Starjumper

I don't know anything about that yin yang stuff as it applies to energy, I'm not sure it even exists, but it appears I discovered this type of breathing, and it is not the same as slow breathing. Could this type of internal breathing be called embryonic breathing or tidal breathing? I don't know. There are times when I practice slow breathing, timing it with chaniting music so that my breaths are 15, 30, 60, or 90 seconds. I can slow it down to one breath every two minutes or 120 seconds but can only keep it up for three or four breaths. If what I have been doing really is this tai shi internal breathing then keep in mind that the quality, the intent, and the focus, are different than just slow breathing. The key is where it says in the text: "the exhalation should be very slight" which is an auqward way of describing it but better than anything else I can think of. The thing I'm wondering about is how it causes heat. Is hot belly supposed to be a result of internal breathing? That's what made me 'notice' this breathing, because it produced the nice feeling of heat. I have read that having hot belly is part of the alchemical cauldron but I wonder how many others feel hot belly? How rare is it or how common among you practitioners out there in Taobum land?

Hopefully he will be flexible enough and kind enough to do that.

Hey Mak, some say you aren't a master but I think you are. I also believe that things like FUs can work and can be helpful, it's a wonderful manifestation of the mystery.

Me too,

I agree, there is an effect, and I can feel it, about not having dogs in particular. There's another Taoist system for dealing with dog shit, and it's REAL Taoism. It comes to us from a long line of thousands of years of careful sages and martial artists. It's called being observant. WATCH wear you step. You can just say Fuk a Duk to Poo FUs. But for the religious who might be gazing up at the sky while walking along, busy busy thinking thinking; rather than observant, anything goes, the fuferpooferU could help you feel better, $80. May the fu be with you, and with your spirit, Amen, Happy new Years, and pass the FAAT.

No there isn't. I think Tao Bums is so popular because of almost no moderation and all things Taoist are lumped together in one category and it makes it seem really busy and energetic, and posters need that energy. It becomes a problem when there are so many new posts each day that it is difficult to find and follow ones you are interested in. All the old ideas get lost in the past so fast it's kind of disappointing and I can feel how others are feeling this. I want to take this opportunity to invite you all to my forum, Empirical Taoism, which has it's beautiful design thanks to Taomeow and is organized by myself. It's a quiet place I think many of you have checked out before, very quiet there lately, but it does have easy to find threads in different categories. I'm no longer 'trying' to make it a success and don't care about it but there is some good information on my special type of nei kung in it. If you people want to take some 'overflow' there then you are welcome to it. people could check back and forth and use both forums, or whatever. Anyway I won't get that involved myself but there is moderation of sorts. I'll just post a link to the Empirical Taoism forum in my signature line for awhile.

Maybe to him ghosts vs. good spirits are different types of entities?

Thanks, I did see that but didn't pay attention to it or do the math because I was looking for 'breathing' type words. My teacher also taught about 'imbibing', and in our 'formles' way it was done without saying a word or any formal non verbal teaching on it either. Learning is all about careful observation and imitation, something only masters do. Wouldn't it be nice to only have masters as students? Dream on.

Any ideas about what the thirty six Imbibments means? Notice it is capitalized. I guess. I'm going to see if I can get hot belly, hot solar plexus, and hot heart all at the same time, I think I felt a hint of it earlier, should be fun. To me it seems it would be wrong to feel heat higher than heart level. I don't know if it would be cool to have a hot butt though?.

This seems to be the pertinent part: So it seems to me that I've been doing this, something I discovered, and it is the kind of breathing which in me produces hot belly, which feels very pleasant. After recently energizing my heart more I found I can breath like this while focusing on my heart and it produces a feeling of warmth there, which feels NICE.

I gave up on being a real Taoist and I was happy to be a fake Taoist ... but now ... Taoism is getting too weird. I say heck with being a Taoist, I'm being an adult Indigo now. They like me, a psychic one told me I'm a guardian for the coming New Age revolution. Whatever guardian means, I don't know, but I like it, sounds good for me! Yeah! Starman = guardian! Now I have to figure out how to sell diddly squat in order to cash in on it. Anybody have any idea what guardian means?

I know! What are those idiots thinking? That the shit bag fairy is going to come along after them and clean up? I'm amazed at how people can be sometimes, like the people take a shower at the exercise club and just walk away and leave the shower running on hot. I can't understand people doing those kinds of things and it's a slap in the face each time. Interesting, so are you trained in the Native American ways? No need to be sad about that.

Thanks, I don't Fu, so I can see my problem is I don't bathe enough, that's why my love life sucks. Sorry I missed the article on the pomelo leaf. I'm tempted to get another wolf, they are so much more affectionate and intelligent than dogs. When you look in their eyes you can tell there is a light on inside. Yah, face planting, like in the movies, it could make you wish you were wearing sunglasses

It makes you wonder about that four letter word: "shit", doesn't it?? the SH sound is the liver sound, isn't it? and the liver is connected to anger. SO! the foo for poo is to yell SHIIIIIT!! at the top of your lungs, but the big question is: which came first? Did the cave man yell sheeeiiit when he was angry in general and then only later yell it when he stepped in dinosaur poo with bare feet and have it squish out between his toes; or was dinosaur poo already called shit first and only later was the word assigned to more everyday mundane f*cking disasters? Actually, coming upon a sudden fit of pissoffedness, one can just yell "SHHHHH" and leave the "IT" off the end, but it does add some flair to ad the 'it' at the end, and that's the English way. So the big question is, which came first, the dinopsaur poo or the anger? and does it matter in Taoism?

Well no wonder my love life sucks. I'm a taoist and I have a dog, damn!! I knew I shouldn't have. In fact I used to have two dogs, a wolf/malmute and a coyote/malmute. Once I was walking with a friend in a park in Oregon when far off in the distance I saw one of the dogs go to the bathroom. I wanted to secure the area so walked over there, which was the direction my car was located in anyway. As I stood there I looked all around and didn't see a thing so I gave up. Turns out I was standing right on it (turns out wizards have this magical homing ability) but I didn't notice anything till I got in the car. The smell was mighty, so I turned around and demanded of the dogs: "Do you dogs smell anything?!" They shrugged their shoulders and said: "No, we don't smell anything" I didn't want to get another dog this last time, they chase the deer away, but cats bring live rattlesnakes indoors. What to do, what to do? Is there a Fu to ward off dog poo?

Thanks Freeform for all the insights. I'm going to tackle it in bits and pieces. I agree there will be relationships caused by cultivating, and part of what I'm working on here is trying to figure out who I'm related to and what they are =) For example, a Taoist nun (named Sister, some here may know of her) asked me to do some long distance healing work on her and so I did. She said it was working well but after a few days of this I felt something negative on her end and then she sent me an email asking me to stop, so I did. Much later I found out that she had felt I was a demon. It could be because I used some bad language on another forum, it could be because she detected my connection to Sai Baba (who appears to be tainted), it could be because I'm on the martial path of chi power and I have inherited my teachers lineage of spirits, and it could be some other things. Anyway, to answer your comments about compartmentalization, I feel that chi is different than spirits, whether they be good or bad spirits, because of this: Chi is something I feel, spirits are some who have talked to me telepathically a few times, and demons I have seen a couple of times. So that is why I think they are different things, chi is something I feel in my body and in others, and spirits I've seen and heard from. Now, as to why I am concerned with power. Power is my path. My teacher said enough times "More power, more power", that is the form of the path. The focus is on cultivating a lot of chi power in our hands and making our aura bigger. In other words it's on the mechanical aspects of chi power, and it's to make us healthy, which makes us happy. It has nothing to do with personal power over others AT ALL. I am aware of love being powerful, and perhaps it can increase chi power. Now I will explain why I'm 'trying' to open my heart: In the beginning and for several years we cultivated a lot of chi power and flow in our bodies, and then we used this to energize our heads. After developing a lot of hand power and generalized body chi power we opened the crown point and focused on it so that large amounts of energy go out the head top in a beam of energy which goes far, and for a long time that was my primary focus. In my mind this provides one with a sort of cosmic consciousness which helps to inform the rest of the path. Later, many years later, I started to work my way downward. (keep in mind that during this whole time I had a lot of chi flow in the body and I can feel hot belly by focusing there and breathing a little bit so wasn't neglecting the body) Next I (with the help of energy work from my practice buddy and #1 student) worked on opening my third eye more and having a lot of chi beam out of that. Later I worked on the throat and so on, working my way down. So that's why I'm working some on opening the heart, it's simply because it's next in line. So far I have energy radiating quite far out from my heart but I think it should open wider than the narrowish beam which goes out my head top. I agree with giving up control as it is obvious, however, since my only 'power' focus is chi power it does not apply. There is no reason to 'give up' chi power to open your heart, and it can't be given up in any case. To lose chi power I would need to poison myself and become sick, I guess. I already am opening my heart, energetically for now as that is the focus, always on energy. As far as being prepared to lose everything, I don't know if I'm there quite yet but I've been close. I'll work on the rest of it later.

Shaking, in my opinion, is part of any 'complete' Nei kung practice but it's just a small part. I've been doing it, and there are very many forms or ways of doing it, for over fifteen years. It will help anyones practice because it generates energy. There is a saying in TCM: shaking the body wards off all illness, and they like to exaggerate, but it implies how important they think it is.

Excellent questions and very insightful, thank you! I can answer some and have pondered some of them but they are all good ones to hold in mind. I'm wondering, did you know a person called Salty? Hi Rain, what is it you are saying no to? That we don't owe anything to those who grant us their favors of power? I guess that makes sense if you consider that they are there to have their power used.

Thank you for the explanation of yang chi. Also, your explanations have helped me to understand why I should follow through on my natural tendency to eat fewer animal products. Concerning yang chi, my Chinese herbal doctor has given me some herbs to increase kidney yang chi, she says it will make me younger.

I'm a fan of Shirdi too. Someday I might go visit Sathya, I'm writing a bit about him in a new thread.

Thanks Dao Zhen. My path is internal alchemy also but it comes from the kung fu side, yet it is still very much Taoist. My teacher is one of the five most powerful chi kung masters and is functionally omniscient so I'm sure he knows about all these things. He taught differently though. The path of Tien Shan Chi Kung (NOT associated with Tien Shan kung fu from Taiwan!) and my teacher's Way is so much into what I feel is the true spirit of Taoism, is so much into the formless, that we have no rules or guidelines. Everything we do is simply what becomes a natural tendency as a result of our practice and Te, and the practice does seem to take one along these steps, or at least some of them. I frequently find that I am doing 'things' that are parts of advanced practices that I was not taught and am simply doing them because I discovered them and it feels right. Keep in mind I'm not doing this from the view point of beginner/spontaneous chi kung that many here talk about, but from the viewpoint of someone with extensive training and a good start in the right direction, and that direction is all about the formless, and on every level. As far as my diet is concerned I used to eat more meat, and my teacher said we should do it too, but that was at the beginning stages of practice. The way I feel now is that I should be essentially vegetarian, but it is difficult because I let my wife cook for me, and she doesn't like green stuff. Lately I am feeling more strongly about eating raw foods. So these are my thoughts. We eat meat in the beginning to cultivate strength and chi power but then later we need to be more open to the environment and more 'transparent' and so we become vegetarian because it makes us cleaner. being cleaner makes us more open, sensitive, transparent, and in particular, more open to the spirit realm. Eating more raw food takes us even further in this same direction, and that's the direction of my natural tendency. Lately I have more of a tendency to not eat, I hardly ever have a desire to eat, even if I feel hungry, and so MAYBE, my body is trying to get into this breatharian state. So we don't have rules or guidelines but maybe I'm still on this path anyway?? I have no idea what yang chi is and I don't associate it with anything, for example erections, as you mentioned. I hope you can explain what yang chi is and if you can feel it then what does it feel like and how is it different than 'regular' chi. I think the diet thing can go full circle, depending on what people want, because when my teacher became omniscient he didn't like it. He said it was like being tuned into a news radio station 24 hours a day, and 99% of the news was bad. So he started eating meat and smoking cigars in an effort to turn it off. Sometimes I think it would be nice to be 'taught' the rules and guidelines, but I like being 'formless' because it appeals to my laziness.

This makes sense to me and I was thinking of writing along the same lines. That eating me is best during the beginning stages but later as we become more attuned to our bodies the purification effect of vegetarian adds energ, later eating more raw foods seems like a good idea. I have heard of breatharians. What path is that?

Why do you ask stupid questions and not address the subject? Because you can and you can't, I know, I know. I don't believe ANYTHING. Belief is the death of wisdom. However I do get feelings about things and I experience a fair amount of synchronicity so I wonder about things sometimes and am looking for some intelligent discussion here on this subject, so keep trying . Hopefully Cat and Freeform and other people with wisdom will help out. That sounds like a dumb belief to me, and I think the universe is a little more complicated than that. I think he's posted a bit on a different forum under a different name =)

Hey, waitaminute, I'm a Taoist, and I eat meat. My teacher put it this way once when I was waxing poetic about vegetarian. "If you are sitting in a cave all day humming to yourself you can eat sprouts but if you are doing this chi kung you need to eat meat!"