, discussions, theory and explanations for inner door students.

 

But it’s really a numbers game in China. There are so many students that it’s impossible for them all to be inner door. So teachers would just teach the basics until the talented or the dedicated ones would stand out.

 

In the West 90% of the teachings are taken from what western teachers learned as outer door students in China and then they add their own interpretations, additions and deletions. Thus the art is diluted to such an extent that the real techniques are lost. This is actually also happening in China as well. These days you need to travel to other parts of Asia to meet accomplished teachers.

 

I’m afraid that what you’re doing, Drew, is the same thing. Taking outer door teachings that have already gone through the americanization process and then further distorting them with pseudo science. The result of this is that neither scientists agree with you nor do qi gong practitioners. I’m afraid that rather than finding an objective way of explaining the processes, you’re muddying the waters and losing the art.

 

I can see that your heart is in the right place and you’re really inspired by these arts. I also completely understand how you would yearn for further understanding. You’re obviously very smart and could probably do really well with proper training.

 

My suggestion for you is to get back to training - the way that a good teacher tells you to train (no third eye orgasms) I can see that Chunyi is rather expensive. So find a way to earn enough money to be able to see him regularly. I’m sure that if you prove yourself a good student, eventually you can reach some sort of compromise regarding costs.

[voidisyinyang]

7 hours ago, freeform said:

Ok Drew,

 

So if I understand you correctly, you’re saying that you couldn’t get enough information from Chunyi, so you had to look to other ways of explaining what’s going on objectively. Is that right?

 

There’s definitely some cultural differences with how things are taught in China and the West. It’s important to understand that in China there are two types of student - inner door and outer door.

 

Outer door students are the millions who take up qigong. The way they are taught is as you say just follow the instructions and get on with it. 

 

Some of these outer door students will start with some natural ability or stumble across a correct principle that would advance them faster past the foundations. 

 

They would then be picked and asked to join as an inner door student. This is when the principles, explanations and further transmissions would be given. There a lot of questions, answers, discussions, theory and explanations for inner door students.

 

But it’s really a numbers game in China. There are so many students that it’s impossible for them all to be inner door. So teachers would just teach the basics until the talented or the dedicated ones would stand out.

 

In the West 90% of the teachings are taken from what western teachers learned as outer door students in China and then they add their own interpretations, additions and deletions. Thus the art is diluted to such an extent that the real techniques are lost. This is actually also happening in China as well. These days you need to travel to other parts of Asia to meet accomplished teachers.

 

I’m afraid that what you’re doing, Drew, is the same thing. Taking outer door teachings that have already gone through the americanization process and then further distorting them with pseudo science. The result of this is that neither scientists agree with you nor do qi gong practitioners. I’m afraid that rather than finding an objective way of explaining the processes, you’re muddying the waters and losing the art.

 

I can see that your heart is in the right place and you’re really inspired by these arts. I also completely understand how you would yearn for further understanding. You’re obviously very smart and could probably do really well with proper training.

 

My suggestion for you is to get back to training - the way that a good teacher tells you to train (no third eye orgasms) I can see that Chunyi is rather expensive. So find a way to earn enough money to be able to see him regularly. I’m sure that if you prove yourself a good student, eventually you can reach some sort of compromise regarding costs.

 

 

Well you seem very interested in my personal training. haha. 

Yes Chunyi had natural abilities and then since he also was chair of his English department, as a college professor, he also had the time to travel around China. Since he also knew several dialects of Chinese - he was able to train with many different masters. And since he did the 49 day cave meditation at Mt. Qingcheng - then his experience level is very "wonderful."

As for him being expensive - yes I would say this is necessary to preclude people just wanting to take his energy all the time - although as he had said - he just recharges his energy as he sends it out. So he gave the story of a couple trying to take his energy all the time - and so he just kept giving them energy and then the couple had to finally realize that "energy" is not something materialistic based on coveting it as a finite resource. So the couple then apologized to him for trying to take his energy.

But I did have the honor of having direct study with the assistant teacher of Chunyi, his only "2nd level qigong master" - Jim Nance of http://guidingqi.com and so I did get some "inner door" experiences and knowledge. Certain things I have not shared even on the interwebs! haha. But Jim did tell me I could write whatever I wanted about him online. haha. But anyway - yes Chunyi also did tell me that:

Quote

It's great that you can give females bliss but as long as you keep doing so then your qi will be weak.

 

So what I have done is bought land "up north" as a hermitage to do meditating training "retreats" so to speak. Nevertheless after my "enlightenment experience" as Chunyi called it - I have done free psychic healing - which is the yin qi energy. As the book Taoist Yoga states yin qi is just the same as yuan qi but only an "immature" level of it. So this is also the DAoist criticism of Buddhism - that the Buddhists achieve mind enlightenment but then just become yin shen ghosts after death, since they don't develop the yuan qi enough, through the yin-yang alchemy training.

 

So another aspect of the Westernization of qigong, like in India, you find that the gurus or masters, not only charge immense fees, but also dabble in Western "fancies" - like taking Cruise ships on a regular basis. So Daoism is supposedly in harmony with ecology and yet cruise ships are a huge pollution source - taking one cruise ship is the same as driving a car for half your life! Cruise ships just dump all the human crap directly into the oceans. Thousands of people die a year just from cruise ship pollution! Some cities have banned cruise ships from docking - since their pollution is so bad.

 

But do I really expect an immigrant to the West, who is financially successful, to not partake in the "fruits" of the Westernized destruction of Earth's ecology? haha. Of course not - that is part of the trade off of learning Ancient Chinese Secrets, isn't it? haha. And so what remains in the end? Well if you consider Abrupt Global Warming - for example the Eastern Siberian Arctic Shelf methane bomb, that, as Dr. Natalia Shakhova has been documenting, going "exponential" with "each year matters" in terms of Earth's global warming doubling - or the Global Dimming Effect (meaning the more renewables we use, the more global warming gets worse) - these are certain locked in fatalities of Westernization. Which is to say - what will remain when the 400 plus nuclear power plants can not be maintained when civilization collapses? Or depleted uranium being spread around the planet?

 

Yes the Dao will still remain as a formless awareness energy - but to achieve the Dao is still based on the ecological harmonization of the Sun, Moon and EArth. So ecology will recover - it may take tens of millions of years. Some new species will discover the secrets of training in shamanic spiritual energy healing. haha.

Edited August 6, 2018 by voidisyinyang

[freeform]

4 hours ago, voidisyinyang said:

Well you seem very interested in my personal training. haha. 

 

To be honest I’m really not.

 

But I am interested in you progressing in your training rather than writing about stuff you don’t really understand yet (and neither do I by the way)

 

It takes many dacades of full time, supervised training in the correct way and with accomplished teachers to really develop some skill and understanding in these arts. Then it’s a good time to start improvising and intellectualising the process.

[voidisyinyang]

28 minutes ago, freeform said:

 

To be honest I’m really not.

 

But I am interested in you progressing in your training rather than writing about stuff you don’t really understand yet (and neither do I by the way)

 

It takes many dacades of full time, supervised training in the correct way and with accomplished teachers to really develop some skill and understanding in these arts. Then it’s a good time to start improvising and intellectualising the process.

 yes I did the intensive training in the year 2000 - I met qigong master Chunyi Lin in 1999 when he gave a lecture to my spiritual healing class for my graduate school degree at the University of Minnesota. So I finished my degree doing self-directed research by only doing intensive qigong meditation for about 6 months. And so I used the book Taoist Yoga; Alchemy and Immortality as a training manual. I would not call that book "intellectualising" - (British English?) but rather - a "cook book" for the mind/body transformation. And so - then I had an experience that was beyond my intellectual or conceptual understanding. Actually I had several experiences like that - and what was required was really only to study the book TAoist Yoga more intensively.

What I first did was look for a monastery to go join but to be honest I could not find a teacher as "wonderful" as Chunyi Lin. I would say http://qigongmaster.com is similar or Wang Liping - or Robert Peng - or John Chang or something - but to really study does require a lot of money and time, etc.

So then I read Master Nan, Huai-chin's books - and he said that what happens is a person "falls back into worldliness" from "Heroic overexuberbance" by using their "spiritual" powers that develop in the training. He said this is the common problem - so this is what happened to me. And indeed, Spring Forest qigong is based on teaching healing.

So a big issue then was learning how to control the energy - as I cite in my pdf - 7 different sources - the secret of how to stop the energy from leaking out of the body. But this was never taught by the qigong master I took classes from.

So I would say indeed there are general principles to the training - and so when I finally did return to the Taoist Yoga book - it was only in Chapter 11 that the experience I had is described and explained.

So I would say that studying the meditation meaning and methods is crucial to the proper training.

 

And I have had other experiences I have not be "writing about" yet online - well one is the source of the Yuan Qi on the right side of the heart - as the book explains (and also Ramana Maharshi explains this as well). I was given this experience by Jim Nance. I was driving the car - and he sat on the right side of me. I was ranting about politics. He said, "But I'm on your side!" But I kept ranting and he got super silent. Suddenly I felt this strong qi just on the right side of my heart and in shock I went silent. Then Jim said: "I just wanted to see if you were speaking from your heart and you were."

 

So since I had done my studies I knew that this is the origin of the Yuan qi in the body - from beyond death. Also - it was a funny thing for Jim to do to shut me up. haha. But there are other experiences. For example in my research in 2000 - I read this book I got through interlibrary loan. It was the biography of Phra Acharn Mun, the most famous Buddhist monk of Thailand. IN the book he describes - or he is described as - knowing the thoughts of his students and also having ghosts come to get healed by him. So I had never read this information before. But before the Level 3 retreat in 2000 - I fasted for 7 days, just talking a half glass of water - so I built up my qi and activated the Yuan Qi. So then at the retreat - as Chunyi sat in full lotus meditation - sure enough I saw these lights shaped as humans - float in from outside the room. We were at a Christian retreat center in the forest - built in the 1950s or so. And I didn't say anything to anyone about this but then Chunyi said to us all: "Since someone can see this, then I will explain what it is. These are ghosts that come to get healed by me. I do this regularly where I heal ghosts." Actually he said something like spirits of dead people and he said that by healing them he sends them back into the Emptiness.

 

So again because I had done my studies - I knew that what he explained was something that could happen - and I had not thought of Master Acharn Mun's description until qigong master Chunyi Lin said it to all of us. Suddenly I was reminded of Phra Acharn Mun's biography I had read.

 

 

Edited August 6, 2018 by voidisyinyang

[freeform]

12 hours ago, voidisyinyang said:

doing intensive qigong meditation for about 6 months. And so I used the book Taoist Yoga; Alchemy and Immortality as a training manual.

 

Sorry Drew, but from what I could work out from your post is that you had limited training and then created your own qigong from various books.

 

I’ve already said what I believe is necessary to develop any skill - the right system, taught properly by a real teacher(s) over a long period of time (several decades).

 

Self directed intensive practice from books sounds like a recipe for qi deviation. Which incidentally often looks like manic over-thinking...

 

So let’s leave this as the last post in our conversation - since we’re going in ever wider circles with this. I wish you all the best and hope that you’re able to train face to face with a teacher soon.

[voidisyinyang]

6 hours ago, freeform said:

 

Sorry Drew, but from what I could work out from your post is that you had limited training and then created your own qigong from various books.

 

I’ve already said what I believe is necessary to develop any skill - the right system, taught properly by a real teacher(s) over a long period of time (several decades).

 

Self directed intensive practice from books sounds like a recipe for qi deviation. Which incidentally often looks like manic over-thinking...

 

So let’s leave this as the last post in our conversation - since we’re going in ever wider circles with this. I wish you all the best and hope that you’re able to train face to face with a teacher soon.

Yes one time I was in full lotus in BK and this big Native indigenous man - we made eye contact. Suddenly my liver got hot and I realized he had an anger blockage. I was reading a book so I didn't dare glance up. Then he walked with his tray of fast food - on the other side of the room - and went behind me in a booth. Then as my liver got more hot - then I sent the Qi energy out of the pineal gland - through the back of the head - into him. So the liver hot energy went away and the heart turned it into qi - as Love healing energy. But I was reading as I did this. So then when my liver was not hot anymore I figured I was safe now - since when we had made eye contact my spirit was sucking up his anger energy and I knew it was dangerous. Then suddenly he had walked up to my booth and he said, "Thank you." And now I was shocked that he realized what had happened. And I didn't dare say anything since sending that energy like that also pulls up all sorts of anaerobic bacteria that leaches out of my skull. haha. I just gave him my primate submissive smile and he walked away.