Best Spiritual Qigong for Spiritual Growth

[New2Qigong]

Hello all,

 

I hope this is the right section for posting this

 

Few weeks ago I attended a weekend workshop about how to have Out-Of-Body experiences as a way of self-realization, for spiritual growth.

 

The teacher showed us some techniques for charging the Tan Tien centre. If we have this centre fully charged -he claims- it will be easier for us to have OBEs. He explained us some stuff about Qi Gong's and Carlos Castaneda's way of working with the energy within to get this goal.

 

I got quite interested so, when I got home, I surfed the net to find out more about this soft qi gong practise and I've read different comments by people talking on how the practice of qigong has made them experience OBEs (regardless they wanted them to happen or not), spiritual experiences, etc, so I'd like to know more about this way of working with one's energy system in order to grow spiritually.

 

Since it seems that there are hundreds of qigong styles out there, according to the experts and senior qigong practitioners from this forum, what's the best qi gong style for this?

 

Newman.

[New2Qigong]

Hello All again,

 

On David Boles' blog there's an entry where he makes some questions to Master Wen-Ching Wu on his book Qigong Empowerment.

 

Here there is a very interesting answer given by Master Wen-Ching Wu concerning astral projection:

 

BOLES: When I first practiced Fangsong Gong (Basic Relaxation Technique) on page 32 of Qigong Empowerment, a curious thing happened to me. My body became a shell and the essence of me was liquid and swimming around the shell of me and I was peering outside at the world through my ears, mouth and nostrils. I was in a floating, trance-like state and it took me a good half hour to “wake up” and “come out of the trance” by opening my eyes. What happened? I can repeat this experience at will, but do I want to? Am I messing up my Qi or am I discovering it and managing it? When I am in this trance-like state, what should I be thinking and doing? Right now, I’m just kind of floating around the world, which seems aimless and unimportant.

 

WU: In Qigong training, it is understood that one needs to enter into a steady state. From the steady state, one can then enter into a calm abiding state. From the calm abiding state one will then be able to enter into a tranquil state. Once the body enters into a tranquil state, the body will have a chance to readjust any imbalance in the body. In Medical Qigong, a tranquil state also provides a favorable condition for the mind to assist in adjusting the energy balance in the body to assist in its healing.

When you enter into a deep tranquil state, it is possible for your Yuanshen (Original Spirit) to leave your body. It usually doesn’t happen to most beginners in Medical Qigong training unless that is their objective. This happening to you on the first attempt suggests to me that you must have meditation background. Being a healthy vegetarian would also provide a “purer” body for housing the Original Sprit and allow it to experience an out-of-body experience.

 

Incidentally, in Buddhist and Taoist Qigong, the higher objective of the qigong training is to work on one’s Original Spirit. In the training of the Original Spirit, light-qi (a higher form of qi not restricted to the physical plane) is the fuel, the medium, which assists the Original Spirit to go beyond the confines of the physical body. In the training of the Original Spirit, we want to purify the physical body so that the component of the Original Spirit is not restricted to the material world and be able to travel to the higher astral planes to learn and evolve further and quicker. Please refer to the Taoist Qigong chapter in the Qigong Empowerment book for more details on this subject.

 

Your experience is not necessarily bad. However, it is possible to do too much. How much is too much will depend on your individual condition. When you are in a “trance-like” state that you described, you are in an out-of-body experience supported by light-qi. The experience you had is like a young toddler learning how to walk. You are experimenting on walking short distances. Gradually, as the toddler grows up, it will be able to travel further. It is important to practice advanced qigong or other proper energy work to sustain the demands for astral travel.

 

Individuals only interested in the health and healing part of qigong need not be concerned with this topic. In Medical Qigong, only the Vitality of the Spirit (the manifestation or expression of one’s energy and life) is of concern.

 

 

 

 

[vonkrankenhaus]

First consider what it is that is travelling or going out in this "out of body" experience.

 

Is that even what is really happening?

 

Is the body or the body energy actually going anywhere?

 

Or is the consciousness?

 

Is the consciousness really going? From where? Where is consciousness to start with?

 

Or - does the experience come to consciousness?

 

 

-VonKrankenhaus

[Brian]

Would you mind clarifying your question?

 

Are you looking for the "best spiritual qigong for spiritual growth"?

 

Or are you looking for the "spirtual qigong that will allow for the best spiritual growth"?

I got the impression he is looking for a system which will maximize OBEs.

[soaring crane]

Qigong is better described as an IBE (In the Body Experience).

[thelerner]

For OBE's anyone with the last name Monroe probably has a pretty good system.  (don't know why that is)..

 

Rawn Clark is a proponent and practictioner of Bardon's Hermetic system- Western Magic.  According to him, spending years on Hemetics, going through the Initiation Into Hermetics, is a slow path that leads to a safer, truer more holistic kind of OBE. 

 

If you're pondering a long term path check out the IIH, and/or Rawn's site, abardoncompanion.com.  There's quite a bit of great (& free) material there.

[Perceiver]

Is this teacher seriously learning people to OBE without ensuring that they have a foundation first; like clearing blockages and learning to ground and harmonize energy?

 

Don't know much about OBEs but that sounds unwise to me.

 

Personally I can recommend you to train in Michael Winn's system. The qigong fundamentals 1-4 give you a good basis for clearing blockages and learning to ground energy. The fusion practices and everything above will advance you spiritually, theoretically all the way to a full union with the dao.

[soaring crane]

I got the impression he is looking for a system which will maximize OBEs.

 

yes, seems so. For that, I sugest guided meditation with someone who has many, many years experience with these things, and who isn't a fruitbat.

[liminal_luke]

I love the description of qigong as an in-the-body experience, because that´s exactly the benefit it has for me.  Years ago, when my first therapist asked me what I hoped to get out of our sessions I said I wanted to feel more in my body.  That kind of stumped him but I still think of it as a very worthy goal, maybe the worthiest goal.

 

When qigong works for me I feel like I´ve "gotten myself together."  And I mean this in a subtle but nevertheless quite literal sense.  Not that I´ve had the more sensational out-of-body experiences people talk about when the consciousness floats up to the ceiling and you look down at yourself lying there in the bed.  That sounds fun and all, but I suspect beginners would do better going in than out.

 

Some speculative thoughts.  Maybe the best, and certainly safest, way to go out is to go in.  If you go in deep enough and your BIG SELF bodymind would benefit from going out, it will rocket you where you need to go. Automatically.  Maybe you don´t need to do anything to go out except keep working on going further and further in.

 

Practices that begin in the other direction seem questionable to me because they can reinforce a tendency we already have to be beside ourselves, to feel alienated, disconnected, fragmented.  Going out sounds like more fun, but if you get to the center of yourself you´ll also be at that magic place which is also the center of everybody else, everything else.  And what could be cooler than that?

 

Liminal   

Edited April 10, 2015 by liminal_luke

[voidisyinyang]

I was accidentally pulled a lady's spirit out of the top of her skull - without touching her. I had just finished a fast so didn't think my qi energy was that strong but it was the strongest it's ever been and she was a little old lady. I felt this heavy electromagnetic blob get pulled out of the top center of her skull. She couldn't see what I was doing as she was sitting and I standing to her side, she looking forward. As soon as I felt that heavy electromagnetic blob get pulled out of the top center of her skull she just started bawling and kept bawling for at least 15 minutes while someone else comforted her. So then I remembered the qigong master teaching to never pull out "energy blockages" out of the top center of the skull.

 

Another OBE experience I had was around the same time - I was in my room meditating, again my qi energy was very strong, and the room began spinning around me - but it was a spacetime vortex. I went into the Emptiness and had this experience that I can only define from what I felt after I came out of it. I really felt that who I was definitely was not my body nor my mind - and so I got rid of this Yan Xin meditation cassette tape since I didn't feel like I needed it - again I knew very well from experience that the real me was not limited to listening to some physical cassette. Also I recycled an old journal I had that covered about 5 years of my life - because again that was not the real me - the real me was not identified by my body nor my mind.

 

So actually it took me many years to discover in the book Taoist Yoga: Alchemy and Immortality that if your spirit leaves your body without enough qi energy enveloping the spirit then it causes dizziness. So the remedy needed is to store up more qi energy in the lower tan tien - behind the belly - and that qi energy surrounds the spirit light body. Also I came across this same experience for astral travel - the spinning experience - from other sources. One was Peter Kingsley referring to ancient Greek Pre-Socratic documents on going into trance - for real meditation - having that spinning sensation first. Then Robert Bruce discussed the same spinning sensation for the real OBE experience.

 

 

The dizziness felt like a spinning or falling sensation. This quickly intensified
and soon felt as if I were caught up in some kind of insane amusement park
ride....In the back of my mind I began to wonder if I might be dying...The bone deep
buzzing, droning waves and dizziness increased, accompanied by an even
heavier falling sensation, as if I were continually falling backward from a great
height. This falling sensation made me feel quite nauseous....The pressure around
me head increased painfully....

 

Robert Bruce, Astral Dynamics: A new approach to Out-of-Body Experience (Hampton Roads, 1999), p. 411

 

Both Bruce and Robert Monroe emphasize the energy of the lower tan tien - or behind the belly energy needing to be built up first. The Bushmen, the original human culture that are the source for shamanic training - also describe this spinning issue and say to focus the energy more as the N/om energy - again the behind the belly energy.

 

But anyway during that same time again when my energy was very pure and the qi very strong my third eye was opened I also saw the qigong master continually create "yin shen" spirits out of the top of his head while he was sending out healing energy in full lotus meditation. Then the other qigong master said that the qigong master was sending out individualized spirits to go heal people - each one created individualized for a special person.

 

So - that is a very advanced level of astral travel where you create - one person - multiple astral bodies that go out and travel around at the same time. On an even more advanced level it could be done with "yang shen" or physical bodies.

 

Normally the "yin shen" can not be seen by other people. For example one time I had the qigong master doing healing on me and I could feel his spirit healing me while I was in my bed at my house at night. It was a bit strange but anyway - so since my third eye had closed up I wasn't able to see the spirit from his astral travel.

 

There are different levels of astral travel - a lower form is having your "yin qi" leave your body - that has to use your "yin shen" as a kind of guiding pilot wave - alchemically the qi and shen are combined. But this is more like etheric energy dealing just with the lower emotional blockages being healed - still that energy can go through walls, ceilings, through the wind, long distance - it's a type of psychic energy, not real "yang qi" spirit energy for astral travel. So again for real OBEs you have to build up the qi energy so it is yang qi and this ability is actually quite rare. Real astral travel is an advanced state, contrary to New Age claims. This is also clarified by Shri Dhyanyogi-ji in his memoir: This House Is On Fire!

 

Oh yeah and even the qigong master mentioned recently that once he had done too much healing on many people and so then he got the same dizziness as a spacetime vortex and so he had his advanced students teach a qigong class for him - so he could meditation to recharge his qi energy.

 

I did have another OBE type experience from qigong. I was in full lotus listening to Coasttocoastam and this person called in saying the were frozen in their bed and they couldn't move but they felt this heavy weight on themselves. I knew that what they really felt was the weight of their own body - but they were experiencing it externally and so that's why their own body appeared to be an external experience.

 

So then I fell asleep in full lotus and suddenly I woke up wondering who was in my bed and I had the same sensation where I could feel the weight of a body in my bed but I knew it wasn't me and then just briefly I could see my own body in full lotus and as soon as I saw myself - my spirit quick shot back into my body on the bed in full lotus. haha.

 

I've also had precognitive dreams many times - and so that is also a type of astral travel - but it's difficult to say - since you can't really do a "double blind" standard on the source of the consciousness that is having the dream. As people have pointed out - if you leave your body - who are "you" to leave? If you have a dream of the future that comes true then your present state of being awake in a body is also a dream. And so which one of you is more real? What enables your future to come true in great detail? There must be some impersonal formless consciousness that is beyond spacetime and that is the real you.

 

One last qigong OBE experience - I was testing Salvia against the qigong third eye full lotus energy. So Salvia is considered one of the strongest psychotropic psychedelics - it's not technically a psychedelic - but more like super super strong pot and the most common reaction people have to one strong hit of Saliva is that their spirit flies out of their body! This freaks people out so badly that even very experienced strong psychedelic users are afraid to take a 2nd hit of saliva. I read about this happening to people online and then I met 2 people personally who had that happen. So when I tested salvia - I didn't take the strongest dose possible but still I was in full lotus and I would black out if I took a very strong hit. The first couple hits I had very strong psychedelic experiences where my whole life seemed like it had been a dream. But anyway I also had a third eye opening experience from the salvia where I could see this rainbow aura around my hands - even though my eyes were closed, in a pitch black room, with a dark winter hat pulled over my eyes. But anyway Salvia wears off fast - and one time I took a strong hit sure enough Salvia tried to pull my spirit out of my body - only since I was in full lotus flexing my pineal gland - the electromagnetic qi was stronger than the Salvia. So instead of flying into the floor or some nearby astral dimension - my spirit was stuck just half way out of my body. So for a while there were "two" of me - my left brain awareness laughing at the Salvia - while I'm in full lotus - and then my spirit half out of the top of my body but at an angle. It was a very strange sensation but it didn't last that long. I was glad my qi energy was stronger than the Salvia because I wouldn't want a plant substance controlling where I would go in the astral realms.

Edited April 11, 2015 by Innersoundqigong

[soaring crane]

Is it possible to pull a person's spirit out of their body?

Good question!

[vonkrankenhaus]

Re:

-----

"The fusion practices and everything above will advance you spiritually, theoretically all the way to a full union with the dao."

-----

 

I not trying to be difficult, but: how would they do that?

 

Tao is the way everything happens, and nothing is exempt.

 

What could be the theory that believes that anything is happening outside of Tao?

 

Even huge "mistakes" are still events that follow natural order perfectly.

 

So what is system actually producing or "advancing"?

 

 

-VonKrankenhaus

[New2Qigong]

Hi VonKrankenhaus,

 

First consider what it is that is travelling or going out in this "out of body" experience.

 

Is that even what is really happening?

 

Is the body or the body energy actually going anywhere?

 

Or is the consciousness?

 

Is the consciousness really going? From where? Where is consciousness to start with?

 

Or - does the experience come to consciousness?

 

 

-VonKrankenhaus

 

I have read A LOT about this topic and most of the authors agree that one might not be traveling 'out' of the body but 'in' one's mind, in one's inner universe. Some say there is not time nor space so all might happens in the very same moment, very same place. I'm ok with that.

[New2Qigong]

I Brian,

 

I got the impression he is looking for a system which will maximize OBEs.

 

Exactly

[New2Qigong]

Hi,

 

Is this teacher seriously learning people to OBE without ensuring that they have a foundation first; like clearing blockages and learning to ground and harmonize energy?

 

Don't know much about OBEs but that sounds unwise to me.

 

Personally I can recommend you to train in Michael Winn's system. The qigong fundamentals 1-4 give you a good basis for clearing blockages and learning to ground energy. The fusion practices and everything above will advance you spiritually, theoretically all the way to a full union with the dao.

 

No, this teacher have taught us to work with our emotions first, to face those inner conflicts we sitll have in "our backyard" in order to dissolve this blockages you talk about.

 

I'll have a look at Michael Winn's system, thanks for recommending it.

[New2Qigong]

Good evening!

 

Is it possible to pull a person's spirit out of their body?

 

Some people say it is possible, others say it is not. Our teacher said that, even if it was possible, it wouldn't be wise to do it because we don't know the spiritual level of that person and s/he can have a terrible experience.

 

They say it all depends on your inner energy system, the level of the conciousness that you have acquired through your inner work, the level of the energy your dan tien has. In the workshop, an advanced girl told us that one day she was able to get a friend out of his body, but the next morning he couldn't remember anything but being flying all night. It seemed that his level of energy was not optimal, the same with his level of conciousness.

 

It seems that the more energy, the more consciousness, the better we can remember and control the experience when we have an 'out of the body' (or 'in the mind' if you like) experience.