Jing and Qi transformation from which to which?

[Gerard]

 

But many traditions describe the process differently. Develop Jing transform it into Qi and then the Qi into Shen. (White tigress/Universal tao (I think).

 

The real process is that one. It happens naturally that way. For the same reason we have our heads up (Yang, close to Heaven) and feet down (Yin, close to Earth) and not vice versa.

 

Trying to reverse the order from qi to jing is plain nonsense.

 

Hope this was helpful.

Edited December 24, 2007 by durkhrod chogori

[Taomeow]

The real process is that one. It happens naturally that way. For the same reason we have our heads up (Yang, close to Heaven) and feet down (Yin, close to Earth) and not vice versa.

 

Trying to reverse the order from qi to jing is plain nonsense.

 

Hope this was helpful.

It's not nonsense, it's the core of authentic taoism -- internal alchemy, a quest for the Triple Treasure of Perfection, Nondecay, Immortality. Modern research into stem cells is trying to accomplish the same, and towards the same goal.

 

I have much higher expectations for the ancient alchemical methods though.

[Taomeow]

'Meow, the book you pointed me to was, curiously, the one I had in mind when I asked...

 

The postnatal jing has a couple of aspects, does the same apply to the prenatal...

 

For me time is a repeating movement, this is the most abstract way i can think of it. Maybe "repeating" would be the inner core of it...

 

The prenatal seems to me that is more related with some type of shen, creating spirit, a tendency to manifest

 

How did you feel this prenatal jing, creative power, when you were pregnant, for example

 

You must forgive us if we get too nosey, but this seems an issue for us men that we really need to understand, and rarely we do have an opportunity to hear the take of a Woman on it

 

 

Agreed on repeating movement. "The way of tao is motion and the pattern of this motion is return."

 

"A couple" aspects -- depends on how much we want to simplify the picture. Down to yin-yang? then, yes. Prenatal jing coming with the frisky spermatozoon from dad is yang, the one residing in mom's ovum sitting there waiting is yin -- by the way this process is what one of the steps of internal alchemy is trying to replicate: yang below, yin above! -- a very "reversed" situation, an Earlier Heaven situation... It will be repeated at birth (I mean natural human birth where a woman squats, not modern hospital birth where she's forced to lie on her back): the baby comes head first, yang descending! That's another situation some steps of internal alchemy recapitulate.

 

As for pregnancy... I have twins, a boy and a girl, and would probably have trouble explaining it even to another woman, one who had a solo baby, let alone to a man -- though in the early days, many moons ago, I tried -- I simply couldn't stop talking because I felt the need to share and to explain -- yes, to guys too! Silly me! There's no vocabulary for this... If the sensation of things still small swimming back and forth could be named, it has to be something like "inherent freedom" and "the thrill of aliveness." Then they start running out of space and practicing martial arts. Then they tell you to eat five pounds of shrimp. Then they make you weep with guilt for catching a cold. Then they explain to you what time is, what waiting is, what danger is, what the unknown is, what love is, what need is, what natural is, what life is. Then they tell you to eat a chocolate cake and chase it with a jarful of pickles. Stuff like that.

[宁]

Twins! OMG! A Yang and a Yin! Well, that would make you the Wu Chi, The Misterious Mother

Yes I have the feeling I understand one bit, at least. Understanding what time is, could be a key to a general upgrade both in practice and philosophy.

 

You are a lucky mom...

 

And the kids, I think is more than luck to have a mother like you

 

And this was just a statement

 

Thanks a bunch for what you share with us, and if you get any interesting ideas meantime, we are all ears.

[Taomeow]

Thank you, Little1!

 

Mysterious Mother, LOL! Nietzsche asserted that every woman is a mystery whose only revelation is pregnancy. He used the line as a put-down though -- but then, he must've had a lousy mother (most philosophers did), unlike Laozi whose wisdom is traditionally attributed to the fact that he spent two years in the womb (obviously reluctant to leave a nice place and "move on" -- and uninterested in "progress" ever since he did move on only to find that it wasn't worth it ). Maybe that's why he understands "the great mother" so well: he spent more time with her than everybody else, and remembers better.

[宁]

if he spent that much time inside her, it could only mean his mother was a very good person

 

philosophers having not so good mothers... that could explain alot

 

oh, just because i saw you have a different take on almost anything, what do you think about Christmass, about Christianity... Mother Mary etc

 

Jeez, we went from Jing to Mother Mary...

 

Oh but maybe we are still on topic

[Taomeow]

Where I come from we used to celebrate the New Year rather than Christmas, on account of the country being officially atheistic for seven decades. So I would have to ask Christians who celebrate Christmas:

what do you do with your non-Christian friends come Christmas? Do you invite them? If no, why not? If yes, do they accept? If no, why not?

 

The New Year's celebration I was acculturated to never presented this problem. It was my favorite holiday. Free of any and all agendas, not political, not religious, not exclusive of any group on the basis of creed or affiliation or denomination. We did have the decorated fir tree, only we called it the New Year's Fir Tree, not Christmas Tree. The custom of giving presents extended only to kids -- who didn't have to "be good" and "behave" in order to qualify, just small enough. Basically, it was very child-centered as holidays go (though of course adults weren't excluded -- like I said, nobody was.) Only the child wasn't Baby Jesus -- every other kid but him.

 

So here and now I don't really know what to do with Christmas other than wish it was more like the New Year's I remember.

 

What about you?

[宁]

I was in the 5th grade at school when the Red Regime falled in the EE.

So from then on I kind of catched up with all that meant relligion.

Not to mention that before that, things were not so harsh with atheism and such, in our country.

There were impediments, but not like the one you write about.

The funny thing is, and its the main reason I put up those questions, is that i didnt feel anything special about Christianity, Jesus and all. It was all so foreign to me. Of course, i tried to blend in, but at the age of rebellion - teenage - i just told them im not interested

They had the pretense, but lacked the power they should have had, in order to represent the Power they talked about. It was just a social group, with special ethical values. Which annoyed me to the point of becoming... well then it happened that i became aquainted with greek philosophy, western philosophy, Kant, Nietzche, Schopenhauer, Heidegger, and so on, and found some real confort in studying the roots of their novative thinking, which i found, some of them, at least, to be in the East. No wonder they were so interesting, the stuff they speak about was so new to Europeans.

Now I study this taoist stuff, that gets more misterious as the days go by

 

Another thing i wanted to ask you... What do you know and think about merits

 

Happy Hollidays

 

L

[Taomeow]

Interesting... So you think they "lack power?" Their real power is hidden, you know... The Bank of Vatican is the wealthiest institution on Earth, and has been for a looong time. But this kind of power doesn't get advertised... and what it is used for doesn't get reported on the ten o'clock news. Yet it is there, and it is used. But how.

 

... well then it happened that i became aquainted with greek philosophy, western philosophy, Kant, Nietzche, Schopenhauer, Heidegger, and so on, and found some real confort in studying the roots of their novative thinking, which i found, some of them, at least, to be in the East. No wonder they were so interesting, the stuff they speak about was so new to Europeans.

 

You're all over my old stomping ground!

I wound up finding out that it's not just philosophy but science, technology, "our" civilization itself -- all of it happened via borrowings, acquisitions, plagiarism, pillage and plunder, or (occasionally) straightforward learning (e.g., all of Greek philosophy, the Greek Miracle that gave birth to Western civilization -- all those guys without a single exception studied at the university of Alexandria where taoists, of all people, taught philosophy!) -- and that there's hardly anything out there at all (even today!) that doesn't have its roots in taoism (ice cream to gunpowder to plastics to binary math this computer uses to antibiotics, vaccines, paper...) -- and that the most interesting (to me) things in taoism have their roots in Siberian shamanism. That's how I made a full circle around the world and returned to my very own source...

 

Now I study this taoist stuff, that gets more misterious as the days go by

 

Another thing i wanted to ask you... What do you know and think about merits

 

Happy Hollidays

 

L

 

Happy Holidays to you too! What do you mean by "merits" -- "virtues of tao?" If that's what you have in mind, the best source I know of is Ta Chuan.

[宁]

Thank you,

 

Well I mean merits as in... winning good points. I was reading somewhere about this daoist text where it said that if your ancestors did bad deeds, you have a lot of bad outcomes in your life, and even if you are a good person, it will take you great effort to break thru...

One teacher i admire, Juan Li, has an entire course, El Sanamiento della Linea Ancestral... i dont know if i spelled it right. But it seems that healing your genealogical roots is one big step in taking whatever steps forward you need to do.

It seems these good deeds, virtuous acts, can be summoned as a summum, you can build them up, and can be a real help, is one part of alchemy i never heard much about. My teacher gave me some pieces and now i want to find out more by myself.

Does this have rellevance to you, or goes in line with what you study?

 

L

[Taomeow]

Thank you,

 

Well I mean merits as in... winning good points. I was reading somewhere about this daoist text where it said that if your ancestors did bad deeds, you have a lot of bad outcomes in your life, and even if you are a good person, it will take you great effort to break thru...

One teacher i admire, Juan Li, has an entire course, El Sanamiento della Linea Ancestral... i dont know if i spelled it right. But it seems that healing your genealogical roots is one big step in taking whatever steps forward you need to do.

It seems these good deeds, virtuous acts, can be summoned as a summum, you can build them up, and can be a real help, is one part of alchemy i never heard much about. My teacher gave me some pieces and now i want to find out more by myself.

Does this have rellevance to you, or goes in line with what you study?

 

L

 

From what I've learned, this sounds quite plausible, I mean the karmic effects of the ancestor's deeds, because in many senses (especially if we go back to the concepts of time and jing), your ancestors and you are one entity. One can see oneself as an unbroken composite space-time creature who has its long ancestral "tail" in the past, "body" in the ever-changing present (quite illusory compared to the more definite, "realized," "really-happened" past), and "head" -- well, wherever it is "headed" into the future. Can the choice of a different direction of the "head" change the direction in which the whole entity is going? That's possible, and that's alchemy at its best, because alchemy is all about changing some "mechanical" impulses, some directions where one would get "dragged" if one were to just go with the flow. Anyone who believes in "just going with the flow" should keep in mind that the flow, for all practical personal purposes, is the impulse from the ancestral "tail" he or she is being propelled by. And I suspect there's more people in this world today whose ancestral "tail" is highly problematic than the other way around. How many can be sure their ancestors weren't among conquistadors who wiped out whole continents, killed for sport, tortured for entertainment, or were simply dumb as doorknobs and knew not what they were doing?..

 

So to "accumulate points" might be a way to turn the head of the entity in a different direction from wherever its tail would otherwise propel it? Trouble is, with a heavy tail whose directional impulse is very strong, the entity that is supposed to know good from bad seldom does... There used to be a taoist nun at one of the forums who had a story to tell. She quit helping people after she witnessed a young guy whose leg she saved from amputation a couple of years earlier use this very leg to kick a helpless old man. She swore to never do any "good deeds" anymore because what is good was something she didn't feel qualified to determine anymore.

[宁]

Tail... nice anallogy. Yes there appear to be many issues practicioners give little thought to.

But heck, there are eight braches of the tao, so, eventually, we will all know better some day.

Much to ponder