markern

What does your hieroglyphs mean? They are really cool:)

Some time ago I read an article by Michale Winn where he talked about how the practice of kan and li gives a type of balance between the internal masculine and feminine that is not achieved through stilness meditation or through fire methods. He also claimed that achieving this type of balanced lead to a balanced sexuality and balanced romantic and sexual realtionships whereas in many cases fire paths could create more problems with regards to sexulaity. One of his examples was a kundalini yoga master who had young female students give him back rubs in order to get yin energy for his kidneys. More problematic examples was teachers having sexual realtionships to female students in order to get more yin to balance them out. I am wondering what you think of this perspective and also what you think are the consequences of achieving a fair amount of such a balance for a person individually and in realtionships. Will one for example become more androgyn? Glenn Morris talks quite a bit about andorgynity as something that is developed to some extent but it seems obvious that most practioners although maybe going somewhat in that direction remain essentially and clearly masculine or feminine. It seems to me that one remains more or less as yin or yang as is natural for the person but stuill get a sort of balance that was not there to begin with but what does that balance feel like and how does it show in the person and in their realtionships. Dual cultivation is said to be one way of creating more balance in this regard by getting energy from the otehr sex. As I understand it we seek the otehr sex and sexuality in particular preciosely because we yearn for this balance so as to become more whole. One of the ways this plays out is that to some extent we all find people from teh otehr sex that are very masculine or very feminine attractive, at least for the short time, because they offer a strong suply if the oposite energy of ourselves. For the long temr people with the reverse balance we ourselves ahve are more attractive, at elast more beneficial. So for realtionships a person that is 70% yang and 30% yin seeks someone who is 70% yin and 30% yang. But what happens when we get more balanced in this way? I have reqad some say talk about becomeing mroe balanced and mellow in a sense, closer to what the other gender is like. But I have also read people talk about dual cultivation amplifying the differences, the yin of a woman nourishing the yang of a man or something like that. Is there maybe a bit of both going on? a stronger amsculintiy and femininity but at the same time some sort of higher level balance. Maybe a movement from false yang to genuine yang etc.? I have also read people talk about amplifying the differences temporarily to increase attraction and the benefit of dual cultivation. But this contradicts the ayurvedic tehory that it is healthier to balance with slightly different sativic things than to balance with extremely different tamasic and rajasic things. Any thoughts on any of this would be much apreceated:)

There are versions of Tummo in Taoism, amongst inuits, in Sufism and probably most other corners of the world. Santiago has learnt seven or eight different versions from different traditions. Obviously these are taught in different context within these different traditions. What you practice as preliminaries, what you practice alongside it and what you practice after having reached a certain level in your Tummo practice obviously varies significantly. I am betting several of the taoist versions are in systems that are largely based on alchemy with little emphasis on insight meditation such as Dzogchen. The inuits and Sufis I am sure have their own spin on it and their own slightly differnt puspose of using it in their context. There is a version of Tummo taught in KAP that is Santiagos own version based on what he found to work best from the different styles he was thaught. The effects of tummo are here balanced with and work in context with the other practices of KAP and that seems to work just fine. I am not sure if I belive pure alchemical systems with little or no emphasis on insight/wisdom or devotion etc. can bring enlightenment although I am open to the possibility that they might. If it can then Tummo can be used in a pure alchemical contect where its sole purpose is generating energy and purification fo the body as part of a larger set of practices aimed towards transforming the body to get people enlightened. Even if a pure alchemical system does not work I Don`t see why combining an alchmical system that has tummo in it with another form of insight meditation than Dzogchen would work. I personally think KAP lacks some sort of insight meditation and think that combining it with Vipassana or Zen or something similar to maximize the chances of getting enlightened is a very good idea. Maybe the void work in KAP 3 compensates for this lack, I don`t know, but at least adding it in seems reasonable ont eh first two levels. Anyway, I think that a use of tummo in the context of KAP and Vipassana is a good example of how tummo can be taken out of its tibetan context and be used as part of a combined path of alchemy and insight or maybe alchemy alone as a path towards enlightenment. THis is one example of what I think is MANY ways tummo can surve a purpose in other systems.

Aren`t there tummo and yantra teachers in the New York area?

There is one way you can do this safely and benefically and that is through Karezza. It is an extremely simnple form of relaxeed interecourse with almost no momevement. It leads to valey orgasms and not peak orgasms. IF you have ONLY this type of sex then you can go for months or years wihtout spilling your seed and without getting problems from not doing so. THe proof of that you can find at reuniting.info. There are many people in that forum you have gone for many montsh and over a year having karezza sex almost every day and experiecing vitrually no side effects. What fivelementao says is for the most part correct about other methods of semen retention used during more vigorous sex or hotter arousal states but not about Karezza and that can be documented very well. Search through my posts in threads about sexuality and you will find more about this. I warn you though that to do this type of sex, especially when you do not meditate on the side, you need to hardly move and keep the arousal and "hotness" down. Read the material on the reuniting site and ask for advice there.

Michael Lomax writes about a method in his lightwarrior book that no one else that we are aware of (I think) teaches in the west. You can mayby take a few private classes with the KAP people to learn sexual stuff from KAP 2 without doing KAP? I like DIane Richardsons books and so does everyone else it seems. Hert aproach is kind of female centric though and she mentions that there is another form of tantra that is more reliant on the male but that is more difficult. MY hunch is that the male reliant version is more satisfying to the female as they almost always seems to find male leadership in sex more arousing and it presumably creates a more powerfull yang state in the man. THat`s just speculation though and I am on the look for something to read about male "led" tantra. YOu could also ask Set Ananda and Vajradhira as they both have practices a lot of quite advanced tantra. I know a teacher within this system. From waht I can tell through her it seems quite serious and good: http://www.schoolofawakening.com/tachyon-facilitators.php

I have seen people mention that after they started cultivating they noticed significantly more interest from beautiful women, including women that were previously "out of the practioners league". I also read someone mention that after he really opened up his earth chakra he, more or less overnight, noticed much more interest from women. Have any of you noticed such changes? And if so mostly connected to the all round effect of cultivating or to specific occurrences or practices like working on the root, sexual chakra, heart etc. I can definitely see the first four chakras influencing attractiveness. I can also see any sort of powerful and nice energy within a cultivator influencing others attraction to the cultivator as the energy makes them feel nice without them knowing exactly why. Not so sure about the upper chakras though although blissful feelings of course should make people gravitate towards you. How about retention, tantric sex and that sort of thing. Any differences from that?

MOntreal is quite big. I am sure there are some good ones there. You don`t need an unusually powerfull master that can use his energy to put it back quickly just someone skilled in qigong and used to guiding students that can help you with practices and help you asses what is going on. And also go see a TCM doctor. Both herbs and acupuncture helps me with my grounding issues akthough both are slow. Acupuncture also has the benefit of helping to balance out any sort of odd imbalance you are not aware of and that can be part of the problem. Try to find someone that also practices qigong. It does not have to be a master or teacher of any kind just one that himself/herself knows how it feels when energy moves arround etc. THe KAP teachers has guided people via skype and phone in these issues before. THey are wort a shot and can scan your energybody from a distance to see what`s up. I recognize the anxiety you mention very well. For me it was one of the key reasons even grounding meditation ultimately didn`t work for me. I was soo scared of the energy and that created an upward movement of energy that aggravated the problem. When I relaxed energy flowed downwards but ultimately I couldn`t do it. I might have if I had continued I just didn`t have the stomach to risk getting in even worse trouble. So I took the long physical route instead and it is working well only slowly. THe gains are even more solid though so I recomend incorporating that as part of teh strategy lng term even if you find an energetic way to fix the problem. THat way you will be much safer in the future. The other benefits of doing physical practices that helps with this stuff are great to an in themselves worth the effort.

You could contact one of the KAP instructors. THey are very good with that kind of stuff. Long term I would do something to ensure the body is aligned in such a manner that it supports grounding and to learn to move from the dan tien. When movement is initiated from the dan tien like it is in a dancer or a martial artist energy naturally wants to be there. I have been doing pilates for months now to achieve precisely that and have gotten very good results now but it takes a long time to achieve a ubstantial grounding effect through it. ONce you have it though it is very solid because it comes from the way the body is aligned and conditioned to move which is way more solid than where you happened to place your energy last time you practiced. Tai chi is superb for teaching you this. A combination of tai chi and standing meditation (zhan zhuang) should help over the course of enough time. Also rotating your ankles, rubbing the soles of the feet and doing squats help. On alhcemicaltaosim.com Trunk says lateral squats are particularly grounding.

I am considering making a few new taobum user so I can use them as a fanclub voting up every single thing I post making me the most spectacularly popular bum ever. My rating will never be below pluss 100. By the way I just voted up this post with this user so even without making new users I can maintain a fairly decent reputation just by selfloving

My thoughts are: The techniques to achieve this often lead to problems for the practitioner. This frequently means energetic imbalances and energetic overload and it can be genital pain. In hindsight it is often easy to see what people did wrong. Over the years several bums experienced in this has developed a fair share of data on what works and what does not. If you follow this advice you should be safe. Is it beneficial? Absolutely! Done correctly it gives large gains in quality energy. My teacher was a celibate monk in the tibetan budhist system for four years. He says celibacy gave him a big gain in energy. Practicing dual cultivation doubled that gain. Is it necessary? Absolutely not! So many people get such good progress without it and so many teachers I have respect for say it is not necessary that to me it seems clear you don`t need either celibacy or dual cultivation other than for extra help in building up juice for certain energetic practices that might be good but you don`t actually need to get enlightened. To achieve the rainbow body or become an immortal maybe you do need it but in order to get enlightened in the buddhist sense you don`t need either. I personally believe the rainbow body/physical immortality stuff, if it is indeed real, is more like a sidhi/a potentially useful thing rather than something that reflects some sort of final level of enlightenment. If you look through my posts in threads concerning sexuality you will find most of the essential collective wisdom of thetaobums about retention/dual cultivation summed up including links to a couple of other useful sites and mention of useful books. THe most important aspects of doing it safe and balanced concerns laying the foundation solidly with correct non sexual practices like belly breathing etc. to proceed slowly and to learn to do it more in a yin way based on awareness, gentle guidance of the breath, subtle intent and having it happen as spontaneously and naturally as possible rather than through forceful contraction of muscles or forceful movement of energy. By the way both stillness movement and KAP include methods of dual cultivation that appear to be good. With regards to naturalness. I have actually read about a few people that have accidentally ended up practicing basic forms of dual cultivation without knowing about the methods. By that I mean men learning to have multiple internal valley orgasms without ejaculation and both the man and woman having valley orgasms as opposed to peak orgasms and both experiencing exchange of energy. I think if one has a high level of awareness and just listens deeply to oneself when having sex with a partner one truly loves there is a fair chance that one eventually slips into something close to this. It would usually require an awareness level that seldom come from anyyhing other than meditation and qigong or yoga but some rare people have so much of it to begin with that it can happen without it. So from that perspective I think it is a very natural practice it is just that most people are just not in tune enough with themselves to slip into it. I also think that this spirtualizes sex in a truly profound way and turns sex into a valuable cultivation practice and helps spiritualize, balance and maintain the relationship in a profound way. So from a spiritual perspective I think practicing these methods is pure brilliance. At reuniting.info you can read more about how this sort of sex can lead to balanced and lasting relationships. THey yap about not having orgasms but clarify int eh forum that the actually mean the tantric internal climax and the type of angelic dual cultivation Lao tzu speaks of so don`t let that confuse you.

As mentioned a lot of Frantzis` system can be leart without a teacher. You can also learn Springforestqigong from DVDs and you can take KAP via skype. You can also learn standing meditation without a teacher. Also healing sounds and inner smile you can learn by yourself. THey are highly useful, you can incorporate them into most other systems and you can do them while doing other stuff like sitting on the subway (the sounds can be done subvocaly and the smile is easy to do without others taking note of it).

As an illustration of the potential power of NLP type stuff as a tool to influence others check out the october man sequence, the mother of all mindfuck tools.

Yes cuddling will help a lot to balance you out. Read this: reuniting.info Good to see you her again Pietro! I am curious how much active moving is possible while still keeping the energy cool. The karezza approach advocates hardly any movement at all.

Hi Manitou! Do you practice a system of qigong/meditation/yoga? Kundalini should over time get integrated in a manner where it does not bother you just enhance your life (although make it a bit strange perhaps) and a good system of qigong/meditation/yoga should help achieve that goal. Have you read Path notes by Glenn morris by the way? It has an interesting account of his kundalini awakening.

I am in New York right now and suffering from jet lag and would like to go have some acupuncture followed by a massage. Anyone local know of a good place to go?

after reading pages and pages of talk about all the "bad" people being judged and getting what they deserve while only the few good (Falun Gong practioners) people should be allowed to be saved I thought what Enishi said in the karma strikes again thread was nice food for thought for the judgemental ones amongst us: "Keep in mind that karma is not merely created by physical actions, but by thoughts and emotions (both conscious and unconscious). I don't want to sound arrogant, but the desire to see a perpetrator suffer for their actions is itself a bad energy attractor for the thinker. One's only thought and desire in that case should (ideally) be to hope that the perpetrator comes to understand their mistakes and feels remorse. " Haven"t seen much of that from the Falun crowd.

I have read that many people don`t just stand and focus when doing standing meditation but do breathwork or active meditations or some sort of more active physical work. FOr example one guy wrote that after relaxing completely he would imagine hugging a tree and tehn trying to pull the tree backwards, forwards to the sides etc. I played arround with it a bit and that can be a real workout if you do it for some time. And it seems to activate ALL your muscles. SOme posters also write about learning to really use the poses actively but I haven`t read much more descriptions of how to do that than this. Anyone care to fill me in? I am also wondering about what happens when you do more active meditations while standing. THey way I think of it is that if you just stand you get a certain effect but if you do for example fusion while standing you get a lot less of the original effect and exchange it with a fusion efect. So you are not just adding you are exchanging. Maybe the trade of is good but it still seems to me like it would be a trade of. In a similar manner I would supose doing Vipassana while standing would change the energetic process from what it is if you just let it be an energetic practice. Any thoughts on this will be much apreciated.

DO you take it before meals? As a ginger tea?

Yes, after doing it for months I have now finally gained a substantial effect from pilates. I am much more grounded (still couldn`t safely meditate though), my awareness is returning into the body and down into teh dan tien after having felt like it was outside me and above my head, sort of. And everything feels much better and smoother, my spine is loosening up again, the horrible pressure in teh chest is lossening a lot etc. A lot of realxation comes from realying on your core muscles to do the job and not use the superficial muscles elsewhere. After getting very slow results with everything I have been doing I have gotten good results with pilates, with cranio sacral therapy and rolfing (much more relaxed, balanced and physically aligned), weights (a little more vital, a bit stronger and looking a lot better and feeling confident because of it), herbs and acupuncture (they seem to slowly balance, relax and build stuff up and congnitive work to get me thnking and emotions straight, and last but not least taking controll over all teh practical things in my life and not letting everything be a mess. I am still lacking the final breakthrough with regards to energy and brainpower and grounding though but all three are now much better finally. Since spleen and digestion are issues for you Wuji pose would be especially good as it does a lot for teh spleena and everything in realted to digestion and the whole stomach and intestine area and it boosts the kdineys a lot. To me standing meditation felt like teh best anti burnout pill ever and wuji felt like it balanced out the issues I mentioned fast. Unfortunately I can`t do any such stuff for some time yet as I can`t handle the energy produced before I am more straightened out by pilates. Even standing meditation ultimately set of my crown chakra too much although I also expereinced the grounding effects at the same time. I needed a low energy way of grounding and pilates provides that over the very long term.

Sounds like more standing meditation would be good for you. I enjoy following your threads and your process. Its interesting and nice to see someone working their issues out well. Even if there are some bumps inthe road. And several of the themes in your threads I also struggle with so they are often relevant to my own situation. That includes this one as I struggle with fatigue/burnout and memory loss because of it. The connection between root/earth and fatigue seems relevant to me as I have struggled a lot with grounding issues, my spleen is messed up and I have felt earth energy helping a lot and giving vitality and strength when I do something that generates it. WHat has been really helpfull now for some time has been pilates. It restructures and properly organises my muscles in my abdomen, lower back and genital area especially. Getting this corrected and starting to learn to move through the dan tien, which pilates is good at teaching you, has the effect of grounding me a lot and harmonising a bunch of other stuff as well.

So, again, what is the latest possible time at which this must happen for LI not to be a fake?

Great post!!