Connecting with the 7 energy bodies

[ssmith7]

Does anyone know how to connect deeply and move through the physical and chi bodies into the Astral, Mental, Causal, Body of Individuality, and Body of the TAO?

 

My thing is, when your deep in meditation, and everything starts to feel all open and spacious, how do you know what level of Being you have reached?

 

Thank you

[spiraltao]

I hope a taoist in the know answers this! Great query!

[Creation]

Bruce Frantzis himself addressed this in the interview he did for the Tao Bums, in reply to the question "Many Tao Bums who resonate with the material in your books yet are also interested in practices that work with Chi and Shen levels. What advice would you give to such seekers?" (starting on page 20).

 

http://thetaobums.com/share/thetaobums-interview-with-bruce-frantzis_march-2011.pdf

 

"Initially, when I left China, Liu Hung Chieh proposed that I first teach, download, put into the air, whatever way you want put it, the body practices of Taoism, the term is jing shi shen or body, energy, spirit and emptiness Tao.

He said to initially put out the physical stuff and whatever chi and spirit aspects that were related to a person needed to be able to open up their body without leaving their body behind. The body practices in Taoism are for most people. Working with people at that level is a bit like going through concrete, especially at the psychic level, because most Westerners are so dead to their bodies.

They are dramatically deader to their bodies than most “native” peoples around the world because we don’t really have a culture in the West of people feeling their bodies and having direct personal knowledge of their bodies.

They know about their bodies as mental images of their body rather than actually feeling and being present inside their body.

When we talk about the physical body, we’re discussing your flesh, then we’re discussing the chi that makes your flesh work and then we’re talking about the chi that makes your lower animal emotions work. So in a sense your internal organs generate emotions just like all of your neurotransmitters.

Most people hear the word chi and they think that is the next phase of body, energy, spirit but in actuality, the chi of the body is still the body. When you talk about the term chi, you’re into the emotions, what lies behind the ability to create mental symbols, what lies at the bottom of the words, where all this thinking comes from and the entire psychic realm.

 

I started teaching the energy of body-energy-spirit a couple of years after the millennium rolled around, sometime in 2003 or 2004 and it’s actually in many ways a lot easier teaching that.

 

If a person is going to engage that level, then you have to start looking at what really lies behind not just ordinary emotions but what about their more subtle shades? What about higher emotions? What about the emotion of love, kindness, generosity, the ability to truly emotionally connect, the ability to truly emotionally nourish someone, and the ability to be emotionally nourished by someone.

What about mentally? Where does your creativity come from? Where does the ability to know where that thought came from, before you start talking in your head about it. Then you start talking the whole psychic realm. At this level, you know you have external senses but do you know you have internal senses? You can obviously see something that you look at externally, for example, a wall or a picture.

Well, what about when you see the future? What about when you can see energies inside people, etc., etc.?

 

So just the same way you have internal hearing, you have internal senses. This is very well known. Buddhism very often talks about consciousness but they’re really referring to senses.

 

In India, it is referred to as external senses and internal senses - you have five of each. Taoists have a very big thing about this but it simply gets rolled into the issue of chi. I do not expect personally for a while to be teaching about shen which are the issues of karma and what a person’s essence is beyond personality or whatever. To engage this, the middle stage of energy needs to be worked out and reasonably stable or there can be problems. However, when this energy is stabilized for my students I will be very happy to teach about shen. I believe safety first is a wise way to go.

 

This is mostly because if you do not have sufficient body stability and stability with your chi, when you start answering questions in the psychic realm what we can say is that very few people can hang with it.

 

If you want to really start going into karma, if you don’t have the subtle awareness of emotions behind thought and the psychic realm, it’s very, very hard to see anywhere where the karma of energy is abused.

 

My advice to anybody who wants to learn the Chi and shen levels or Taoism is there’sonly one way to do it.

 

You’ve got to start personally interacting with a live teacher. To think that you’re going to get it purely by reading is a bit of a problem because all those mental symbols will not take you into your body and all those mental symbols rarely, if ever, take a person to the place from where those mental symbols arise and can internally imprison you.

All I can say is that I’m teaching as the years go by and we’re trying to get our filming and production to put out whatever materials, videos, audios and books are within my limited capacity to produce and generate. And if there are other authentic teachers out there who can get you to the same point all the better.

 

It has been well known in the subject of rhetoric for hundreds of years, even thousands of years, that there can be a person who is intellectually an absolute genius and a totally emotional wreck in the psychic world. Mental IQ is not necessarily going to help you because psychic energy can take anybody’s ability to meditate and blow it up like a little bomb or more accurately, it is like having an EMF field all of a sudden scramble a computer’s hard drive and memory.

 

That’s pretty much how it goes and do bear in mind when those things happen, the energies are running through your body and it’s not really good for you. It’s nice to be stable.

 

This is a subject when you start going into the level of Chi, when you start going into the level of Spirit, you really need to be with someone who has been there and done that. It’s a bit like thinking, “I’m just going to start walking in the middle of the Canadian wood somewhere.” It really helps to have someone who actually knows, hey, don’t eat that berry, it’ll poison you or, listen, don’t walk over here or you’re going to get some big animal attacking you.

 

The reason there have been teachers is not simply because they’re some exalted beings but simply that they have been there before and at least they have some idea of what’s going on so they can give the student some sort of needed context."

Edited August 16, 2013 by Creation

[三江源]

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Edited June 23, 2014 by cat

[doc benway]

Does anyone know how to connect deeply and move through the physical and chi bodies into the Astral, Mental, Causal, Body of Individuality, and Body of the TAO?

 

My thing is, when your deep in meditation, and everything starts to feel all open and spacious, how do you know what level of Being you have reached?

 

Thank you

 

Disclaimer - below is simply my opinion FWIW.

 

I think it's important, although potentially confusing, to recognize that each of these "bodies" is a creation of our mind.

All of these various bodies are labels the mind creates to distinguish different characteristics that we can perceive through our various senses and modes of perception.

You are what you are, and the best way to investigate exactly what that is requires patience, diligence, and awareness, Awareness, AWARENESS.

 

Don't let the thought that refers to itself as the thinker get you too distracted with theory.

If you have arrived at the point where you can sit in deep meditation and feel open and spacious, that is valuable.

Labeling it is not.

Keep practicing.

 

From time to time it's fine to read theory and as you have deeper experience the meaning buried under the words will progressively reveal itself.

But be careful not to let the intellect disturb the practice.

[Creation]

The emphasis he puts on the deadness to/in the body in most people and his emphasis on the depth and awareness required to get anywhere in practice is refreshingly honest. It does sound as though he is saying that not everybody can do practice. Which is kind of the opposite to what is usually said.

 

Or is he saying that you simply have to have a good teacher, that you cant get anywhere much alone..

In my experience, it is easy to get lost in a bunch of nonsense if you jump into the psychic world without having some sense of goundedness and letting go mental filters.

 

As far as teachers go, I don't think he is saying no one can get anywhere without one; there are some naturally psychic people out there. Just that a guide for the territory will help you get somewhere beneficial and not get hurt.

[Seeker of Wisdom]

Body of the Tao?

 

The fundamental principle behind existence doesn't have characteristics, it's beyond all phenomena, not an object or a subject.

 

If it had body it would have form. It doesn't have form, but nor can it really be said to be formless.

 

You don't connect with Tao, you realise it's there and that everything is just a mirage within it. To connect would imply things can exist independent of it.

[thelerner]

Does anyone know how to connect deeply and move through the physical and chi bodies into the Astral, Mental, Causal, Body of Individuality, and Body of the TAO?

 

My thing is, when your deep in meditation, and everything starts to feel all open and spacious, how do you know what level of Being you have reached?

Rawn Clark has a series of meditations that help you develop and separate out the mental and astral body. Its the Archaeous collection found at abardoncompanion.com . I like'em and tend to listen and 'do' them standing up.

[三江源]

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Edited June 23, 2014 by cat

[Uroboros]

I find a point he makes very insightful and important. Many people are disconnected from their bodies. I know I am.

 

So starting there is a good thing. He mentions that in his books, as well. Its our foundational form in this form. densest body.

 

If we cant even feel the densest form of ours, what business do we have in the subtle ones?

 

Things to ponder. He (BKF) talks about feeling your organs, the blood in your veins, all of that as being connected, em-bodied.

 

I figure thats a great place to start. build the foundation and all that jazz.

 

Peace.

[三江源]

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Edited April 4, 2015 by 三江源

[Uroboros]

I have to agree with him, though. I recently started the water method he teaches and I have become aware of SO much :stuff: stored in my body.

 

I was aware of a good bit of it before....Just in my head, HUGE amounts. Lawd.

 

Sometimes, the organs show themselves to me, its a beggining process.

 

So I know I am not truly embodied in my body.

 

when I talk to people, they are very unaware of whats going on inside. Until it gets really bad.

 

How do you feel about it, Cat?

 

Peace.

[三江源]

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Edited June 23, 2014 by cat

[Uroboros]

Hehe, It was a question worth asking! Haha.

 

Ahh, so you naturally feel and connect to your body intensely. That big of a shock that many dont? Wowser.

 

We are vast and complex. Our bodies are so intelligent...Often my body knows what to do and I just get in the way with my "intelligence"! hah.

 

The trauma can be stored deep, tis true. In working on my body, BKF water method style, I have noticed allot of stuff in my head..which makes me wonder if its stored trauma from times I hit my head. Happened a few times as a child.

 

Which brings me to a question....how often do we truly heal from traumas? I dunno....

 

Can we really connect to our subtle bodies, in a fully integrated and coherent manner, with all this "stuff" in our dense bodies?

 

Hm...I wonder if that is why so many psychics are mediocre at best.

 

 

Wake up, eh...

 

Cat, have you found the BKF Water Method beneficial to your practice/ well being?

[三江源]

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Edited June 23, 2014 by cat