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Hi Welkin... So I think we need to talk about ‘dabbling’. You’ve talked about Mo pai breathing, kundalini yoga, flying Phoenix, heavy weight training, Damo Mitchell’s stuff, Hermetics etc. You’re going to need to focus on one thing. It is not the case that doing mo pai breathing while practicing flying Phoenix and doing Hermetics training will give you some extraordinary results. In fact it’s the very opposite. I realise it’s exciting to have all these possibilities in front of you. I’m not saying you shouldn’t explore them, but to actually get anywhere you will need to pick one path and stick to it. The best way to explore is to actually meet people practicing these systems. You’ll get a very good vibe of what each school is like by meeting students and teachers. You can work out which ones seem more compatible and who would you rather turn out like (the nature of this sort of training is that you’ll start to harmonise with the teacher and general ‘personality’ of the school) You can’t combine these things - it just doesn’t work like that... it’s like getting all excited that you got into aeronautical engineering so you put a helicopter blade, a hot air balloon and some rocket boosters on a passenger plane... I’d suggest just make a habit of training something physical every day. Do some basic sitting practice like following your breath (not breath control like you talked about - you will end up hurting yourself). And then explore, talk to people (not just on forums) and see what path you’d like to follow. Once you’ve got a disciplined daily routine (this can be hard to establish) then it will be easy to plug in a more ‘internal’ practice in that time slot.

It is interesting to note: In many years of speaking to students and others in conversation regarding the importance of the Basic's - and just how primary and fundamental and incredible the basic's are - NOT ONE person has ever asked something like "you stress the importance and comprehensive nature of the Basic's pretty frequently - can you expound on what you mean and include in the Basic's - i think most of us are incline to assume we understand what the basics are but you seem to include much more" Please note - NOT ONE What is most important about this fact is that it illustrates just how much we do not wish to open our opinions and boxed in notions to elaborations that effect our own inertia's - AND the idea that Basic's take about one class to get a full understanding of.

And he actually does communicate with his students - one human to another, yes? I wonder why people don't just communicate with him - instead of about him. Or just leave him be.. *edit to add, I'm not just referring to this thread, which has soo far been of a much more mild and sincere variety than some of what I've seen here in regard to SOTG.

Chances are when your outside around trees you absorb their energy.... but it is very subtle and hard to feel. I would point to the way you feel after being outside for a period of time. Some would say it’s the fresh air or the sunlight. I would say it’s all of these things, including the trees. Just being outside and open to the landscape, you will already be connecting in some way. Just takes practice to feel it.

Just what I was saying ! Then again, it appears this is a request for 'travel purposes' only ... so not much point in 'visiting yourself' (Thats the thing about travel , no matter where you go ..... you just cant seem to get away from yourself .)

Sure ok. I won’t lecture you about needing to find teachers. I also began my journey adamant that I don’t need or want a teacher - and I did manage to make some progress without. So yes it’s possible. (But then I found lots of teachers 😄) If your aim in the internal arts is beyond the basic de-stress and relax thing, then you need to start with reasonably good health - both physical and mental... If these are not generally fine, then you need to fix them - the internal arts at this level won’t heal you in that way... Once your health is reasonably fine, the main premise is don’t trust your mind As you probably know, we need to work with your Qi and the channels of the body. But the way we get to them is through focus on the body first - you don't start out trying to feel your your Qi or direct it with your mind. This mental control of Qi creates all the dangers - Qi reversals, heat in the head, poison fire tainting heart, steaming bones etc etc... One of my teachers in Malaysia specialised in treating people with Qigong sickness - it’s quite common when not following a proper method. The first step is to prepare your body... this means 1) loosen tension, 2) increase flexibility, 3) build strength... This involves stretching and mobility exercises and a lot of bodyweight strength training - focusing particularly on legs and core - nothing extreme like muscle ups or heavy weights though, as this will slow your progress in Qigong. The second step (and this is generally done concurrently) is to start to get into your ‘inner body’... This is basically accessing the various tissues that we’re not used to using - the little stabilising muscles, the deep core muscles, the sinews and tendons and the fascia matrix. You do this by standing (a lot) and repeating the foundational Qi Gong movements of your system (a lot)... And developing Sung (active release) and Ting (inner listening). At first you’ll get hints that there’s something more than the basic muscles we all know about - you’ll feel aches and pains in places you’ve never felt before, you’ll feel weird stretchy connections between parts of your body that you’ve never felt before etc. It takes a long time (3 to 5 years), but eventually your entire body will feel connected. It feels like your insides are all rubbery and connected in stretched way - a slight change in pressure of your foot will send your arms up... a slight stretch in your palm will be felt throughout your body. It feels like wearing one of those wetsuits... but interweaved through your muscles under your skin. When you have this sort of body, you’ll get into your standing posture and it will feel like sitting into a nice stretchy hammock or trampoline - quite comfortable... When you do your moving forms, it’s not the ordinary muscles that move you, but these stretchy connections. Often it feels as if the movements are happening by themselves. Ever do this thing as a kid - where you stand with your arms by your sides and your friend holds them there as you try to push out... then your friend suddenly lets go, and your arms just lift and float up by themselves... all your Qigong movements will start to feel like that. (This is just a stage, you actually need to relax and drop more weight into this floating - then things start getting painful - but that’s some way off!) This is ‘the Qigong body’... this is the foundation you need to move on to anything else. But why? Your standing and moving practices will have connected your body in a very particular way. The Qi of your body run through these tissues. It means that you’ve built the physical riverbed of your channels for the Qi to move through in a particular way. Now you don’t need to direct Qi with your mind - because its path and direction is already physically built into your body... it will naturally flow where it needs to without any mental effort. Remember - we can’t trust the mind Another aspect... if you think of an old style lightbulb, the light is created by running electricity through a metal filament... when you build this body, you’re actually building thicker, denser filaments through your body - meaning you can transmit a far greater current. If the filament is too thin or the current too strong - what happens? The filament pops and the light goes out As well as this you’ll need to build your Dantien (this starts concurrently to building the body)... this creates the vessel or container for generating, holding and moving very strong currents of Qi. And that’s basically the foundation - although obviously there’s a lot more - like harmonising your organs, clearing out blockages, sinking Qi etc etc. To summarise - 1) open and strengthen your body physically 2) find your ‘internal body’ 3) build a fully connected, elastic Qigong body 4) build a Dantien. So bearing in mind that this is missing a ton of stuff, and written very crudely... but I hope it helps to explain what authentic Qigong does to set up the foundations for further development like actually going through the Jing-Qi-Shen conversion process and so on. Happy to answer questions.

Actually as an homage to the trailblazer Linnel lets do this: Linnell: 凡 心 之 刑 the common heart has a standard 自 充 自 盈 Naturally full, naturally overflowing, 自 生 自 成 Naturally born, naturally complete. 其 所 以 失 之 The reason that it loses the standard 必 以 憂 樂 喜 怒 欲 利 Is certainly due to worries and happiness, love and anger, desire for profit. 能 去 憂 樂 喜 怒 欲 利 If the heart can leave behind worries and happiness, love and anger, desire for profit, 心 乃 反 濟 the heart then returns to being useful. 彼 心 之 情 The nature of that heart 利 安 以 寧 is profitable and peaceful hence tranquil. 勿 煩 勿 亂 when not troubled, not confused, 和 乃 自 成 then harmonious (so the standard) is naturally achieved.

Might want to do a little research. He's been part of his lineage since he was 8 and recognized as the successor at 16. He is now in his late 50s.

Oh yeah. We talk on the forum, he posts update videos, help videos, texts members depending on what's what, voice chats, etc. I'm biased of course, but I've never understood how worked up people get about it. He's super chill.

Intuflow - beginner https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFB458458F14ED867 Intuflow - intermediate https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2F820643A63A9D0D This is great for releasing Also interesting:

Strengthening is more important than stretching in order to develop chi power, but pushups and pull ups will not do it at all. You need a strenuous kind of moving chi kung, which is what real nei kung has a lot of. Like Freeform said, the strengthening should focus more on core strength, shoulder strength, and leg strength. It needs to be the kind of exercise which does not make your muscles hard, like weight lifting does. This point about strengthening in the proper way seems to be turning in to a big giant secret.

I've been trying to fit that with the rest of the verse but it doesn't really make sense to me. can you explain why every other translator takes it the other way? Also presumably there are Chinese commentaries which give the right context - or are there none.

Freeform - thank you so much for taking the time to write all this. It is wonderful information, but your way of putting it - even for the layman - brings it all into focus. All the bits and pieces that I've picked up 'somewhere' that were tucked away in a little drawer in my psyche, connected all at once as I read your words. My dantien is tingling and feels huge. Did you mean to transmit through your words to date? Or is there more to come?

Practice with trees is a big part of many northern Daoist lineages including Longmen. It’s a good practice. You don’t want to give much direction to the Qi with the mind. Obviously things will move much more powerfully once you’ve built the foundation. But the idea is to connect with the tree and then let it lead... sometimes it will give you ‘energy’ (particularly at night) and a lot of the time it will take your pathogenic Qi and transform it... But there’s not much for you to do other than engage your ‘insides’ and then create the connection - the tree will do the rest... Once the foundations are mostly built, this is not a subtle experience in the least!

Ahhh .... the easiest method .... I think most of us know about looking up stuff on google here ..... we 'talk about stuff' .

Once again, here's my comment written before reading most of the above.... Following from the previous verse, the qi being referred to here is likewise the shen of later Daoism, as in the conceptual model: Jing Qi Shen (精氣神). At the highest level, to my mind, this shen can be likened to Buddha Mind, or to the Christian notion of Holy Spirit. Hence we have this description of the first five lines from A C Graham: “This may well be the earliest Chinese interpretation of the experience of mystical oneness.” (Roth bases his version of line five on what he considers from his extensive research to be the wording of the original line. I followed Roth in my version but if I were redoing it I’d go with something like Eno’s: "So compact! As though residing within oneself." Or go free form and add Eno’s as a new line after Roth’s line five.) The second part of the verse brings in the important notions of de and also awareness / intent. In my comment on the first chapter I wrote: “Whereas for the sage of the Neiye the same vital essence burns continually with a steady glow. They have somehow transmuted vital essence into something stable and manageable.” Here we learn this stabilisation requires personal de. Moreover, the vital essence (shen) itself helps develop de. They must be allowed to work together for wisdom to develop. (For those who aren't familiar with the Chinese notion of de there's extensive discussion on it in the archives of DaoBums and on the web in general.)

Sit comfortably in a nice chair or recliner and try to jump, with your mind/awareness, to a position where you are looking at your body from the front, then jump to the left side and look at yourself, then jump to the right and look, then to the ceiling and look.

Safety and Efficiency? Daoist path? If you have no teachers, where is "Daoist path" coming from? Books? Those are written by teachers. Why would someone want no teacher but want to know? Is that how people are on the Algebra path? The surgeon path? Pilot? $4000 seminars - how do people without any teacher know if they are ripped off? Every day, people are happy, not knowing. There is no real "safety" if you don't really know what you are studying. There is no real "efficiency" either. Any traditional Gongfu school is a decent place to actually start. -VonKrankenhaus

Ok 1) This is quite important - for several reasons. Fitness is important for building Yang in the body. For fitness anything aerobic like running or swimming is good. Strength - particularly in the core of the body is also important. You’ll be creating some very strong forces and internal pressure inside, so you need strength. Also when you strengthen your muscles, it’s actually easier to Sung. A very minimally contracted strong muscle is better than a strongly contracted weak muscle for the purposes of qigong. With strength training for internal arts, I’m afraid that stuff like powerlifting, kettlebells, heavy clubs, lots of pull-ups, Olympic Rings etc are all majorly detrimental to building the Qigong body. What works best is connected, whole-body movements - like the ‘animal crawls’... also core work - like planks and the many variations on them. Unweighted squats are also good. Opening the body - basically stretching and loosening. Particular focus should be on the lower body, shoulders and spine. Also joint mobility stuff - like Scott Sonnon’s Intuflow is good. 2) for finding your insides and 3) building your internal connection - the very best thing I’ve seen available is Damo Mitchell’s Foundations of Qi Gong Practice online video course. 4) building the Dantien - I’m afraid that’s beyond the scope of this thread. Actually this is also a primary aspect of building the foundation - not secondary. And that’s clearing your channels. The reason I can’t say much about it is because it can’t really be ‘taught’ online. In person I’d just activate your Dantien and get your Qi moving and you would generally go through a process called Zi Fa Gong... basically means spontaneous movements. As Qi moves in your body it will hit blockages and as a result produce spontaneous spasms, shaking, flailing about, sometimes shouting, laughing, growling, singing etc. This generally takes half a year to move through if you’re practicing a lot every day. This stage is not really possible without a teacher. Sometimes people start the process off on their own, but they will generally need help to move through it efficiently. Not every system uses this method, but most of the more powerful ones do. All the teachers Pegasus mentioned - I’ve trained with all of them - and they all use Zi Fa Gong. The other part is harmonising your organ and emotional system. This is partly accomplished with particular use of the Zi Fa Gong and partly through different forms of Wuxing Qigong. Now regarding this: That’s true. You can get a lot of ‘experiences’ from both LiPing and some of the other teachers mentioned - without even having a foundation. The difference is that when you have a foundation built, these experiences actually make profound changes in your development. Without the foundation they’ll just be experiences that you’ll remember fondly. I’ve found that with advanced teachers they’ll generally only take on ‘inner door’ students that clearly demonstrate that they’re prepared to make a commitment and take the time and effort needed to build the foundation. Otherwise they’ll just give you a little light show for your money and you’ll leave exhilarated and very happy, but with no actual development.

evolving towards the non-evolutionary ...ha ha... Brahman does not evolve, so what the hell? yet soul evolves as a matrix for Brahman which many matrix's talk about since Brahman is roaring with silence on the matter.

I would like to know as well . that is the point of this thread.

First learned Tree-gong form Michael Lomax and it's still one of my favorite practices. There are many ways of working with trees. The basic method is that you approach the tree with respect and ask permission to cultivate with them. Then you get into your form.....be it Wu Chi Posture, Holding the Ball or simply LDT Meditation. All of these are valid IMO. The whole point is to allow a cycle of energy to form between both parties so that a mutual exchange will occur. You don't need to do this yourself....the Tree will facilitate the transaction as Freeform mentioned.

One of the more advanced practices is to construct your own astral temple ... your ' sanctum sanctorium ' .

Any examples?

I took a quick look through those links and what stood out is there are a bunch of piggy wiggys who are absolutely clueless, couldn't care less, about the basics and they just want to 'get something' from trees. It would never occur to them that the main function is to get rid of sick energy, which they are overflowing with. Spotless was talking about the importance of practicing the basics. The Piggy mind set makes people want to get, get, get, gimme gimme, gimme; but their ability to do it is super weak. This is so common everywhere with new age bullshit. They think they can do something with energy when their energy abilities are garbage. They think they can do it just by standing around and thinking positive thoughts, it's pathetic.

Rara This is so exciting. I am in Montreal Canada back to the mountain in the fall. I would love to hear about your adventures. Have you been up on the mountain? My school is located down the steps on the other side of the road of Purple heaven Palace. Very excited for you wish I could meet up with you. Long live Wudang Kung Fu!

Don't worry. He has other colors also

Regarding CO2 uptake of trees as well as all plant life has been touched upon in this thread awhile back. As I stated previously, all plant life have an upper limit of CO2 uptake and if this limit is breeched, there are ramifications as stated in current research. Tampering with evolutionary parameters has consequences! https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-10174-4

My teacher could feel the condition of a person's bones from across a rather large room when he came to the doorway. He could feel the interior of a person's bones and know if they had good bone marrow or not. Good bone marrow is juicy and works like a battery for chi, old bone marrow is grease, no battery there. Don't believe a word of Moretalk's bullshit about bone marrow nei kung. When my teacher would come to a doorway, if he felt strong sick energy in the room he would not go in.

That video must have been from somewhere else, not me, but I'm curious to see it now if you could share it. Not really, it can get way stronger than that. Have you heard about hermit warriors who can feel the presence of another person from far away if that person approaches them while they are meditating ... of course their whole life is a sort of meditation.

Yes, it can be dangerous. If someone does it who doesn't have a pure heart or a powerful guardian they can attract very bad stuff from 'upstairs' and it will stick to them. I could share a story about that. So it's best to be a good Taoist and have nothing for negative to stick to: be transparent.

I am going to trust and follow this to the t. will edit if needed based on discussions.

Are those anything like the "heavenly corridors" described in this post?

How many times... have you encountered the saying, 'When the student is ready, the Master speaks?' Do you know why that is true? The door opens inward. The Master is everywhere, but the student has to open his mind to hear the Masters Voice. Robert Anton Wilson

It would not be too surprising if radiation was involved, nor early attempts at something far more lethal sounds like they got a dirty bomb on top of it all. BTW. This may or not be of interest I have a client who is closing in on 92 years old. He is German and was stationed on the Russian front in WWII. His job was to carry something similar to a Bazooka and plant mines on Russian tanks. He recently related a story to me where he was in a foxhole in the hellish cold winter and would wait for Russian tanks to roll by. When the Tanks rolled by he had a magnetic mine, he would arm it as it was spring loaded and then magnetically attach it to the Russian tank and blow it up. The Russians caught on to this and started painting the tanks with thick cement to make it more difficult for a magnet to stick by making the metal further away. Sure enough a tank rolled by, Jochen armed the mine which once armed there was no going back, attempted to affix it to the tank and the next thing you know it slid right off!!! and fell in the foxhole with him!!!! According to him he made a mad scramble to get the damned thing out of his fox hole ant threw it as far as he could he barely got down in time as it detonated.

Ezekiel 25:17- " The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyrannies of evil men. Blessed is he, who in the name of charity and goodwill sheperd's the weak through the valley of darkness, for he is truely his brothers keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers, and you will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee." " Let him seek, until he finds." - JC " It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of god." - JC " As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another. " _ Proverbs

Yes. Whatever is most comfortable. I liked doing it in bed before I went to sleep. However, it may not be JUST practice, it might be that some have a propensity to this type of thing and others dont. It surprised me to find out that some find this ability rather fantastic. I use it to develop my martial arts; I would be in bed at night and then imagine I am standing out of bed on the floor ( to me this is easy, for others they need to spend time imagining their form outside and separate from themselves) and practising forms. Then I will go through the application of parts of the form with a partner and develop new ideas , possibilities and applications. Then I will apply them in training. people wanted to know where I learned it and teacher accused me of training in secret with another teacher. When I explained how I learnt it all , they all ...... and I ; " Dont you ever do that ? " Nope, I got the weirdest looks ! Another practice is to imagine yourself next to your body and observing your body, now your body is to yourself's left , then move around the other side, now its to your right, etc. (note the difference between the use of 'your self' and ' your body' ) Anyway, just practice that. after a while imagine you are further away from your body, in another location, but a familiar one . A good thing about this practice is it is not just a step along the way, it also brings benefit by itself .

The Basic's - the Foundation is never discarded. It is the most advanced of all practice. To dismiss this is to have a very poor understanding of the Basic's. If you are thoroughly grounded in the Foundation - you will proceed in no need of a master - but if a master is needed or wanted a master will arrive. Part of the Basic's is to understand or have indicated to you in and through practice - your strengths and weaknesses regarding energetic fluxuations and capacities. Subjugation is an abyss. Subtle bodies are not forced into molds of concept and doing. Carry Salt - with a grain of salt check that you are not deluding yourself Measure head - listen to how you speak and follow your path - it is a religion? something you believe in? or is it not something but a way of being that brings you to drop belief again and again and find presence in non-grasping. Is there ever increasing patience or more and more expedient means?

Practicing on your own can be perfectly safe if you use moving chi kung that requires relaxation, and most chi kung was like that in the past. Since the advent of books combined with money grubbers the visualization methods have gained a lot of popularity with the armchair crowd. Those are just about guaranteed to be unsafe without the close supervision of a master, and even so, they ruin someone for the path of power ... inTaoism. Practicing a good moving chi kung on your own can be an efficient way to get a good start while always keeping an eye on the fact that everyone needs a powerful master to help get their motor started. For a person to expect to be accepted by an advanced master when they haven't practiced anything of the kind before is not realistic.

It’s important to talk about this. I’ve met many hundreds of students... maybe thousands by now. As you can imagine - with that number of people, a proportion of them thought that they are naturally talented or that they’ve somehow gone past ‘the basics’ on their own. Some of them were indeed naturally talented... Some were just deluded... But that’s not important. The important thing is that natural talent doesn’t mean you don’t need to build the foundation. Think of it this way... you’re studying surgery, and you somehow have this natural talent of not being bothered by blood and guts and you have a very steady hand, great dexterity, and a good ability to focus - but does that mean you can just go ahead and perform surgery and skip the rest of the medical degree? Or say you have a naturally athletic build, you’re big, strong, resilient etc - but can you become an Olympic power lifter with no training? Of course not. This is the same with the internal arts. Regardless of talent you still need to build the foundations. Everyone always does. The other issue I mentioned is delusion... sometimes we have experiences that our mind attaches to and uses it as a kind of ego fuel - so we have a genuine experience but then the mind conflates it to mean that you’re somehow extra special. This is quite normal and very common in the internal arts. There is nothing really wrong with that but it does create issues - particularly if you don’t have a teacher to have a word with you and confirm or deny your assumed level of development. For example - one way to confirm that your foundation has been built is to stand in perfect posture, with unwavering Sung and Ting for 8hrs straight (no breaks, obviously)... it should be effortless and deeply relaxing if you’ve built ‘the Qigong body’... And with many internal teachers it is actually the test to see who’s ready to move on. So yes there certainly are people with major talents - but they must all still go through the same process - they may get through some parts much faster, but they still need to do them, and they will always find parts that are just as slow and difficult for them as for anyone else. If you want to check whether your foundation is built, just stand in wuji or I jong for 8hrs straight - if that’s easy for you, then you can probably move on past the foundations.

I guess i had researched this about a month ago. Anything/book specific? or just look around and see what conclusions i can draw? Thanks for the heads up, and after speaking some people i would say they agree with what you just mentioned. Maybe i should state my intention. So there are some places around the world that i would like to travel to. I plan to do this in person of course one day. But let's say i felt due to safety reasons of not being able to go to these places in person, and wanted to astral travel there. Is there some specific practice i should do? i don't necessarily need or want to travel to another dimension.

Astral projection is a valuable tool to develop in some traditions because it can open a whole lot of doors, but don't start a "crash" course without a teacher perhaps. Some traditions don't think much of the astral and might see it as a lower dimension full of distractions. I believe there are different levels of density within the astral. Building foundations with regular meditation are considered important, so that you don't get stuck in some level..

My response to refinding this thread says it's time to revisit Druidic Lore. It's been a good long soak in the shadows. Time to open the oven tree and see what's been cooking been seeded.

Definitely some juice there. I asked “Where are you from?” Got a more inter-dimensional vibe rather than space alien. I also felt the stone was part of a temple or a room that was specifically used for tapping into this realm. Like obviously it’s broken off from something, but that whatever the larger structure was - it’s function was to facilitate some spiritual or psychic communion. Fun stuff!

I cared so much because the inner alchemy is a direct and powerful path toward personal transformation. The philosophical and religious facets of Daoism simply don't offer the same opportunity. How is one to tell if they are ready? We generally don't really know until we try. Often a teacher can help us with that question but even they don't know for sure. If one starts at the beginning, with an experienced guide, most are ready. I disagree, I think many are ready to engage in true practice if they are willing to make a commitment and start at the appropriate place. If you are referring to practicing based on reading books, watching videos, and playing in internet forums then I fully agree, perhaps 1 in a million are ready for that. I think there is so much talk because there is so little action for many. For the dedicated practitioners who connect with a teacher and lineage, there is generally a lot less talk. There is still value for talk, however, to the extent that it can be mutually supportive on our paths. Just some random thoughts on the matter this beautiful morning after a brief but intense personal retreat.

That's our instinctual reaction - the main character (ourselves) is always the one to root for. There's something about human psychology, for instance, if we watch a movie or read a book where the bad guy/antihero is the main character, the one we tend to project ourselves onto, we can find ourselves hoping that they don't get caught. Considering this aspect of our nature, perhaps it's helpful to view ourselves not from the first person perspective, but as best we can from the third person perspective, in an equal way to any other "character". Then we might have greater insight into ourselves. This is going beyond neidan discussion - but I think that in order to actually become good, before anything else we have to be super clear about the ways in which we're not good. The bad person believes they're good, the good person knows the ways in which they're bad. ... Also - does neidan really have anything to do with "power"?

Interesting contrast point on the One from the Gospel of Thomas... 50. Jesus said, "If they say to you, 'Where have you come from?' say to them, 'We have come from the light, from the place where the light came into being by itself, established [itself], and appeared in their image.' If they say to you, 'Is it you?' say, 'We are its children, and we are the chosen of the living Father.' If they ask you, 'What is the evidence of your Father in you?' say to them, 'It is motion and rest.'"

From the Apocryphon of John: The Inexpressible One The One rules all. Nothing has authority over it. It is the God. It is Father of everything, Holy One The invisible one over everything. It is uncontaminated Pure light no eye can bear to look within. The One is the Invisible Spirit. It is not right to think of it as a God or as like God. It is more than just God. Nothing is above it. Nothing rules it. Since everything exists within it It does not exist within anything. Since it is not dependent on anything It is eternal. It is absolutely complete and so needs nothing. It is utterly perfect Light. The One is without boundaries Nothing exists outside of it to border it The One cannot be investigated Nothing exists apart from it to investigate it The One cannot be measured Nothing exists external to it to measure it The One cannot be seen For no one can envision it The One is eternal For it exists forever The One is inconceivable For no one can comprehend it The One is indescribable For no one can put any words to it. The One is infinite light Purity Holiness Stainless, The One is incomprehensible Perfectly free from corruption. Not “perfect” Not “blessed” Not “divine” But superior to such concepts. Neither physical nor unphysical Neither immense nor infinitesimal It is impossible to specify in quantity or quality For it is beyond knowledge. The One is not a being among other beings It is vastly superior But it is not “superior.” It is outside of realms of being and time For whatever is within realms of being was created And whatever is within time had time allotted to it The One receives nothing from anything. It simply apprehends itself in its own perfect light The One is majestic. The One is measureless majesty Chief of all Realms Producing all realms Light Producing light Life Producing life Blessedness Producing blessedness Knowledge Producing knowledge Good Producing goodness Mercy Producing mercy Generous Producing generosity [It does not “possess” these things.] It gives forth light beyond measure, beyond comprehension. [What can I say?] His realm is eternal, peaceful, silent, resting, before everything. He is the head of every realm sustaining each of them through goodness.

John 15:3 “Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you. 4. Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me. 5. I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing.” A few points of thought on this one: ”word which I have spoken unto you” It’s important to note that Jesus as the “word” is not referring to spoken word but to the light/energy that he brings. The second thought I had is that Jesus is very much bringing us into the equation in this verse. We are an extension of the light that he brought into the world... This reminds me of, Matthew 18:20 “For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.” Galatians 6:2 “Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.” This is a big concept/practice in some mystical Christian traditions, is sharing the light with one another... relying on each other and being the “branches” from the vine.

This book explores the beliefs and practices of the Quanzhen (Complete Realization) School of the Taoist religion during its founding phases in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. The Quanzhen School is a living tradition. It is the dominant school of monastic Taoism in the People’s Republic of China, and numerous non-monastic Taoist temples and organizations in southern China, Taiwan, and other countries claim an affiliation with the Quanzhen tradition as well.1 The emergence and rapid growth of the Quanzhen School during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries has frequently been cited as a pivotal event in the history of Taoism. Quanzhen Taoism in its doctrinal content has been described as the foremost representative of a “new Taoist religion” (xin daojiao) that in very fundamental ways differed from the “old Taoist religion” ( jiu daojiao).