'Just do it' vs 'imagine'

[freeform]

Steve - you sound like a great teacher. I think your approach of adapting to your students starting point is probably the best way to teach.

 

I find the way that Soaring Crane uses imagery interesting. What you're talking about is an approach of using visualisation to inform physical mechanics. I think it's an important distinction. The visualisation is grounded in, and helps to inform the kinaesthetic sense. I think most of the problems with visualisation or imagination in beginners is that it's completely untethered from their physical presence and instructions that don't specifically anchor the visual sense within the kinaesthetic tend to hinder progress.

 

This matches what Taomeow is saying about the imagination being 80% kinesthetic... although even kinesthetic imagination can still unroot one from the body in the present (and there may well be legitimate reasons for doing that in certain practices - but not, imo in beginner's qigong)

 

Nei Dan is a whole different playing field - firstly no beginner would normally be involved - that's already a big fail-safe. I think the approach of nei dan is closer to ya mu's method of 'creating' - the visualisation aspect is just a method of transcoding the subtle in to the sensorial. In teaching this, demonstration and transmission is vital, otherwise it's all just pretty colours and unicorns in your belly

Edited November 14, 2014 by freeform

[Brian]

 

Curious -- why do you say "visualization along with intellectualization" in the same context? What kind of visualization do you mean?

 

I was partially trained and partially self-trained in assorted visualization modalities, chiefly derived from raja yoga and/or other Hindu methods, before taoism, and later in taoist-proper complex visualization routines that are used in neidan. It is my impression that they are designed, among other things, specifically to break the habit of intellectualization, and are pretty good at that. The Hindu ones are often meant to unify the brain before you attempt unifying the body-mind-spirit, i.e. remove the unfortunate and nearly universal (conditioned and/or developmental) habit of being either a right-brainer or a left-brainer, or in the best of the worst case scenarios, switching from one mode to the other, without ever using the whole brain.

 

So, our typical spiritual seeker or adept will be meditating successfully while sitting meditating, but try to get him to balance his check book in this state, or resolve a dispute. The switch is immediate and, to me personally, often shocking.

 

So, a visualization (the good ones are, like, ten percent visual, ten percent auditory, and eighty percent kinesthetic/sensory) might involve a winter night in your left brain, with sounds, sights, smells, the temperature dropping, the snow melting on your mind's eye's eyelashes, the polar wolves howling at the cold moon -- while simultaneously you unfold a summer afternoon in your right hemisphere, the sun blazing, the flowers fragrant, the birds chirping, the sand under your mind's bare feet so hot you can barely stop yourself from skipping and hopping -- stuff like that.

 

You can't intellectualize this, you can either do it or find out things about your own mind and your own brain you didn't know, the limitations you didn't expect to discover. Personally I never think of anything as "wrong" if that's what it does, reveals more of the real state of you to you. As you practice though, you are beginning to find, after a while, that you are losing these limitations one by one. After a while you can choose your state of consciousness and your state of cognition more and more freely, successfully integrating and gliding through states that used to be resistant to being experienced simultaneously -- e.g. deep and genuine, not fake, peace of mind while you're under attack... no small accomplishment, this one, IMO.

 

And this extends to physical stuff -- e.g., you can be in pain but deliberately choose to know about it, not suppress it, and yet not be bothered by it, because you've deliberately and expertly placed your awareness on whatever else you've chosen to place it on. This is very different from the "skill" of numbing out and becoming unfeeling, flattened sensorily and emotionally. As different as a winter night in Siberia is from a summer day in California. Just switching states at the cost of sensitivity ain't the ticket. Integrating them consciously and by choice, integrating control and spontaneity (sic) -- that's the ticket. Hard to explain, don't know if I'm making sense...

My mistake, Taomeow -- I should have put more energy into my response...

 

First, my focus was on energetic healing as that is the only intentional manifestation I do. Second, the parenthetical "along with intellectualization" was an afterthought -- not coupled with visualization but separate from and in parallel with visualization as a separate obstacle for me.

 

There have been several "visualization" threads on TTB over the years and language generally becomes a challenge -- not language differences or inadequacies of a particular language but the loss of fidelity which necessarily accompanies the attempt to render in words that which is beyond words. That said, I'll give it a whirl...

 

I have learned single thought (from my early "Mentat" days), and I have learned no thought, and I have learned to observe thoughts without attachment as they arise and "do their thing" -- and I find value in these learnings where appropriate. With Ya Mu's guidance, I've also learned something that is sort of orthogonal to that whole "thought" thing, but I've also realized it is not unique to that system (although the lineage Ya Mu transmits seems to be spectacularly efficient in opening that door).

 

What I am talking about is more akin to memory than imagination. From a healing perspective, I don't imagine healing happening or pain being gradually eliminated or inflammation slowly receding -- instead, I "remember" an alternative present state (and subsequent near-future) in which the healing already happened. This memory comes in a flash rather than being built-up in pieces or in layers. Rather than "unfold(ing) a summer afternoon" and noticing elements reveal themselves one after another, it is an instantaneous (without chasing that term down a rabbit hole) and complete manifestation of the memory of a summer afternoon. Nothing "wrong" with painting a summer afternoon a brushstroke at a time -- in fact, that is a very powerful thing to learn, too! I find it, however, to be limiting in both time & scope -- I sometimes chafe at the term "quantum level" but it is a useful shorthand for the non-linearity I am trying to describe -- in my mind, "visualization" is the linear and somewhat Newtonian "painting of a mental image" and it brings with it the temporal and amplitudinal limitations of the imaginer's thought processes. What I am talking about is a non-linear and somewhat quantum-level spontaneous state of being.

 

Case in point -- a co-worker with whom I had discussed my "hobby" some months ago was recently lamenting before a meeting about the arthritis in her right thumb, and she said the magic words by asking if I thought I could help. I told her I would stop by after the meeting. I spent the meeting with my brain engaged in the conversation but my awareness on the shifted space of the higher level healing frequencies. After the meeting, I followed her back to her desk and asked her to describe the pain/sensations/history/etc. She told me about the swelling and the stiffness and the pain and the burning which radiated from the joint, and how she'd been treating it with Arnica but that it didn't seem to be working, etc. I closed my eyes for a moment, settling deeper into that shifted state, and in a flash set my intent on the reality in which her discomfort didn't exist -- a "visualization"? Yeah, I guess, but not in the "mental painting" sort of way.

 

My "work" was already done but I spent the next thirty seconds or so using a specific physical technique Ya Mu had shown me at a recent workshop which works particularly well for an arthritic thumb (one of those odd synchronicities). Her eyes got bigger and bigger and she whispered, "I didn't think I would feel anything!" I asked her how she felt and she replied, "It's gone. I mean 'gone' gone."

 

That was Tuesday afternoon. I've checked with her each day since. She tells me she is completely pain-free, has no hotness in the joint and hasn't used any medication since. How did the mechanics work? I don't know but I know it wasn't from a stepwise process of visualizing the undoing of her dis-ease.

 

And that "I don't know" brings me to my "along with intellectualization" comment...

 

I spent my first <mumble-mumble> years -- up until not too many years ago -- totally absorbed in the cerebral. There was nothing I couldn't intellectualize and few things I couldn't explain (much to my family's perpetual annoyance), even if I was wrong. Lots and lots of misplaced shen (or whatever). My greatest spiritual/energetic challenge has been to draw that back to the heart center. The rational mind is loath to relinquish its dominance, however, and seeks every opportunity to analyze and explain. When I indulge in that urge, my heart weakens and my tenuous connection with the Light starts to fade. I am still (and perhaps will always be) at a point where I have to consciously NOT intellectualize (so much, anyhow) in order to allow manifestation to occur.

 

Don't know whether any of this will make sense to anyone but me. I welcome feedback & comments, though -- and I really hope to hear from Ya Mu...

 

 

Anyhow, that's just my two cents.

[manitou]

For some reason the concept of visualization irritates me, lol. Maybe I've been to too many touchy-feely sessions with lady friends and metaphysical beings.

 

I've gone back to using the childhood concept of 'Pretending'. That's all it is, for God's sake. But pretending puts us in the place of the Creator. I do healings this way.

 

I will have people bury photos of other people (involved in their specific dynamics) and give them to 'Jesus' (or whatever entity they need to worship). It's 'pretending' to give them to Jesus. We enabled a cure for a quadriplegic boy by Pretending that his head, arms, and legs were all parts of a floor lamp, and at the appropriate times we turned on the lower parts of the lamp to replicate the energy in his limbs. The boy is getting better.

 

Pretending is so childlike, and yet so powerful. It really does place us in the chair of the Creator. A re-enactment of sorts, an enactment of that which we wish to see changed, like the above mentioned boy. We can all remember what it felt like to be a child - we still have that within us. Why not appeal to that which is already there?

 

Also - when it comes to the word 'imagine', we're really saying image-in.

Edited November 14, 2014 by manitou

[Brian]

I should have added that I am a beginner and those "flashes," while becoming stronger & more frequent, are not always there. In those occasions, I find myself painting mental images and trying to apply brain-power to fill the gap -- generally with disappointing results.

[Taomeow]

My mistake, Taomeow -- I should have put more energy into my response...

 

First, my focus was on energetic healing as that is the only intentional manifestation I do. Second, the parenthetical "along with intellectualization" was an afterthought -- not coupled with visualization but separate from and in parallel with visualization as a separate obstacle for me.

 

There have been several "visualization" threads on TTB over the years and language generally becomes a challenge -- not language differences or inadequacies of a particular language but the loss of fidelity which necessarily accompanies the attempt to render in words that which is beyond words. That said, I'll give it a whirl...

 

I have learned single thought (from my early "Mentat" days), and I have learned no thought, and I have learned to observe thoughts without attachment as they arise and "do their thing" -- and I find value in these learnings where appropriate. With Ya Mu's guidance, I've also learned something that is sort of orthogonal to that whole "thought" thing, but I've also realized it is not unique to that system (although the lineage Ya Mu transmits seems to be spectacularly efficient in opening that door).

 

What I am talking about is more akin to memory than imagination. From a healing perspective, I don't imagine healing happening or pain being gradually eliminated or inflammation slowly receding -- instead, I "remember" an alternative present state (and subsequent near-future) in which the healing already happened. This memory comes in a flash rather than being built-up in pieces or in layers. Rather than "unfold(ing) a summer afternoon" and noticing elements reveal themselves one after another, it is an instantaneous (without chasing that term down a rabbit hole) and complete manifestation of the memory of a summer afternoon. Nothing "wrong" with painting a summer afternoon a brushstroke at a time -- in fact, that is a very powerful thing to learn, too! I find it, however, to be limiting in both time & scope -- I sometimes chafe at the term "quantum level" but it is a useful shorthand for the non-linearity I am trying to describe -- in my mind, "visualization" is the linear and somewhat Newtonian "painting of a mental image" and it brings with it the temporal and amplitudinal limitations of the imaginer's thought processes. What I am talking about is a non-linear and somewhat quantum-level spontaneous state of being.

 

Case in point -- a co-worker with whom I had discussed my "hobby" some months ago was recently lamenting before a meeting about the arthritis in her right thumb, and she said the magic words by asking if I thought I could help. I told her I would stop by after the meeting. I spent the meeting with my brain engaged in the conversation but my awareness on the shifted space of the higher level healing frequencies. After the meeting, I followed her back to her desk and asked her to describe the pain/sensations/history/etc. She told me about the swelling and the stiffness and the pain and the burning which radiated from the joint, and how she'd been treating it with Arnica but that it didn't seem to be working, etc. I closed my eyes for a moment, settling deeper into that shifted state, and in a flash set my intent on the reality in which her discomfort didn't exist -- a "visualization"? Yeah, I guess, but not in the "mental painting" sort of way.

 

My "work" was already done but I spent the next thirty seconds or so using a specific physical technique Ya Mu had shown me at a recent workshop which works particularly well for an arthritic thumb (one of those odd synchronicities). Her eyes got bigger and bigger and she whispered, "I didn't think I would feel anything!" I asked her how she felt and she replied, "It's gone. I mean 'gone' gone."

 

That was Tuesday afternoon. I've checked with her each day since. She tells me she is completely pain-free, has no hotness in the joint and hasn't used any medication since. How did the mechanics work? I don't know but I know it wasn't from a stepwise process of visualizing the undoing of her dis-ease.

 

And that "I don't know" brings me to my "along with intellectualization" comment...

 

I spent my first <mumble-mumble> years -- up until not too many years ago -- totally absorbed in the cerebral. There was nothing I couldn't intellectualize and few things I couldn't explain (much to my family's perpetual annoyance), even if I was wrong. Lots and lots of misplaced shen (or whatever). My greatest spiritual/energetic challenge has been to draw that back to the heart center. The rational mind is loath to relinquish its dominance, however, and seeks every opportunity to analyze and explain. When I indulge in that urge, my heart weakens and my tenuous connection with the Light starts to fade. I am still (and perhaps will always be) at a point where I have to consciously NOT intellectualize (so much, anyhow) in order to allow manifestation to occur.

 

Don't know whether any of this will make sense to anyone but me. I welcome feedback & comments, though -- and I really hope to hear from Ya Mu...

 

 

Anyhow, that's just my two cents.

 

Thank you for elaborating, Brian.

 

And great going with the thumb!

 

The technique you describe, of "flashes of memories of the future," sounds very familiar, except it is not necessarily the future of "this" life or even "this" dimension. I've experienced flashes of that spontaneously, and the interesting thing is that under certain extreme or special circumstances, they weren't/aren't flashes, they are whole chunks of a different reality, very detailed but effortlessly so. They have a ring of truth to them which I think some taoist techniques attempt to replicate by methods that would insure they work under any circumstances, not by chance, not by hit and miss but as reliably and to a great extent predictably as this-here "default" reality does. You know -- you put a kettle on the stove, you don't expect it to freeze. You put a tray of water for ice cubes in the freezer, you don't sit there watching with curiosity if it might catch on fire instead. This reality uses some rules. ALL realities do, it's just that the rules may be different. You won't freeze you kettle on the burning stove even if you don't know the rules in this reality. But suppose you wanted to? Suppose you wanted the impossible? Then you would want to learn the know-how of a different reality, it just won't "just do it" in the vast majority of cases...

 

I see a bit of a parallel between "creating" instant different states of your choice (as in your example, the state of health where the ailment doesn't exist anymore) by "just doing it" vs. by training your faculties gradually and precisely to ultimately "just do it" exactly as you choose, exactly when you choose it, and "knowing" what you're doing, that can be drawn between street fighting and taiji. Some people are ready to fight when they have to -- they know how without knowing how they know, and come a fight they fight, and are victorious. Others don't know how to street fight, and might learn after many years of taiji. I had a guy like that in my class, he was bullied in school and his goal was specifically to learn to fight. Now that he has learned, by investing a helluva lot of work, no street fighter stands a chance against him. I mean, zero chance -- and perhaps even against a whole pack of bullies, he would be victorious. Does THIS make sense?

 

Applied to healing, I am after the same certainty of skill, applied to magic, to cultivation -- anything -- I just don't want this to be a perpetual game of dice, of hit-or-miss. The latter can be spectacular when it works... but when it doesn't, it just doesn't, and then it is very frustrating to not know how or why it didn't, or how to make it work the next time around. So, in taiji, e.g., I'm taught to know, every step of the way, what I'm doing and how and why -- not "Intellectually" though the mind is not excluded, it's just not allowed to usurp what isn't its proprietary domain. It leads but it doesn't micromanage, so to speak. And I like this way to have everything revealed to you not at once (flashes don't stay put) but with heng, reliability and duration, the ability of a phenomenon to be counted on whenever you need it rather than to be whimsical. Heng, the lasting virtue of tao.

[Brian]

Looks like our last posts crossed in the mail -- and that there was a commonality in them, too.

 

It is my experience that there is a strong correlation between my neigong practice and my sight into alternate realities. The more consistently and diligently I do my homework, the better I get at applying what I'm learning. Seems obvious, eh? Raising my vibrational level through my practice strengthens and deepens my insights (which are not like an old-fashioned "flash bulb" but more like an "instant-on" projector). There is also a strong correlation between applying the empowerments being offered to me through my energy-work in the higher levels and the applicability of those insights.

 

The more I practice and the more I help others, the deeper and more persistent my "vision" becomes and the more ingrained my healing abilities (which, of course, aren't "mine") become. I have had, for instance, a few instances of very long-lasting experiences of altered reality in which I was "seeing" everything from an energetic perspective. It was simultaneously awe-inspiring and disorienting. I know, though, that I am moving in the direction of this becoming my new "natural state" and that those far more energetic than I experience reality very differently than I used to imagine possible.

[Brian]

In the "for what it's worth" category, that co-worker's thumb was just the most recent example -- and a particularly vivid case for me of simply letting an alternate reality occur (like "Click!" and now the train which was on that track is now on this track instead.

 

That was on Tuesday. On Saturday, I saw my brother and his wife while visiting my dying mother. My sister-in-law grimaced while sitting on the sofa so I asked what was wrong. Turns out my 300-pound gorilla of a brother had added a little more weight to her deadlift sets and she had hurt her back at L1-S1. She had been hobbling around for days. I fixed her (checked with her via text a few minutes ago to make sure I'm being straight here) with another technique Ya Mu has taught me (which, of course, also involves setting intent on an alternate reality and then just letting it happen) and asked her to back off the weightlifting for a while.

 

He immediately started telling me how he had "popped something" just above his right elbow several days earlier and could I help with that? I reminded him that he is self-destructive. I was shown that direct manipulation of his energy was appropriate and started doing wei qi liao fa on his arm (his bicep is literally the size of my thigh!). Within seconds, I understood that, besides physical damage, he had an energetic problem with the SI meridian, so I worked on that, too. And his shoulder. Both shoulders. And a problem right at TW16.

 

I only worked on him for a few minutes. He told me that the pain in his elbow was completely gone and that the numbness along the outside edge of his hand was gone, and that the weird muscle pain behind his ear was gone, and that his shoulders both felt a little better -- and he kept grilling me for an explanation as to how I knew about these other things when he had only told me about the elbow. All I could tell him was that I 'saw" them. I also showed him an exercise to help open up his shoulders and advised him to back off the lifting but I expect him to ignore both of those suggestions...

 

Weekend before that, I went to visit Mom and learned she had been in pain for the previous four days and that they (my sister and a different brother) had been giving her morphine again after more than four months without needing any. I "listened" and "saw" and then removed her pain. She hasn't needed any morphine since.

 

Being a family healer is a meaningful thing.

[manitou]

Brian - that is wonderful that you are getting so connected to the healing stream. I've read a lot of Mary Baker Eddy (Christian Science) and her healing method is much the same - as far as 'seeing the truth about the situation'. And this hooks in with the everything is 'here now' mindset - that yesterday, today, and tomorrow are illusions. It is in using that 'truth' that the flesh and the spirit can be brought into union and the healing effected, because that is the true state of the body as it should be.

 

I like to further triangulate the reason for the manifestation. What's the significance, in that particular person's life, of a pain in the elbow or behind the ear? Is there something they're being repeatedly told that they don't want to hear? (ear) Is there a reason for inflexibility in the elbow? (inflexibility in attitude toward something). Just a little questioning can usually determine the metaphysical 'reason' for the unusual manifestation. I always assume a 'spiritual' cause to the malady.

 

I just got bit by a tick. I got a fever, got sick, and now I can't move my neck. I'm being treated for Lyme's, but the doc doesn't think I'll be getting it because I happened to be taking a prescription of Amoxycillin at the time I got bit, which is what they use to treat Lyme's Disease at the beginning.

 

But getting bit with a tick is unusual. As Don Juan Mateus (Castaneda's nagual) would say - if it's unusual, look at it, it's there for a reason. So I started to triangulate what a 'tick bite' would mean, in my particular case.

 

Tick bite.

Tick.

Tick.

Tic!

 

I have a tic! And it needs to be removed. It's getting in my way. I do like the cannabis, and it's become a bit of an attachment. I can see it clear as day. It was even reaffirmed when I went to a hocus-pocus ladies luncheon today where someone was reading Tarot cards. As I was having mine read, I told her about the tick bite - right after that, she drew the next card, and it was the fellow trying to pull the sword out of the mound. Like....pull that puppy out! Remove the tic!

[Brian]

Curiously, my wife is a tick magnet.

 

I should have led off by saying that "I" don't "do" any healing. Instead, I practice my neigong (having been infused in the lineage by transmission from Ya Mu) to expand my energy-body and to raise my vibrational frequency. This creates a potential difference which allows my energy-body to more strongly interact with the energy-bodies of others. Then, and this is VERY important, I ask that the will of the Light be done (explicitly NOT asking to do anything contrary to that will) and I offer my strengthened energy-body to be used as a facilitator in effecting any change in the other person's energy which might help them in their spiritual alignment -- the "physical healing" is secondary or tertiary to the spiritual healing.

 

As a result of this approach, there are people and particular conditions (dis-eases) for whom/which I will seem ineffectual -- situations in which the immediate ailment is part of their own journey and my "help" won't have a direct impact on their complaint even though I am, in fact, helping to smooth out wrinkles or mend holes in their own energy-body and thereby take them a step closer to discovering their own destiny/purpose/mission for this lap around the track. When invited, an infusion of positive energy at a higher potential is always beneficial, just not always on the mundane plane the individual is currently occupying. Sometimes, rather than "fixing" a physical problem, the result is something much more subtle -- such as leading them to examine some karmic aspect of their own life.

[manitou]

Sometimes, rather than "fixing" a physical problem, the result is something much more subtle -- such as leading them to examine some karmic aspect of their own life.

Exactly. It's all mind, and the mind manifests.

[manitou]

Curiously, my wife is a tick magnet.

 

 

 

Are you still keeping her tied up outside?

[Brian]

Are you still keeping her tied up outside?

Only until winter weather takes care of the tick problem -- then she's welcome to come inside until Spring.

[thewhitetiger]

I would like to share my experiences to this topic, if I may.

 

I teach accordingly to the student...However...I do find that for many that directness is very successful.

I do not subscribe to absolutism though. I find it limits experience.

eg. a student can neither feel or visualize, sometimes kinesthetic is required. Blowing warm air into the palms, rubbing the palms or a tai chi ball or ruler. Looking at the ends of the hands at first (not a direct gaze) can help with the flow of intent.

Anyways. I just feel if things are Do or Do not, it is not very Taoist. It seems fundamentalist.

 

But that is just my limited view.

[Creation]

I recently I came across an interesting variation to this sort of instruction. It was in the form of a question 'can you feel a sphere below your belly button?' Subtle, but imo profound difference.

Hi freeform.

 

By phrasing this as a question, it takes out the intentionality. If the point is to intend the sense of a sphere below the belly button, my mind would parse "can you feel a sphere below your belly button?" as a yes/no question, very probably answer "no" since no intention to do so was made, and then ask, "What in the world is he asking such a dumb question for?" and become frustrated with the person asking it. Don't know about anyone else though; do you find this works for some people, perhaps those who are not highly rationally oriented?

Edited November 18, 2014 by Creation

[Creation]

I spent my first <mumble-mumble> years -- up until not too many years ago -- totally absorbed in the cerebral. There was nothing I couldn't intellectualize and few things I couldn't explain (much to my family's perpetual annoyance), even if I was wrong. Lots and lots of misplaced shen (or whatever). My greatest spiritual/energetic challenge has been to draw that back to the heart center. The rational mind is loath to relinquish its dominance, however, and seeks every opportunity to analyze and explain. When I indulge in that urge, my heart weakens and my tenuous connection with the Light starts to fade. I am still (and perhaps will always be) at a point where I have to consciously NOT intellectualize (so much, anyhow) in order to allow manifestation to occur.

Thanks for sharing this, Brian.

Edited November 18, 2014 by Creation

[manitou]

Don't know about anyone else though; do you find this works for some people, perhaps those who are not highly rationally oriented?

 

'Highly rationally oriented'. That seems to be the crux of the problem, lol. Some of us have spent years in professions - legal, etc - where extreme rational thinking is required. As a career detective, this is my curse.

 

Yes, it can be very irritating when someone tells you to 'imagine a sphere' below the naval, if you're a rationally minded one. The only way I can feel these sensations, such as a sphere under the naval, is to do a very minimalistic circling of my hips - not so that it's obvious to anyone else - but 'jump-starting' the sensation of anything such as a sphere. This seems to work for me, to start the visualization with an actual physical motion in the same area.

[Taomeow]

Hi freeform.

 

By phrasing this as a question, it takes out the intentionality. If the point is to intend the sense of a sphere below the belly button, my mind would parse "can you feel a sphere below your belly button?" as a yes/no question, very probably answer "no" since no intention to do so was made, and then ask, "What in the world is he asking such a dumb question for?" and become frustrated with the person asking it. Don't know about anyone else though; do you find this works for some people, perhaps those who are not highly rationally oriented?

 

In my experience, it's an excellent approach -- perhaps with some linguistic fine-tuning so as to make "the offer you can't refuse" sound very neutral, just the way don Corleone used to do it.

Seriously though, master Wang Liping teaches some neidan moves in a similar way. E.g. he might tell you: "Look far into the distance, see if anything might be glowing there." This, with eyes closed, in a dark room. You look -- well, I don't know what happens when you look, but I see something glowing. It's not farfetched, I've seen it many times when NOT trying to do anything, it's something that happens, for whatever reason. But then you are asked to do things with this glow that "normally" wouldn't occur to you to do -- and it starts gaining more and more tangibility. Then...

 

OK, then there's always people who will say, after the session, "I can't see anything glowing." So a couple of techniques will be offered -- some for those who can't see, some for those who have a hard time "handling" what they see. Ultimately, some people who can't see or can't feel stuff are not skeptics at all, contrary to what they believe about themselves. They are just not very perceptive, for whatever reason. They are unable to see or feel what's really there, not imaginary stuff, real -- only subtle. Once they have been shown how, they don't have to make things up, they just have to tune in to what was blocked away from their awareness before.

Edited November 18, 2014 by Taomeow

[Creation]

In my experience, it's an excellent approach -- perhaps with some linguistic fine-tuning so as to make "the offer you can't refuse" sound very neutral, just the way don Corleone used to do it.

Seriously though, master Wang Liping teaches some neidan moves in a similar way. E.g. he might tell you: "Look far into the distance, see if anything might be glowing there." This, with eyes closed, in a dark room. You look -- well, I don't know what happens when you look, but I see something glowing. It's not farfetched, I've seen it many times when NOT trying to do anything, it's something that happens, for whatever reason. But then you are asked to do things with this glow that "normally" wouldn't occur to you to do -- and it starts gaining more and more tangibility. Then...

 

OK, then there's always people who will say, after the session, "I can't see anything glowing." So a couple of techniques will be offered -- some for those who can't see, some for those who have a hard time "handling" what they see. Ultimately, some people who can't see or can't feel stuff are not skeptics at all, contrary to what they believe about themselves. They are just not very perceptive, for whatever reason. They are unable to see or feel what's really there, not imaginary stuff, real -- only subtle. Once they have been shown how, they don't have to make things up, they just have to tune in to what was blocked away from their awareness before.

As far as fine tuning is concerned, "can you imagine" or "can you have the feeling of" would do better than "can you feel" if there is intentionality implied. I had the impression that that is the kind of thing being discussed here. Your example of Wang Liping seems to be a case of having your attention directed to something that is already there, in which case non-intentional language is appropriate.

[thewhitetiger]

This does have some elements of NLP. NLP is an excellent resource. I would recommend it to everyone.

[freeform]

Hi freeform.

 

By phrasing this as a question, it takes out the intentionality. If the point is to intend the sense of a sphere below the belly button, my mind would parse "can you feel a sphere below your belly button?" as a yes/no question

 

Hey! Thanks for the feedback. Yes I could see how the question could be taken literally... as a question. What I like about the premise of it is that it's an indirect invitation to search for the feeling. Not to imagine the feeling. Not to 'create' the feeling. And not fail in doing so.

 

Perhaps with some semantic jiggling the invitation aspect could be heightened. An invitation to search for sensation, I believe, is an interesting approach because it's softer, and engages awareness rather than mental intentionality or strong focus (which as we know is detrimental in qi gong practice)

 

I think Taomeow's example of Liping's guidance is very much what I'm talking about.

 

I'll just have to consult with Don Corleone to make that invitation unrefuseable

 

[MooNiNite]

everyone so obsessed with the LTD

[Marblehead]

everyone so obsessed with the LTD

Hehehe. I don't even know what the LTD is. And no, don't tell me. I would rather remain ignorant of it.

[MooNiNite]

Hehehe. I don't even know what the LTD is. And no, don't tell me. I would rather remain ignorant of it.

its the lowest level of attainment possible. lol too late

[Marblehead]

its the lowest level of attainment possible. lol too late

Well, I'm not up there yet so no worry.

[Brian]

Hehehe. I don't even know what the LTD is. And no, don't tell me. I would rather remain ignorant of it.

An options package on the now-retired Ford Crown Victoria...