Bindi

I see thoughts and emotions that have been restored to their original flowing nature as in service to the transcendent consciousness once it is established.

But the cosmos is just so cosmic, personally I’d prefer a right relationship with myself down here on earth which leads to a right relationship with my true/original Self. And no doubt there will be a fairly great variety in which 5% of conversations we believe the ‘true essence of the Dao’ is contained.

I have a completely different view (as per usual I’m afraid), to me the thing that exists constantly that we are not aware of is actually the ‘Shakti spirit’ for want of a better word. To me this is the thing that is trapped starving and forgotten and alone. The work becomes finding the way to realise this and to release it from its ‘prison’, and bring it up to the upper dantian. Just my take on the subtle energy reality of ‘Original Mind’ as opposed to the emptiness or void that is usually posited as original mind.

To me there is a twofold mundane mind process, consisting of emotional and cognitive strands, that are entangled from issues and ultimately beyond issues needs to become fully complementary and fully engaged. Not analysing or engaging cognitively as in your model leaves half the work undone in your model IMO. Beyond these two is a third process that I don’t know much about yet.

Regarding relationships (and their relevance to spirituality/humanity) - Emotions themselves are seductive in a way, but I am thinking they’re a very unstable way to steer a relationship. Pure intellect/logic won’t steer a relationship either, if anything I think that would be worse. There’s a third way, hazy to me as yet, that is the right way to steer a relationship, in myspeak it’s related to the central channel energies being in charge. I’m not there yet, but getting closer. My ideal spirituality includes relationships, but ideally they should be conducted in the right way.

For me chaos is Yin - Dark and shadowy and child like, order is Yang - White and crisp and ordered, most likely a metaphor for the two ways in which our brain processes, and the challenge is to get that brain level of Yin and Yang, the two hemispheres, working together. Chaos benefits from order without losing its essence which remains dark and childlike, equally Order benefits from chaos and learns to be not so uptight.

… One more dodgy guru with anger and greed issues, and an inflated ego regarding himself and the students whom he has proclaimed to be buddhas. It will never end, but TDB is a great space to expose them.

What are subtle energy channels, they’re not physical matter, not body, but they’re also not mind. More likely perhaps to be explained by quantum physics which seems to accept that odd things go on. Can mind be informed by subtle energies? If yes, then mind becomes much more than brain based, but minds basic mode might be brain based.

I think it’s a grave error to foreclose on relationships before the heart has been purified, you’d be left with so much unresolved baggage and karma. Say the heart is part of the dantian irrigation system, a cold heart isn’t going to support water flowing, nor will it support what else is required for authentic energetic growth. Unhealed, there will always be a bug deep within the system. IME one can work directly on the heart (chakra and MDT) but there will be issues that only appear in relationship even when everything that can be resolved personally has been, to be specific, relationship accentuates how I perceive others and how I perceive myself in a way that nothing else can. Once all of that is sorted, maybe there is value in letting relationships go, maybe not. Perhaps I’m in the camp of becoming more human and accepting all of my humanity, as opposed to reducing my overall humanity and delineating only part of myself as ‘spiritually’ acceptable.

Not palatable to any human methinks. What is the place of normal human love in neidan. Do we really need to let that go, or can we arrive at a love that is more mature?

I voted ‘other’, IMO the usefulness of visualisation is entirely dependent on getting the timing and what is being visualised and it’s purpose right, and the chances of these three things coming together are very very low without some sort of personalised psychic guidance. Doing a visualisation without proper guidance can make something happen, but to my understanding what it makes happen can be entirely useless in the grand scheme of things, if not detrimental to the authentic energy body that is the ultimate achievement.

I have read that the External Yellow Court Scripture is considered to be the first internal alchemy text, and that almost all Taoist internal alchemy texts have been modelled on it. I have access to three different translations, one by Jane Huang (actually her father’s translation) in The Primordial Breath: An Ancient Chinese Way of Prolonging Life through Breath Control Volume 2, one by Imios Archangelis and Miaoyu Lanying in Jade Writing, available online Here and one by Stuart Alve Olson in Yellow Court: The Exalted One’s External Illumination Scripture - Attributed to Lao Zi -. The external Yellow Court scripture is assumed to be written by a scholar, as it uses strictly seven words per line, no mean feat apparently in Chinese. It is divided into three chapters, I will follow Huang’s paragraphs. Chapter 1.1 太上黃庭外景玉經上 太上閑居作七言， 解說身形及諸神， 上有黃庭下關元， 後有幽闕前命門。 呼吸廬間入丹田， 玉池清水灌靈根， 審能修之 可長存。 The Exalted One’s Scripture on the External Illumination of the Yellow Court Upper Chapter of the Scripture, Part One. Above there is the Yellow Court and below the Pass of Origination. Behind there is the Secret Watchtower and in front the Gate of Life. Breathe in the spaces of the Thatched Hut so to enter into the Elixir field. The pure water of the Jade Pool pours onto the Spiritual Root. If you are able to examine and cultivate this you can be long preserved. - Olson T’ai Shang, the Supreme Superior [Lao Tzu , N.T.], in leisure living, composed the [following] seven-word verses to explain the body and the spirits. Up above, there is the Yellow Court and down below there is Kuan Yuan, the Primordial Pass. In the rear is You Ch’ueh, the Dark Mysterious Gate Towers [the kidneys, N.T.], and in the front, there is Ming Men, the Gate of Life. Inhalations and exhalations are done through the Hut and enter into Tan T’ien, the Elixir Field. The clean and clear water of Yu Ch’ih, the Jade pond, is to irrigate Ling Ken, the Miraculous Root. Whoever can carefully nourish that may enjoy long life. - Huang High Sovereign, residing in peace, wrote a seven-word scripture, to tell the secrets how to enhance the individual form and spirit. Yellow Court is located above, Original Pass is located below. Quiet Watchtower is behind, Life Gate is at the front. Let your breath precipitate between three joined Dan Tian, and clear waters of Jade Pool irrigate Spirit Root. Practice constantly, to achieve longevity. - Archangelis and Lanying

I don’t disagree with you that a person appears in the middle dantian, and that this process starts in the red spectrum.

Agreed It seems very likely to me that this concept might be the brainchild of some alchemically challenged dufus

Defining terms is so important. What I mean by polarities is subtle internal Yin/ Yang energies, it makes me wonder what Apech actually meant.

Interestingly I’ve been cultivating the polarities for decades

Thanks for your translation TT. To be honest, whether it’s a good idea or not, I would only take my personal experience as valid anyway, all end points are suspect until I myself arrive at the end point.

So the translation could be endlessness or ‘ceaselessness’ as opposed to “limitless space”? Adjective 無間 having no gaps in between physically; close; hard to separate 合作無間{jiàn} to have good cooperation having no gaps in between temporally; ceaseless; uninterrupted

Since I’m not following modern mainstream neidan I can fortunately ignore the Buddhist overlay which I feel has no place in inner alchemy. Again is this Buddhist overlay? To get to a Buddhist conclusion neidan has to be minimised to be only a path that falls away once trodden. From the Yellow Court External Illumination Scripture the end stage is “Departing from the Heavenly Gate it enters into limitless space”. “It” the immortal spirit, departing from the head, entering into limitless space. An entity within limitless space, but not disappearing into emptiness in some nondual fashion as Indian tradition would have it. And if joining the emptiness (and stopping the orbit in order to join the emptiness) can be discarded as Buddhist, then the place of the MCO becomes something to be discovered, not quoted as a foregone conclusion from old corrupted texts.

I personally find it unlikely, but I am bound by my own previous quote to allow that it might be a possibility Good point TT. With just a moments thought I must agree, the dantians are there, but I would insist that they are in a state of disrepair, cracked, unsealed, silted up, unflowing etc. I’m very sure filling is the way to go as long as we’re talking about yuan jing, yuan qi and yuan Shen. As for “joining the emptiness”, I don’t think we can assume what that might mean until we experience it, because 99.999% sure our assumption will be wrong. My first question would be are you sure that “joining the emptiness” isn’t a Buddhist add-on? Is 'the full development' of the top DT the last stage, or is joining the emptiness the last stage? Is it the MCO that fills the dantians? What if the MCO is a way of cycling the Yuan energies through the system from top to bottom, like the water cycle of rain > evaporation > cloud etc. A static system might not be dynamic, and if nothing else a functioning subtle body must surely be dynamic.

If qigong can create and fill dantians, then it would be valuable. As far as I can see it, having the dantians leak-proof and filled and operating to their full potential is a fundamental requirement, upon which the “orbit” can then operate. Seeing initiating the MCO as the only valid step seems shortsighted. I recall someone once saying that he had initiated the MCO but it was empty, it felt like he was just spinning his wheels, I would take this as not having developed the dantians first, substance is missing. Developing the three dantians successfully would in itself be rare as, they are very complex systems. To refer to dantian development as ‘Just qigong’ seems unnecessarily dismissive. I can imagine that after the three dantians have been fully developed the orbit self-initiates, in the meantime more dantian development is required for me, not empty MCO’s. If you had completed dantian development first, I don’t think you would be so dismissive of it, so right now I’m assuming you haven’t.

Say there’s a model of the blood vessels and lymph vessels, or any of the organs, can you really call these models wrong? Or a model of something invisible like a virus, why would this model be wrong? To all intents and purposes it correctly represents the actual thing it’s modelling, I believe the same is possible of the subtle energy body, a functional model is possible though it might be two steps away from the reality of it instead of one, as the subtle energy body model will be in a more metaphorical language. I gave my personal take earlier on this thread https://www.thedaobums.com/topic/53700-what-exactly-is-neidaninternal-alchemy/?do=findComment&comment=994095