Authentic golden body

[Taomeow]

In Chinese mythology the term was used to describe the transformation, due to staunch perseverance, of a certain carp.  That stubborn fish was swimming against the current aiming to get to the top of the waterfall, and while its mates gave up and turned back, it kept at it for one hundred years.  It must have grown some badass muscles in the process, in body or spirit or both, for it finally succeeded.  Once it reached the top of the waterfall, the gods rewarded it by turning it into a golden dragon. 

 

Metaphors of this sort, promising magnificence, against insurmountable odds, as the outcome of stubborn disregard for a long stretch of failures, are rather popular in Chinese culture.  The story strikes me as the antithesis of the Western myth of Sisyphus.        

[liminal_luke]

15 hours ago, Trunk said:

 

My mostly-picture-book-essay about the deep-centers (with very short explanatory captions) was meant to illustrate that process. 

 

There's this process of integrating a deep-center with The Big Light:

 

..

 

 

 

Trunk,

 

I reread your mostly-picture book essay and connected with it / understood more this time than I did the first time around when you first published.  Despite my years hanging out in the forum, the phenomena you illustrate are not part of my experience.  And yet something in me must understand at least a bit because I'm getting the resonance.  

 

The still image from the Wizard of Oz is beyond awesome.  Was L. Frank Baum, the book's author, familiar with this transpersonal process?  Were the producers of the film?  Looking at the picture, I get the sense that the Good Witch is inside a taoist pearl, something akin to a chi ball, something that bears a distant relationship with the chi ball I first learned to feel between my hands oh so many years ago.  There's a throughline from that easy initial practice of feeling energy between the hands to the sublime experience of feeling oneself to be inside a chi ball....or perhaps feeling that one is the pearl itself.

 

Seems to me that there's a point as one goes deeper and deeper inside where the distinction between in and out breaks down and boom, ignition, the body glows.  Which leaves me with a question: who are we really?  Are we the body with it's arms and legs and internal organs...or are we the glow?  And can the glow pass through dimensions of being that our material body can't?  I'm thinking now that the more ephemeral something is, the more subtle, the more real it is.  

 

Anyway, I could be way off about all this.  Like I say, it's not part of my everyday experience.  I just wanted to share a little of what started to percolate reading your post and essay.

 

 

Edited April 22, 2023 by liminal_luke

[old3bob]

the term and its esoteric/mystic meaning are well known in several forms of Hinduism/Yoga,  btw variations are also found in the Bible, both in the Old and New testaments. (although meanings are so often and heavily veiled over in the Bible that some people just dismiss them)

Edited April 22, 2023 by old3bob

[blue eyed snake]

16 hours ago, Trunk said:

 

"I can live off of a compliment for three days" - Mark Twain 

 

My mostly-picture-book-essay about the deep-centers (with very short explanatory captions) was meant to illustrate that process.  It seems like the recent text struck a chord - it might be fun for you to scan through that picture-essay and see if it lines up with what I've tried to say here.  And, since I seem to be on a little roll, same concept here below again, illustrated briefly with some of the same pictures.

(And, like I said before: I'm not claiming to exactly illustrate/know any specific traditional version-of-body nor method ... but, in my experience, from what I've read, from everything I've heard quite a number of astounding teachers tell ... this basic territory is developed in a deep way.)

 

There's this process of integrating a deep-center with The Big Light:

 

... and we've got a few centers.  most of us 'd agree on power, love, wisdom - at least.  Same basic process, each place.

 

 

 

 

thank you, the  pictures above remind me of a "golden lightbulb"  that always accompanied me until I lost it sometime in my forties . As a kid I called it the golden eggyolk, 't was visible with closed eyes.

 

some weeks ago all of a sudden It was there again, which was quite a strange experience. Maybe I need to look at your picturebook essay

 

Regarding the goldenbody, I do not know anything about it but the memory of one remarkable practice session where all of a sudden a golden body appeared in front of me, have been staring in openmouthed wonder.

 

Adding to your series of pics, this is a fresco in chora church Istanbul

 

 

 

and this one, Fra angelico 1440

 

Edited April 22, 2023 by blue eyed snake
added a picture

[Lairg]

Often I see nature spirits (lesser devas) as having a golden light body - often egg-shaped

[Trunk]

There are steps to finding and cultivating the center that are accessible and understandable.  There are some in various essays at my free blog https://johndaoproductions.wordpress.com/  It's *not* that there is this high thing that we see but have no access to in our own systems.  It can be commonly understood, and accessed incrementally.

I've posted more than usual (which was really fun, thanks all) and for now I'm outta gas. 

 

"All of my practices promote the center".
- Sifu Matsuo

 

and, yup, this phenomena shows up across cultures, across traditions.

 

"The clear bead at the center changes everything.

There are no edges to my loving now."

- Rumi in Open Secret 

[blue eyed snake]

12 hours ago, Trunk said:

There are steps to finding and cultivating the center that are accessible and understandable.  There are some in various essays at my free blog https://johndaoproductions.wordpress.com/  It's *not* that there is this high thing that we see but have no access to in our own systems.  It can be commonly understood, and accessed incrementally.

I've posted more than usual (which was really fun, thanks all) and for now I'm outta gas. 

 

"All of my practices promote the center".
- Sifu Matsuo

 

and, yup, this phenomena shows up across cultures, across traditions.

 

"The clear bead at the center changes everything.

There are no edges to my loving now."

- Rumi in Open Secret 

 

 

thank you for posting. 

 

been mulling it over. 

 

these pictures show what I call the bubble around the fleshbody. As to such a bubble appearing in a kidsmovie, a lot of young kids are able to seen those bubbles. They quickly learn not to talk about it as in this society they are met with disbelief.

 

through my life I've sometimes seen those bubbles, they were generally  whitish in color, only once did I saw one with a true golden aspect. a toddler that was

 

@dwai wrote that the golden body is the causal body, now that's interesting, could you point me to a site which tells me a bit about it ( from the Hindu viewpoint that is, I'd rather skip the theosophics)I've looked but could not find much.

 

But the golden body I saw was not a bubble or eggshaped, it was shaped like a human form and it shone bright as the sun.

 

 

 

[blue eyed snake]

On 22-4-2023 at 4:22 PM, liminal_luke said:

 

Trunk,

 

I reread your mostly-picture book essay and connected with it / understood more this time than I did the first time around when you first published.  Despite my years hanging out in the forum, the phenomena you illustrate are not part of my experience.  And yet something in me must understand at least a bit because I'm getting the resonance.  

 

The still image from the Wizard of Oz is beyond awesome.  Was L. Frank Baum, the book's author, familiar with this transpersonal process?  Were the producers of the film?  Looking at the picture, I get the sense that the Good Witch is inside a taoist pearl, something akin to a chi ball, something that bears a distant relationship with the chi ball I first learned to feel between my hands oh so many years ago.  There's a throughline from that easy initial practice of feeling energy between the hands to the sublime experience of feeling oneself to be inside a chi ball....or perhaps feeling that one is the pearl itself.

 

Seems to me that there's a point as one goes deeper and deeper inside where the distinction between in and out breaks down and boom, ignition, the body glows.  Which leaves me with a question: who are we really?  Are we the body with it's arms and legs and internal organs...or are we the glow?  And can the glow pass through dimensions of being that our material body can't?  I'm thinking now that the more ephemeral something is, the more subtle, the more real it is.  

 

Anyway, I could be way off about all this.  Like I say, it's not part of my everyday experience.  I just wanted to share a little of what started to percolate reading your post and essay.

 

 

 

thank you from making such clear words about it.

You come at that point thinking it over and that, for me , is helpful as it makes words for my lived experience

 

it seems to me that i am crawling out of the worst of my illness with a heightened awareness of that bubble, 

 

somewhere I read something like: at first you'll become aware of a nothingness inside you, and later you'll find yourself inside of a nothingness.

But forgotten where that comes from.

 

seems cognitive faculties are failing me more of late.

[liminal_luke]

The great irony of this thread is that nobody, including me, ever imagined that the OP, Ethan singh, would get the answer he was looking for and then he kinda did.

[Trunk]

My experience is that once I got the concept of the basic dynamics of what I call the “deep-centers” (specifically, how they integrate with emptiness), then I started seeing that concept in more and more places, … kind of most places.  I would suggest that whatever system you’re digging into, it’s there.  For instance, if you’re Christian, you can find the Light of Christ in your heart.

 

I guess I want to say a few steps, points, that’ve been helpful along my way … with some pretty strong disclaimers, and encouragement to excavate the classic resources where ever you’re diggin’.

Disclaimer: There are whole systems about sequence and if I even start to talk about that what come up in my mind is everything I’ve skipped.  Also, it’s extremely difficult to tell what is the right next step for anyone.  Geez, I should just pin this sort of disclaimer into my automatic signature, because it applies to my every post.

 

Yeah, so, a few things along the way for me (and skipping a whole lot):

- Some training in view and practice of stillness, assumed.

 

- Then there was Healing Tao system introduced idea of the pearl, and I experienced it as nourishing … but *not* as integral with emptiness.  I was subtly gently ‘holding’ the nourishment of the pearl, which does have some use but …

 

- The simple Tibetan pith instruction of “enter, abide, dissolve” (though surrounded by an *extremely* ornate system) blew things open for me (conceptually and practically) that the pearl was integral with emptiness and resonated potent points along the central channel …

 

- How to find those potent places (the deep-centers)?  They feel like nothing.

Like, if you focus on the front of your chest and slowly move your focus back into your heart area there will be layers of feeling … then there is this little still space in the ‘center’ that feels like nothing.  *That’s* where the magic happens.  The "mysterious pass".

The deep-centers can also be found by slowly searching vertically, up and down the center line.  Mark Griffin encouraged becoming familiar with "every inch of sushumna".

 

So, those principles dovetail into methods.   While *far* from any comprehensive list of what's out there, these are merely a few that jump out at me right now.

- The pearl meditation, as described above.

- The mani mantra, secret style.  Linked from the "enso" essay at my blog.  (I think a breathing method linked from there, also).

- Kwan Yin Magnetic Qigong I find is one of the more accessible ways to start in on this process.

 

cheers,

Keith

[liminal_luke]

Some of my deepest experiences of the central channel and "emptiness" occured during Kan and Li retreats with Healing Tao teacher Michael Winn.  In the method he teaches various sources of fire and water are gathered, first from inside the body and, in more advanced meditations, from various celestial locations.  The fire is placed below a cauldron of water so that it creates steam.  This steam is said to be Yuan Chi and doesn't have the Yang charge of fire or the Yin charge of water -- it's balanced.  My understanding is that Yuan Chi is akin to emptiness.  

 

This method is of course controversial as it involves much visualization, something anathema to some alchemically knowledgeable Bums around these parts.  My own subjective experience is that it can be very powerful.  

 

My sense is that the complicated mental gymnastics of setting up a steaming cauldron can be skipped by simply going to the center.  I believe the emptiness is already present in all of us, at least in rudimentary form, and we need only go inside and discover it.

Edited April 25, 2023 by liminal_luke

[Bindi]

I think a ‘spiritual’ body, the neidan child, can be produced, it is referred to as clothed in gold and in a golden chamber in ‘The External Yellow Court’ scripture, though the method to produce it is almost certainly lost. From what I can gather the neidan child is the ‘spirit’ of the central channel, well worth developing if you can though you’ll have to find your own ways to do this. 

[Lairg]

It may be worth considering that the "golden body" is the natural product of spiritual refinement.

 

As the human uses more of the higher subplane energies, the denser lower subplane matter is discarded and the energy body becomes more radiant - on each of the planes on which the human is functional.

 

The color indicates the nature of the dominant energies in the lightbody.  Thus the diamond light of the Buddha has much more whiteness and brightness than the gold-white light of the Cosmic Christ.

 

 

[Trunk]

On 4/22/2023 at 7:22 AM, liminal_luke said:

Which leaves me with a question: who are we really?  Are we the body with it's arms and legs and internal organs...or are we the glow?  And can the glow pass through dimensions of being that our material body can't?  I'm thinking now that the more ephemeral something is, the more subtle, the more real it is. 

 

Just my personal take on this, not that I have a perfect nor classic idea-model of this area, but partly what I've observed (and at least three contradictory ideas that are each important, imho):

 

#1. I think it's important to keep the idea of the integrity of each layer of being, and not generally discard a basic respect for each layer in itself.  Someone once said something like, "a problem needs to be solved in the layer it originated in".  Build a life that suits you, take realistic care of your human aspect and respect it, etc

 

#2. During some methods (like meditation, etc) you might emphasize a certain layer of being (such as emptiness) as a serious focus and everything subsumes to that during the practice.  That's the view, that's the practice.  (... and I get that it integrates more with daily life, but ...)  And there are pieces of your path where you'll want to emphasize that, a lot maybe... to develop depth and fluency.  And, over a person's lifetime, it gets deeper ... no end.

 

So there is that emphasis, that focus, during the practice.

There's a phrase in one of Cleary's Taoist books, "manifesting and un-manifesting at will".

Merge into The Big Silent One gradually more deeply, more fluently...

and be able to put yourself back together with integrity, also.

Both of those parts, weave into each other.

 

#3.  The Deeper Stuff.  Well, if the measure of 'reality' is something like "is it a more foundational, more enduring level of life that we're mindblowingly profoundly part of?"  Yeah, well, then I'd kinda say that The Deeper Stuff is more real, lol.

 

 

[liminal_luke]

41 minutes ago, Trunk said:

 

#1. I think it's important to keep the idea of the integrity of each layer of being, and not generally discard a basic respect for each layer in itself.  Someone once said something like, "a problem needs to be solved in the layer it originated in".  Build a life that suits you, take realistic care of your human aspect and respect it, etc

 

 

One of the things that appeals to me about Daoism, as I understand it, is this "basic respect" for each layer.  In some systems I get the sense that there's a desire to escape from the layers that are seen as lower.  

 

There's a concept in Jewish mysticism called "running and returning" that stems from a Torah verse (Ezekiel 1:14).  In the Sefer Yetzirah it says...

 

1:6   Ten Sefirot of Nothingness: Their vision is like the "appearance of lightening", their limit has no end. His Word in them is "running and returning". They rush to his saying like a whirlwind, and before His throne they prostrate themselves.

 

My take on the phrase "running and returning" is that it refers to a sense of easy alternation between levels of being.  Each level is important, respected, and the mystic can run and return from the mundane to the not-so-mundane.  Perhaps something special happens when the "lower" levels are suffused with a certain something from the "higher" levels -- heaven on earth.  

 

.......................................................................................................

 

A song I like:  All the world is a very narrow bridge (between levels of reality?)...

 

(42) Ofra Haza - Kol Haolam Kulo - YouTube

Edited April 26, 2023 by liminal_luke

[Cobie]

“Chinese culture is about harmonising ’sky’ and ‘earth’ in everything. 
Everything.

E.g even chopsticks have a round side to represent heaven and a square side to represent earth.”
(my Chinese language teacher) 

 

 

Edited April 26, 2023 by Cobie

[Taomeow]

8 hours ago, Cobie said:

“Chinese culture is about harmonising ’sky’ and ‘earth’ in everything. 
Everything.

E.g even chopsticks have a round side to represent heaven and a square side to represent earth.”
(my Chinese language teacher) 

 

 

 

What about mine?  What do you think they represent?

 

[Trunk]

@Taomeow,

Those are beautiful!

I've never seen twisted chopsticks!

They look like they feel good!

Those are special; thank you for sharing.

Any back-story: I'm all ears.

- Keith

[Taomeow]

11 hours ago, Trunk said:

@Taomeow,

Those are beautiful!

I've never seen twisted chopsticks!

They look like they feel good!

Those are special; thank you for sharing.

Any back-story: I'm all ears.

- Keith

 

Appreciate your appreciation.  

No back story except I have a small collection of beautiful (and comfortable to use) chopsticks, a dozen or so -- some gifted, some thrifted, some I was planning to gift.  I can send a couple of twisted pairs your way if you like, PM where.   

 

 

[Ormus]

On 4/21/2023 at 4:54 PM, Taoist Texts said:

yes, exactly

I didnt find this exact text in my version .from where it is:

 

a golden body being like ○ and the dharma body like ○; the original face and the emptiness are like ○, the Heaven-Earth from above to below are like ○. The Heaven-Earth will perish but this ○ would not. Please ask what is this ○? It is the true yin-yang pre-Heavenly qi of all things, my true Xing-Ming, the never ruining true form of a golden saint, not born and not dying prime spirit of the absolute being and non-being Tathagata. This is the end of the 16^th step’s oral secrets.’ (Qian-fen old man 千峰老人, 赵避尘 Zhao Bi-chen, 顺一子 Shun Yi-zi)

[Taoist Texts]

4 hours ago, Ormus said:

I didnt find this exact text in my version .from where it is:

Probably Charles  Luke omitted it and did not transl it. It is a part of the 16th chapter.

https://comter.xoom.it/b/mingzhi/16.htm

you can use AI or Google transl on it, they work quite well

[johndoe2012]

On 4/28/2023 at 2:44 AM, Ormus said:

I didnt find this exact text in my version .from where it is:

 

a golden body being like ○ and the dharma body like ○; the original face and the emptiness are like ○, the Heaven-Earth from above to below are like ○. The Heaven-Earth will perish but this ○ would not. Please ask what is this ○? It is the true yin-yang pre-Heavenly qi of all things, my true Xing-Ming, the never ruining true form of a golden saint, not born and not dying prime spirit of the absolute being and non-being Tathagata. This is the end of the 16^th step’s oral secrets.’ (Qian-fen old man 千峰老人, 赵避尘 Zhao Bi-chen, 顺一子 Shun Yi-zi)

 

To get a glimpse, try imagining having no head, Douglas Harding style.

 

Or do the "gone" meditation by Shinzen Young.

 

Many short glimpses, many times until the karmic mind is exhausted.

[Miffymog]

6 hours ago, johndoe2012 said:

 

To get a glimpse, try imagining having no head, Douglas Harding style.

 

Or do the "gone" meditation by Shinzen Young.

 

Many short glimpses, many times until the karmic mind is exhausted.

 

Just to add, I love the Douglas Harding style!

[Sahaja]

On 4/27/2023 at 1:07 AM, Taomeow said:

 

What about mine?  What do you think they represent?

 

Is the twisty bit the human being (between heaven and earth) or is it that heaven is the part holding the food?

[Taomeow]

1 hour ago, Sahaja said:

Is the twisty bit the human being (between heaven and earth) or is it that heaven is the part holding the food?

 

Who knows, might just be an artistic twist.  Though it reminds me of a lot of spiral patterns in nature and in taoist arts (e.g.  taiji).  The heaven-earth connection is also something that in reality happens in a spiral, not in a straight line...