traveler

I am looking for the Chinese version of Taoist Yoga, Alchemy & Immortality, by Lu Kuan Yu. Google tells me that the original text is called, The Secrets of Cultivating Essential Nature and Eternal Life. Specifically, what I am looking for is a public domain version of this text in the original language. Thank you in advance for your help. Traveler

I am less than a novice but interested. Google translates 旨 as purpose and 指 as finger. Google says the symbols mean: 性 sex, nature, character 命 life, fate, order 法 law, method, act 诀 tactics, formula 明 clear, bright, understand 指 finger, refers to. Is this really The Secrets of Cultivating Essential Nature and Eternal Life?

Thank you.

Interesting read, this. From your descriptions here, I see a good correlation between these element aspects of our journey and The Color Code by Taylor Hartman. There are four colors which define four types of personalities. Red is proactive and bossy, blue is carrying and loving, white is peaceful and a bit stubborn, and yellow is fun-centered. For yellow, the world is divided simply into fun and not fun. Fire would be red for nothing gets done without action and reaction. Where do the other elements fit these personality types? Or, do they? Taylor Hartman says we all have a main color or personality with bits of the other types added in. The goal is to drop the negative aspects of our main color type and add the positive traits from the other colors. So, we have five elements. If you view these as parts of your character, then you can see that the Fusion of the Five Elements is attempting to achieve the same thing as Taylor Hartman is suggesting with his Color Code: To improve the character through mixing, removing, and adding aspects of our personal traits and tendencies. The elements are a way to organize our thoughts and set goals for self improvement. Self-evolution also seems to be an automatic process which we are only able to observe, once we allow our deeper self to surface and take more control of our progress. Regardless of how you view any of these ideas, one thing is certain, there is a process going on inside of us, and in our environment as well, which cycles over and over, but not in circles; it is a spiral, ever reaching upward into new inner experiences.

In response to taiwabbit's post, your way of expressing this is how I have been seeing this. It is nice to see it in print. As Michael Winn stated, there are two parts, which I call expanding consciousness and energy movement, and that I personally call the Fusion of Heaven and Earth; when these two halves are brought together there is an inner explosion, every time. This is a basic concept so I am not saying anything new here. I equate intension with heaven and body movement with earth. A new something emerges when you combine these approaches in any way. Such as action following intent, using affirmations and energy meridians like EFT employs, and so forth. Expanding consciousness can be simply that - letting down the barriers and allowing your concept of self to enlarge outward. This is different than moving energy along a meridian such as running the orbit. So, what if you lit up the Mortal Gate (CV1) and then moved energy up the thrusting channel to the lower tan t'ien, then while holding that, expand your awareness outward to engulf the belly? In some small way, at least, the portal into True Earth opens and there is a new sensation that fills your body and flows outward, without center, like you've been connected to something far greater than either your upward moving energy or your expanding consciousness. So, taiwabbit, I liked the way you expressed this. Another way to look at this is found in Hua Hu Ching: you are to give service in all directions undiscriminatingly (that is the energy movement part, doing), and you are to adopt the view that there is no separation between any of the parts of creation (that's the expanding consciousness part). If you can follow these two paths simultaneously, a third path presents itself as the portal into True Earth opens. deci belle, I also liked your post as much and for the same reasons.

Unity in diversity. When we can see every path as a valid experience, then the many become one. It is OK if we disagree because this only strengthens the whole fiber of our collective experience. Grasping: you simply lose track of what it is you were grasping at; you look and cannot find it. Like thinking that you were being attracted to the ground by gravity and then finding that you are actually floating in the air. Is floating or grounding the better path? Who cares as long as what you are experiencing is working for you. Awakening is a never-ending spiral: some times you need to be attached to certain energies or aspects of who you are, other times there is nothing there and you find yourself floating free of all entanglements. Around and around the great wheel of creation we move, discovering new and wonderful things at every turn. Consider: you cannot understand what it feels like to be free until you have grasped at stuff. One cannot exist without the other.

I agree with your explanation. It makes sense and it feels right intuitively. Eric Yudelove describes ascending jing as smoke-like. I can't recall where I read this next bit, but the ascending earth and descending heavenly energies were described as meeting in the body at different points, depending on where the work is needed. In relation to our discussion of the tzu hour, this would indicate different times of the night for this meeting which would activate a healing in the meridian that is moving at the time. There is a paragraph in Taoist Yoga which gives a clue, perhaps. Here it is: I wish I could read and understand the original in Chinese. But, the English translation here indicates that the tzu hour begins when the penis stands without provocation. "When the penis stands during sleep at night this moment is called the hour tsu ..." If it stands at 6:00 AM one morning during the time when the stomach meridian is active, then at that moment the energies of earth and heaven are meeting there for rejuvenation. Quote: "It is important to avail oneself of this moment when the penis stands to gather the generative force for sublimation, for the gathering of it during the negative half of the day is ineffective." This indicates that the moment for sublimation is anytime during the positive half of the day. Since the moment for sublimation is named as the tzu hour, this suggests that the penis may become stiff any time during the first half of the day and that this is the correct time for sublimation that day. I could be wrong, which is most likely when butting up against traditional interpretations of this stuff, but my experience shows me that if I am being celibate, my penis gets stiff without provocation in the morning at various times, different each day. I run the orbit about nine times and it retracts. The time this occurs is the correct moment for sublimation that day. This idea is what your post #10 awoke in me. And I got excited because I thought I was seeing some light shed on this subject of the tzu hour.

Thanks for the book list. Much appreciated. What I am really interested in is what you said about the tzu hour. Is it the heart meridian or the gall bladder meridian that is being targeted by running the fourfold orbit in the tzu hour? My intuition tells me it is the heart's true fire that is being awakened.

Cycles within cycles. Each time the work is "complete" the results are planted back in the earth to grow into the next cycle. I like your way of putting this a lot. Is there an end to the creative cycles? I am beginning to think not. Where can I read more about this Cinnabar-mercury-silver-gold explanation? Please explain the discrepancy that the heart meridian is active around noon, and the gall bladder meridian is the one active near midnight. I know you will have a good explanation. I feel that the heart is the key and so your statement makes perfect sense to me, except that the heart meridian is active at the opposite end of the day, around noon.

Andrei, that's as good an explanation as I've ever seen. Where on the Kabbalah tree of life would you place these steps?

I'd like to express my feels about the word Master and its various uses. Self-mastery refers to a level of proficiency in this school called life. The Inner Master enters your conscious awareness at a certain point in your spiritual path and eventually you come to know that you and this master are the same "person", you are One. That brings me to the third use of the word master, the teacher-student relationship. This is a complex issue. On one hand, the relationship between student and teach is giving and receiving, one-sided. On the other hand, it is a fellowship where teacher and student are equal reflections of each other. No true master will allow the first type of relationship to exist for it creates dualism, the very thing that the master is trying to help the student escape. Though I use the word master in reference to a teacher, there is no hierarchy implied, only one of greater vibration attempting to assist another in their path of spiritual evolution. Love is the key to a healthy teacher-student relationship. Love and Unity which are essentially the same thing. Ra, the entity who channeled through Carla Rueckert, explains how they appeared in Egypt and attempted to teach them the Law of One. Why did they consider their relationship with the Egyptians "hypocritical"? Because they were elevated to the status of gods due to the fact that they appeared as beings of light and in shape vastly different from the human races. If they weren't gods, then what were they? Teachers. There is no hierarchy in heaven or earth that is not an illusion. More quotes regarding the teacher-student relationship: Here is an excerpt from the spiritual experiences of Mary Sparrowdancer. At this point in her narrative, a being of Light has been appearing to her for some time and she decides to begin addressing this being as her Master. She is rebuked. Whether this story is fact or fiction matters little here. There is a lesson to be learned nonetheless. That goes for the words of Ra, Neale Walsch's God, Lao Tzu, Nirod, or P'taah - their teachings are all potentially fiction. What does it matter? Listen to your heart for that is the only place you will find truth. There are mixed messages in this article, I admit it. The siddha offered this solution, "Unity in diversity".

We eat meat here, but not excessively.We almost never eat wheat. Quite often in the morning, we eat a cooked cereal of our own make which is a lot more nutritious than your average kind. It is composed of quinoa, ameranth, teff, buckwheat, chia, brown rice, and milo. A number of these grains are complete proteins. It keeps a person going longer than whole wheat does. The flavor is great. We grind the mix to make pancakes or tortillas as well.

Back to the chemical angle to behavior. Does the herb, sage, clean the person or place, as in smudging, or does it change our perception through inner-body chemistry? Cause and effect, not sin and judgment. Or, moral codes which have a foundation in truth. Two sides of the coin. So to speak in absolutes on this subject is not practical. I stand corrected. All would agree that murder is morally wrong if committed in cold blood, like for pleasure or anger. On the other hand, to not worship God on a certain day or in a certain way is not a moral issue, to me. But in some circles this is a serious breech of moral conduct. Perhaps we should, if living among a people with expectations of this type, comply to avoid consequences. What is "sin" in one social setting is not "sin" elsewhere. Let's use nudity as an example; at the local hot springs this is OK, but not sitting on a park bench downtown. Ah yes, our thoughts seem to have wandered away from the topic. It's like when a circle of people pass a whispered phrase one to another around the circle to find the original phrase to be quite different from the end product.

Could we look at desires vs. choices? Are desires deeper rooted than choices? If so, then to a change our desires would effect the surface stuff we call choices. For instance, what if you could change your preference for apples over oranges on a fundamental root level so that you now automatically chose oranges over apples if given a choice? Then there is the very common paradox: you want a thing but another part of you knows that different choice would, ultimately, be better for you.

The analogy works when you explain it to us. I recall a quote from ACIM that seems to fit:

I like that one. If I may use the example, this is like being capable of celibacy. Sex becomes a conscious choice after that, not an urge which is out of control. My psychologist friend tells me we are all mentally ill. I ran into this snag a few years back when I naively thought that our personalities were who we are. A study of Tourette's syndrome showed me that our personalities are chemical-based. There was this great jazz drummer who had Tourette's. His spasms would throw him into some very bizarre rhythms which he incorporated into his drumming, making him an exceptional jazz drummer. But Tourette's other symptoms made it hard for him to keep a job. He began taking haldol, a drug for depression which regulates the serotonin in the brain. His Tourette's symptoms went away and his personality changed drastically, making him a modal employee but a mediocre drummer. He compromised by going off haldol on the weekends when he enjoyed him drumming. OK. That is not an isolated example, is it. Some people are wondering if DMT isn't responsible for our spiritual experiences. Meditation is said to produce DMT which then alters our perception of life. Overdoses of oxytocin has a great effect on the personality. Deep breathing creates DMT and hugging creates oxytocin, some claim. So, Rara, your question certainly has validity. We are born with a certain chemistry, BUT we can also alter that chemistry. I have altered my chemistry. We all do this by what choices we make within our limitations. Choices made of a certain nature expand the spectrum of what choices we can make in the future. I have been told that the chakra lights are what creates our personality, on that level of consciousness. So, we have chemistry on the physical level and chakra lights on a deeper level. If we work on our chakra lights, then that makes a larger variety of choices available to us. For instance, if we would like to be a loving person but find ourself, time and again, acting out towards others in a hateful way, then open the heart chakra, which creates more inner love. If we'd really rather be a visionary, then wake up the third eye. And so forth. Or, like the book, Color Code, says, work on the character traits directly and rework our personality until we are endowed with the gifts we desire. There is always room for work here. This is, of course, my opinion, and subject to change at any time. But, I used to be an angry SOB. I had a real problem. I almost never get angry any more. We all need healing from time to time.

Forever. Another way of saying this is to describe meditation as delving deeper and deeper into your center. At some point, it gets to very quiet. You can still sense your mind's chatter going on but it is all happening on the outside, like in another room, closer to the surface of your consciousness. Yes. A vary good way of describing this. "There is no effort involved in it." Eventually, the chatter in the outer room of our mind ceases out of lack of being listened to. What we give our attention to grows, what we ignore fades. Then there is this awareness that a great something is looking at us, that we are the focus of something huge outside ourselves (or perhaps just beyond the center of ourselves). An intense focus. Like a rabbit caught in the headlights of a speeding car. We can't move. All thoughts and emotions have flown away. This is the squeeze I mentioned earlier, the tight spot in the vortex.

Could it be that we, as the microcosm, go through this same expansion and contraction cycle? Think of life as a vortex (which is a complex thought-form); there is the wide part and the narrow part, like an hourglass, which repeats over and over. The quiet state of un-identification takes place in the squeeze, the narrow part of the vortex where time seems to stand still. "The balance of power shifts after un-identification takes place," then we are off again into chaos and imbalance, to create new opportunities to experience life.

Is there such a thing as sin? Or is it a product of our perceptions only?

The veil of King Solomon's Temple had cherubim embroidered on it. The idea is that by entering the Holy of Holies you are reentering the Garden of Eden which is the goal. We start there and return to it. How do we get past the flaming sword? By embracing it. That is the meaning behind the Five Points of Fellowship in Masonic ritual. It is embracing the sword, thus gaining admittance to the next level of the game. Years ago, I used a meditation in which I drew the image of Jesus to me, seeing him standing right in front of me and then we hugged. Then He stepped into my Temple-body and we merged. Then with Jesus kneeling with me at the altar of my body (which is the heart) we gave the whole world a loving hug. I repeated this meditation for three days straight before I had the mystical experience I was seeking. I also agree with this because, ultimately, this is where you will do the Great Work.

OK, I'm going to take a crack at this topic. I was teaching a meditation group a method of getting a quiet mind last week. I asked them to see the atoms of their body then shift their focus to the space between the atoms. It's amazing how this simple act can quiet the mind. One lady asked why I was asking her to do this, because she never figured out how. Another person told her that he envisioned floating in the space between the planets instead which she thought was an easier method. So, I explained that the left brain understands the atoms or the matter that makes up the body, but when asked to focus on the space between the atoms it refuses to do it, saying that this is impossible, and so the left brain turns off which allows your right brain to take over your conscious state. The right brain doesn't function through the thought process and so you get a quiet mind in this way. Manifestation is brought about by thought empowered by emotion. It takes both brain-halves to manifest. The further you are along your path of spiritual evolution, the less time there is between your thought/emotion and physical manifestation. This buffer-zone is here to protect us from our thoughts. Oh, that is deep! I like it. Very good. On the spiritual path there are times when thoughts and emotions completely disappear. Then there are times when there is so much Light streaming through you that one second of this downloading intelligence could fill many pages of English and then not really explain what you learned. Those are the extremes. At times, you many find this void taking you over for large amounts of time, even months or over a year. Sometimes the bliss may fill your world for extended periods. In the end, they merge. The Light or bliss and the non-beingness become a third thing. This third thing is not bliss nor is it devoid of thoughts and emotions. It is something new - a new kind of thought that does not fill the mind with chatter; the emotion of love is predominant but you are capable of feeling the whole spectrum of emotions as well. So, I wholeheartedly agree that in the end, at the bottom of our existence, there is a place where thoughts and awareness are the same thing. In a state of Totality, all options are open to us. I'll quote Dumbledore: It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities. What are thoughts? I read "Zero Limits" by Joe Vitale and Dr. Len. Here is a summary of the book's ideas mingled with my own observations as I recorded them back in 2010: We meditate so that we can quiet our minds and when we become quiet our body chemistry opens up a portal into other worlds and we begin to communicate with the deeper parts of our self and attract guides. We also meditate because in this state the healing process is accelerated. Yes. Perfect explanation. There are so many ways of describing concepts. it is not the descriptions that count, only the concepts. If the "bad wolf" is pushed away or shunned, this strengthens the shadow-self. To truly overcome the negative in our lives we must look the "bad wolf" squarely in the eyes and say, "I know who you are. You are me." And then that wolf will leave and not return. When you focus on the positive parts of your life they naturally become more a part of your life experiences. It's like you don't have to judge which wolf is bad and which is good, but acknowledge that both are who you are. It is by this recognition (with unconditional love) that the bad wolf diminishes and the good wolf grows stronger. I was talking to a friend a few years back and discussing religion. He was a newly hatched Christian and he was not liking what I was saying. In exasperation, he finally said, "Then you don't believe in the Devil!" I replied, "I won't say that I don't believe in the Devil, only that he does not seem to be living in my neighborhood." You get to a point where the "bad wolf" dwindles down to a very small puppy and then ceases to exist in your world. Absolutely. Yes. Our free will which leads to free actions create chaos, causing "knee-jerk habituated reaction to stimuli" until, little by little, a new way of reacting to this world begins to emerge. I love the words of Hatonn and I'll let him explain: Here is a new take on the topic, and an important one. Could this be restated to say that thoughts become the building blocks for our evolving awareness? They define our beliefs which are only thoughts we have thought repeatedly. At some point the ego is integrated and stops being such a bossy thing. Our new thoughts and desires become the new building blocks for a new spiritually evolved self. The Christians call this being Born Again. Yabyum24's closing statement cannot be improved upon in its perfection.

Yes.

Here is how to perform the 6th Rite again, singled out of the book's text: I would like to make an addition to the way this yoga pose is performed. When sex energy is drawn upward into the body it acts as an amplifier: if you are angry then uplifted sex energy will make you more angry. If you are joyful, you become more so, if sad, it deepens into depression. Do you get it? The uplifted sex energy does not judge, it simply amplifies what is already there. If you place your hands over your heart center as you breathe deeply after each repetition of the 6th Rite, the uplifted sex energy is transmuted into love energy. Therefore it is love that gets amplified as you perform this yoga pose. You can place your hands on your chest, palms down, one on top of the other, or you can press your palms together, fingers extended, and place this over your heart center, or you can cross your forearms over the heart center as the Masons do. Each culture has its traditional methods for this. Experiment and see what works best for you.

This is an old thread but I'd like to add a bit to it. Maybe someone else would as well. If you ask Google to search for the 6th Tibetan Rite this thread this is nearly all there is to choose from. So, I applaud TheTaoBums for providing this thread. After reading the above posts I will add that semen retention and celibacy are two different things. The energy experience from each is vastly different. The Big Draw and the Sixth Rite have similarities and each can be used interchangeably. There is another version of this found in a most unlikely place: the teachings of Paul Bragg. His Super Power Breath is quite similar to the 6th Rite. Here is a description of it: I have my own twist on this kind of energy work which I have posted at http://thetaobums.com/topic/31684--/page-6 post #86. So, semen retention suggests there is sexual activity going on, and celibacy means sublimation without sex. I suggest that the 6th Rite, the Super Power Breath and my version of this are most effective for being celibate. There are so many more convenient ways to sublimate sex energy during sex than getting out of bed to do this yoga pose. The real beauty of these yoga poses goes beyond sex. They are grounding and will balance emotions. If you are sexually aroused and don't want to be, perform one of these yoga poses and you will not be aroused, not in the slightest. If you are depressed or angry, performing this same yoga pose will eliminate these negative emotions. The Taoist would say that you have transmuted them into positive emotions. However you want to look at this, the results of performing this kind of yoga pose is a change of your emotional state. Here is a quote from a letter I recently sent to a friend who is trying to be celibate.

I found the posts interesting and informative.