Nuralshamal

Dear friends, Some time ago I shared the post below on another thread. I stumbled upon it again recently, and I felt it could potentially help a lot of people. That's why I'm reposting it now with some edits, as well as an "update" at the end of the original post. Here's the original post. ORIGINAL POST I will share in 4 points:1) Intro 2) My experiences with evil spirits 3) My experiences with black magic 4) My proposed explanation integrating viewpoints on evil spirits and black magic (Buddhism, Sufism, Martinus, Hinduism etc)IntroIn my opinion, this is an extremely important topic, that is extremely ignored, belittled and misunderstood by the vast majority of cultivators. Especially those with a western background. Also, even by high level masters who simply don't know about this particular area or haven't trained and studied it.My experiences with evil spiritsI have personally suffered many extreme and terrifying experiences, and no matter where I sought help, I was belittled, ridiculed, ignored or misunderstood.I have seen books flying out of shelves. I have seen bagpacks and other physical items dragged back and forth on the floor. I have experienced "wind" indoors, even though it was a closed off room with no windows. I have seen shadowy/smoke like figures physically moving around, experienced physical touch even though no physical beings are there and much more.When I sought help from a hindu monk, he advised me to start japa of my guru mantra when it happened. I did it... Didn't work.When I sought help from a high level "shamanic" qigong master (you would think spirits would be a walk in the park for a shaman), I was belittled and told "not to pay attention to this illusion I am experiencing". There's nothing illusory about physical objects being thrown around by an unseen force. It's pretty much as concrete as it gets. Almighty God bless him, and bring him to clarity and allow him to actually help people with his powers of qi.When I sought help from another qigong master specialised in healing, he told me to say a prayer and do a mudra. When it didn't work, he explained it away saying that "you're just not powerful enough to do it yet, you need to cultivate more. Be my one-on-one student for 2-3 years, meet me on on a weekly zoom meeting priced at 1.600 dollars for an hour, and then in a couple of years, you will be able to do it".This healing qigong master stated that I have a very loving and very spiritual energy, and that's why troubled spirits get attracted to me. They seek help and healing from me. That's why it worsens when I travel to new places or stay overnight at places that are not my house. The troubled spirits in that place see me and come to get help.I actually believed him, and met him 3 times, wasting thousands of dollars. It didn't work! And on top of that, the clairvoyant things he told me about me and my health were flat out wrong (he said I had weak sexual energy, ejaculated in seconds and drank a lot of alcohol which damaged my liver). I am at a very advanced level of sexual qigong and lovemaking, haven't touched alcohol in more than 10 years and make love for hours daily without ejaculating with very strong erection power.So after 3 meetings, I realized he was simply a semi-psychic (he did say correctly that I had a spine injury, although there were so many other things wrong about his psychic reading), yet pretty good healer (I could feel my back getting better when he gave healings), but most of all he was just thirsty for money. So, of course I stopped seeing him. Dear God, bring him to the straight path, let him let go of his greed for money and selfishness, and instead lead him to the straight path, that he may use his gift of healing for good.I then spoke with a highly clairvoyant sufi master, who did a check on me (for free). He related my entire life story regarding troubles with spirits (without me telling him anything), and he also stated that it's because I have a lot of "light" (noor) inside my soul. This is because of all the prayers and mantras I say each day (since I was a child). He said the spirits are troubled where they are (in "bardo" or "barzakh" as it's called in Islam), and seek my help.He said I should visualise putting up spiritual sign posts around my aura, my house, or anywhere I go that says "I am sorry, I cannot help you. I myself need help, that's why I pray to the light and get that light into me. Please don't come to me, I am in no position to help you, I myself need help, that's why I pray so much. You should yourself pray to the light, then you will get help".I tried it for some time, and it helped in my own house. However, when I went to new places, it didn't work. God bless this man, he is extremely loving, knowledgable and powerfully clairvoyant.When I sought help from another sufi (via the internet), he for free did a "spiritual check" on me. He stated that yes, I have some low level evil spirits around me. He gave me (for free!) a one week program of readings of salawaat (prayers to the prophet), and reciting "bismillahir-rahmanir-rahim" (the bismillah, "in the name of God) many hundreds of times in a day. Then blow on water and drink it.I did it for 7 days, and it worked! It was from his heart and soul he wished to help me. He did it for free.I sent him 100 dollars and said that it worked, and asked if I could keep training with him. I must have paid him only a few hundred dollars, yet I spent 6-9 months corresponding with him via email. He would give me different salawaat, dhikr (name of God), verses of the Qur'an and du'a (prayers). Whenever I did a program (e.g. 7 days, 11 days, 21 days), he would tell me how it went. He would give me feedback on the energy, without me telling him anything. He was very good, he helped me a lot, and he didn't ask much in return. However, after 6-9 months, because he wanted to remain anonymous, I felt that to be a bit weird after so long, so when I had completed a big program, I stopped corresponding with him. We haven't been in contact since.What became my go-to after training with this last sufi guy is 5 verses from the Qur'ran. Ayatul kursi (Verse about the Throne of God), and 4 verses called "the 4 qul". They are the last 4 verses of the Qur'an, and they all start with "qul" which means "say". It's Surah Nas (verse of Man), Surah Ikhlas (verse of Unity), Surah Falaq (verse of the Daybreak / rising sun) and Surah Kafiroon (verse about the Unbelievers).You recite each 11 times (11x ayatul kursi, 11x surah nas, 11x surah ikhlas, 11x surah falaq and 11x surah kafiroon). Then you blow on your right index finger, and visualise your hand coming down from the sky, and drawing a protective circle around the 4 corners of your home, and then finally around yourself, or the room that needs extra protection (e.g. bedroom, prayer room).This has been my go-to for more than 6 years. It has been the only thing that worked for me in this area. If you want to keep your house energy pure, you say 21x ayatul kursi, blow on a glass of water, and sprinkle it around your house. The combination of these two readings saved my life.God bless this man who helped me without demanding anything in return!Unlike these chinese qigong masters, just wanting money and doing nothing to help.Lately when I'm learning Sri Vidya, I feel that some of the mantras and rituals from Sri Vidya will eventually be able to give spiritual protection on an even higher level. There are 2 specific "deities" or energies generated from mantras and rituals for the navel chakra (Durga) and third eye chakra (Varahi) which specifically combat negative spiritual energies, including black magic, evil spirits, the evil eye etc.All of the above are my experiences and solutions for evil spirits so far.My experiences with black magicI have worked for the army in my country. One of my functions was as a translator and interpreter. I have been deployed several times to a UN mission in West Africa.On one of my deployments, there wasn't much work. We only worked from 6 in the morning to 2 o'clock in the afternoon. The rest of the time we we're pretty much on standby.Being stranded in a war zone, there's not much to do. So I spent all my free time reading, studying and practicing (mantras, meditation and qigong).I was in a very good spiritual state at the time due to so much practice, so I was seeing auras and energies most of the time.One time, we were training the local special forces to save hostages. The only building we could use was a big fancy hotel, yet no tourists (because of the war). So to survive, the owner of the hotel rented it out as a brothel.One day, in a break between exercises, I saw one of the prostitutes sitting on the other side of the courtyard (they just sat around and waited for the 3-4 hours that we and the local soldiers used it as a training compound). When she saw me, she started whispering something, and I saw a small cloud of black energy generating in front of her face. Then she did something with her hands, and started blowing towards me. This sent the small black cloud of energy across the courtyard towards me. It just landed in the outskirts of my aura, it didn't go in (thank God!). So nothing happened to me.When I was back in my room later that day, I meditated. Then I understood she was trying to do some black magic on me. Maybe she was trying to seduce or attract me. For a prostitute in a war zone, hooking up with a soldier deployed from Europe could be her ticket out of the warzone to a better life. Luckily, the energy wasn't powerful enough to penetrate my energy field (which was pretty charged at the time due to so much spiritual practice). And as I meditated, the cloud was just destroyed and disappeared from my field.One of the local maids cleaning my place actually put my tooth brush up in her vagina when she was cleaning the bathroom. She thought I didn't know, as I was sitting in the living room. I guess it's a primitive form of African black magic. If you ingest some of the fluids (spit, sweat or sexual fluid) of someone (especially if they say mantras while doing it), you can become more partial to liking that person (becaues you will have some of their energy inside your physical body). I bought a new tooth brush!Another woman working in the restaurant spat in my food and stirred it around to hide it. I ordered a new pasta You need to be very careful in many places of Africa, the Middle East, South America and certain parts of Asia. It's rampant with black magic and desperate people. Luckily they are usually not powerful practitioners, but you can still catch something if you're not protected and observant.My second experience is with my girlfriend. She comes from the Middle East, i.e. the vast majority of her family still lives there. When we got together, it was made public, her ethnicity in our European country as well as her family and relatives in her home country in the Middle East became aware of it. As soon as this happened, she started to fall sick.She would get wrist tendonitis, elbow tendonitis, sore knees, sore lower back, her vision would suddenly drastically reduce, she would get nauseous for no reason, got rashes, stomach ache, started to suddenly lose weight and appetite. For no reason!It just came suddenly out of the blue. She would suffer for some time and recover. Then a new problem came back. This continued for about 6 months. Before we made our relationship public, she wasn't sick even once. After we made it public, she kept continually falling ill again and again.After 6 months of this story of suffering and disease, once when I was meditating, I saw a cloud of red and black energy entering our house. It went to my girlfriend. Then it went into her wrist.That same evening, she started complaining that the wrist tendonitis was coming back.I was very surprised. I was praying and meditating, trying to understand what had happened. A few days later, I got a dream, where I saw planet Earth from above. Then I saw her country in the Middle East (Kurdistan). Then I saw clouds of red and black gathering and forming, and then they travelled to Europe to our country.When I woke up, I understood that God had heard my prayer, and given me this dream to let me know that someone in her home country was cursing her.That started an 8 month period of fighting this magic.First I consulted this qigong healer about it (the psychic one, who told me correctly about my spinal injury, but wrongly about alcohol, sex etc). He to my great surprise said that someone was putting black magic on my girlfriend, and that she should practice his "small universe" meditation to transform the energy.I was surprised he went straight to Black Magic as an explanation, even though I didn't tell him about my dreams and visions. We tried what he suggested, but it didn't work.Then I went to a hindu tantric, who has mastery over spirits, done sadhana (spiritual practice) in graveyards, and done many tamasic tantric rituals to control these spirits (e.g. animal sacrifice, bathing in blood, smearing yourself with your own filth and urine etc). When I spoke with him, he asked me to send a photo of my girlfriend.After 2-3 days, he called me and said that there is black magic on her. We should just worship and pray to God like normal, remain vegetarian, avoid alcohol, and when he visits our country, he will put a kavach (shield/armor) on her. From that day we spoke, everything stopped. So he did something remotely. After a few nights, I had a dream where I saw this swami doing something. A beam of energy went to the Middle East, where I saw someone had buried a charm inscribed with mantras and signs under the plot of one of my girlfriend's family's buildings. The beam from the swami went in and neutralized the black/red energy.I would again highlight that he did all this for free. It seems again that this phenomenon that spirituality costs money and is a business is mostly related to chinese qigong traditions. Sufis and hindus have helped me completely free of charge, just from their heart.It was about 2-3 weeks where it was completely gone, but then it returned.I tried many different sufi methods, prayers, Qur'an, tasbih (prayer beads). It was always the same. It would make it go away, but after a certain period of time, it would return.Later, after I had done a specific reading of a passage from the Qur'an about Moses fighting the black magicians of Farao, the black magic completely stopped. It took me a month, and you have to recite late at night. Then I finally had a dream where I saw this black magician in Kurdistan. Every new moon, or on specific astrological days, he goes to a kind of basement or cellar underground. Here he conducts terrible black magic rituals, involving animals, kidnapped orphans and other terrible things. That's why it's all black and red energy, because it's dirty and bloody what he does. It's someone from my girlfriend's family who's jealous of the part of the family that's gone to Europe.Then I saw him get hit with my one month program of Qur'an, and he lost all of his powers. All the energy drained from him, he became thin, weak and pale.After this it was about 6 months where we were completely free from this black magic. I thanked God and actually thought it was over. I felt kind of bad that it seemed my Moses-reading had damaged him, but I didn't mean to hurt him, I just wanted to protect my beloved girlfriend. It hadn't really hurt him, just taken away the energy he had built up and the evil spirits he was working with.After 6 months, he decided to start to try again, and start from the bottom to build up his energy (he was the most powerful black practitioner I've ever seen). But this time the things he sent were really weak. We just read some Qur'an and du'a, and it stopped.Finally, after starting Sri Vidya one and a half years ago, and we did a 41 day Varahi tarpana. Now we've been clear of black magic for about 1 year. I feel like we have built our spiritual protection so strong now, that we're mostly safe.My proposed explanation integrating viewpoints on evil spirits and black magic (Buddhism, Sufism, Martinus, Hinduism etc)I've highlighted a bunch of my experiences above. Now I'll try to make sense of it and provide an explanation.I'll use an idea of different dimensions of reality to try and explain why people misunderstand each other when it comes to black magic and evil spirits.For simplicity I'll just use the following terms:1) Physical (shared physical world, objective reality, different beings interact with each other in an objectively verifiable sense).2) Energetic (shared energetic world, objective albeit non-detectable reality for untrained people, objectively verifiable by people with their energetic senses open)3) Mind (inner, individual world, unique to you, subjective reality, there's no one else here but you)4) "Astral" (objective and shared reality with different beings interacting with each other through energy and mind)Buddhism:A big problem is that many Buddhists will brush these kinds of things off and say "it's all just mind". Someone even told me "spiritual beings viewed with ignorance, are demons", "spiritual beings viewed with wisdom, are devas". That sounds great philosophically, but it's a completely useless viewpoint when shit gets serious. Books are flying around your room, or your girlfriend is falling sick. It's not something mental, it's concrete and physical. You need to do something.Just like an intruder in your home trying to steal your stuff "it's just mind, it's just illusion". Yes, fine illusion when he slaps you in your face and rapes your family. You need to take practical action and protect yourself and your family.So all this "it's all mind" is great for a meditator going inwards, but it's not useful if you have a concrete, practical problem. Just like feeling hungry "it's just an illusion in your mind", no, you need to eat something.I feel like the misunderstanding is because the buddhist meditator is talking about "mind", whereas the person talking about problems with black magic and evil spirits is talking about the astral, energetic and physical dimensions.It's true that you can meet "darkness" in your own subjective mind, but this is not the same as the objective, shared reality in the astral, energetic and physical dimensions.Some people who are also generally confused and vague in their life experience will not have the ability to discriminate between "mind" (their own fears) and "astral" (a real, verifiable, shared and objective reality). These are the people that buddhists in general target when they say "it's all in your own mind", because they think it's just imagination. For these meditators getting lost in their own subjective minds, it's a great piece of advice. However, for people truly experiencing objective problems in the astral, energetic or physical domains, it's ridiculing, belittling and just not helpful advice.SufismSufism states that there are unseen beings living in an astral, objective dimension. They also differentiate between the subjective mind or ego called "nafs" and the astral world called "malakut" or world of light (angels are called malai'ka, or powerful beings of light).HinduismAlso differentiates between your own subjective mind, and the astral world.MartinusAlso differentiates between inner subjective world (mind, you and your own mind), and inner objective world (spiritual world, your soul and the soul of others).ConclusionI am sure buddhism also discriminates somehow between inner subjective and inner objective world, I just don't know the correct terms. Maybe someone can help me out?The reason that these qigong masters failed to help and just tried to extract money from me, is simply because even though they're master healers, the just haven't trained in and studied the astral world. They know about the physical, energetic and mind, they just don't know about black magic and evil spirits in the astral.The sufis who helped me, they knew about energy and astral, so they could easily see what was happening and what I should do. They had trained in this and understood it.Similarly, the tantric swami had knowledge and power to help us quickly. The black magician was just very powerful, so he could break the spell from the swami and start his black magic again after a couple of weeks by repowering his buried charm through rituals.Mostly when people belittle or ridicule black magic and evil spirits, it's just because they themselves didn't have karma in this area, so they don't know about it. That's why they brush it off as unimportant and not necessary, because it wasn't important to them in their cultivation. However, if you have karma in this area, there's no escaping it. You need to read, study and understand about it, then you need to train in it (mantra, meditation, ritual etc). Then you will master it and be able to go beyond it and continue your cultivation undisturbed.All traditions have sections of their teachings dealing with this, it's just not all masters who've studied this section of their tradition. Because they didn't need it, they state that no one else needs it (wrong assumption and bias to think everyone is like you and need the same as you did. Wrong. We're all different and unique, we need different things).God bless you all! UPDATE SINCE THE ABOVE ORIGINAL POST On top of our spiritual cultivation, we've employed some very basic truths in our everyday lives, which is usually taught at the basic level in most traditional spiritual teachings, albeit largely ignored or misunderstood by western people (myself included, that's why I'm emphasising it now): 1) "Conceal your blessings" (this is as to not invoke a feeling of lack in others, which could trigger jealousy, envy, evil eye or black magic - practically it just means not to talk about your succes in love, money or spiritual journey publicly (e.g. insta & fb) and even to your loved ones, close friends and family members. We just share it with each other, me and my girlfriend, celebrate our sucess and give thanks to Almighty God) 2) "Certainty" (Yaqeen in arabic) consisting of 3 points 1) everything is from God, 2) it's for my highest good, 3) it has a message for me, about something I need to change. For me the message was simply to accept that "evil" is indeed a part of God's creation, and evil spirits and black magic is real. I always shunned it off and looked down upon it as mere superstition. Nope, it's real! So take it seriously and take mindful precautions, it's simply a test from God. Don't lose your certainty, your faith, have full trust in God and do your daily spiritual work 3) The best spirituality you will find is free or very low cost - all the people and healers I splurged money on failed to deliver and actually help us. The people who had true love, compassion and heart were the most powerful, they helped us completely for free or at very low cost. All these commercial gurus are simply fitna, illusion, they're a Golden Calf or temptation from the straight path. Truth is hiding in plain sight, simple, yet most profoundly powerful. Be a good human being, trust God, have heart and mercy for your fellow human beings and the animals, and you'll be showered with a tsunami of power and protection directly from the Lord Most High. 4) The importance of "local" spirits - each place you go to have a Kshetra Palaka (Local Protector) or TuDi (Earth King/God) who are the Spirit Kings of that place. Further, there are also local spirits living in that location. If you do cultivation there without permission/friendship with the local Spirit King, you can start to get into spiritual trouble. This is a big part of traditional Hindu sadhana as well as Daoist cultivation. After each hindu ritual you give Bali Dhana (spirit charity offering) to the local spirits and the Kshetra Palaka, or in the case of Daoist magic or cultivation you say the An Tu Di Shen Zhou (Pacify Earth Spirit Mantra). It's even one of the Daoist Ba Da Zhou (8 Great Mantras) to be said daily. So be aware if you travel to new locations - make sure to include the local Kshetra Palaka or TuDi to be in harmony with the spirits of that place. 5) The importance of spiritual lineage (sampradaya). When you're part of a true, authentic spiritual lineage, you will also have much more spiritual protection and power. If you call upon your guru or master with the appropriate mantra and mudra, it's the combined energy of thousands and thousands of years of people doing spiritual practice coming to help you spiritually. A complete game changer!

@idiot_stimpy That depends on the definition. Some systems will say yes, some will say no. I wil personally say no. In Simplified Kundalini Yoga (SKY) kundalini is the life force energy experienced as a vibration. It's of course somewhat related to breath and heat, but it's independent from it. Compare this to tummo and lower dan tien, which is related to blood and food qi, cultivated specifically by holding the breath again and again (thereby over time building more red blood cells). It's much more physical and related to the body.

Dear Dao Bums, Here is my experience with Tummo with Tulku Lobsang. I'll share in 2 parts: 1) Background & 2) The Course Itself 1) Background Since I was a child my father told me stories of naked monks in the snow of Himalaya staying warm through yogic siddhi power. How teenage tibetan monks had "exam" at school to see how many wet sheets they could dry with their body heat from sunrise to sunset using tummo. I learned from Tulku Lobsang that the accepted amount for a "good grade" is 21 sheets. In my late twenties I saw Tulku Lobsang on the show "Story of God With Morgan Freeman" where he meditates in a t-shirt in -5 degrees celsius seemingly unbothered by the cold temperature. Morgan Freeman wears cap, gloves and a big jacket. This reminded me of my desire to try out Tummo for myself. 2) Tummo Weekend Course The course was just 2 days. There was a lot of people, maybe 100 or so. I was there with one of my friends, who's also into meditation, energy work, out of body travel etc. The practical part of Tummo consists of physical exercises, breathing exercises and meditation exercises. The meditation method used is visualisation as well as focused awareness in your body. We meditated all together maybe 7 times at the course, and 5 or 6 of the 7 times both me and my friend felt very warm. We felt heat in our bodies due to the transmission from Tulku Lobsang. For me there was only 1 time I didn't feel much, and for my friend it was also only 1 time or so. So overall, we very both very happy with the course. However, I spoke to several other participants at the course. One was a girl sitting next to me, the other was a random woman I spoke with in a break. Neither of them really felt anything during the course. So my conclusion is that: 1) Tulku Lobsang is legit and does transmission for sure, 2) Whether you pick up that transmission is then apparently dependent on several factors. What these factors are, I of course can't say for sure. Both me and my friend have meditated with many masters for many years of our life, and have been exposed to spirituality since childhood. So it makes sense that in accord with previous karma (thought, words and deeds) you have built up a "vessel" in your soul to receive the transmission. The bigger your vessel to receive is, the more of the transmission you receive. I for example felt my friend received it much more than me. Interestingly enough, he's been mainly involved with Buddhist practices in his spiritual life, whereas I've been mainly involved with Hindu practices. Of course they're both branches on the same Dharmic tree, but maybe that's why he picked up more. He already is connected to the Buddhist stream to a much larger degree. The girl and the woman then maybe did receive something, however, their vessel to receive was smaller, hence what of the transmission they could pick up was proportionately smaller. So if you wish to try Tummo out, build your vessel to receive as big as possible through: 1) daily spiritual practice without fail (discipline - you reap what you sow, if you work more, you will in the end receive more), 2) have a big desire for the practice, the bigger the fire of your desire, the bigger your vessel to receive will grow, 3) be on the same "wave-length" as Buddhism, read about it, study, meet & connect with Buddhist people, watch interviews etc 4) when you finally learn Tummo, dedicate X amount of time to it daily for a specified period of time. The transmission is simply the seed, you need to water that seed daily for it to over time grow into a plant, then a bush, then a tree, and finally a mighty tree reaching far into the sky. Depending on your karma, it can take a couple of weeks, a couple of months, a couple of years, or a couple of decades to nurture that seed of Tummo into a mighty tree, allowing you to stay warm naked in the snow. I can say for myself, I think I will need at least 6 months to a couple of years of daily practice to be able to do that. I feel the heat, but there's still long to go to grow it so powerful. I wish you all the best with your practice!

@idquest Yes, I agree, when you reach a certain level spiritually, time and space are not a barrier anymore, as we're all connected spiritually outside time & space. "Where there are channels, there is blood. Where there is blood, there is tummo heat. 4 fingers below the navel and deep in your body near your spine is the door of your inner fire, to open and access it. In your sexual chakra or genital organs is the source of your inner fire" - direct quote from Tulku Lobsang continously said during the course during our meditations. Firstly it is felt in that particular area 4 fingers below the navel and deep in the body. Then you spread it using breath holds, physical exercises and of course visualisation. I felt it like that too: in the main area, then to each are we spread it to, slowly filling the whole body and finally merging with eternal space and filling that with flames too.

Hey @idiot_stimpy, thanks for your message! Yes, the idea about tummo is similar to the idea of lower dan tien in qigong and daoism. The idea is that the bigger and stronger you build your tummo fire or lower dan tien, the better your physical health will be. Furthermore, the bigger you build it, the more it opens the other channels and dan tiens (chakras in buddhism of course). If your lower dan tien or tummo fire is at maximum level, everything else on the spiritual path will be quite easy, no matter if it's opening chakras and dan tiens, mastering dream or sleep yoga, bardo yoga, healing yourself or others, acheiving deep meditation etc. This is because all these skills are dependent on chakras and channels (or dan tiens, meridians and 5 organ qi in qigong). Just take meditation as an example: when your middle channel is open (sushumna or chong mai) deep meditation is effortless. You can feel it physically, as both your nostrils will open completely (normally one nostril is more open, and the other is more closed). Then you feel incredibly refreshed and energized, very harmonious, and your senses effortlessly go inwards. A big tummo fire or strong lower dan tien will automatically open and unblock your central channel. So if you've mastered tummo, and you want to meditate, it will be very easy, as your central channel is open. Similarly dream yoga is dependent on the throat chakra, sleep yoga is dependent on the heart chakra, sex yoga is dependent on the navel chakra and sexual chakra. That's why Tummo is the base of many practices, just like lower dan tien is in qigong.

Dear Dao Bums, I would love to hear your story and experience of serious, long term, daily standing practice The pros, the cons, was it worth while, what did standing do to you / for you? Physically, energetically and spiritually. In order to kick of this exchange of personal, lived experience, I will also share my own experiences. However, please refrain from sharing theories, opinions, views of different schools, your viewpoints, these are all interesting of course, but I would like to keep this thread completely clean of that, and instead solely focus on lived, personal experiences. The end goal is to collect actual "data" on standing from real people, and see which patterns emerge over time, with more and more people sharing their stories. My Own Experiences So Far, 4 parts 1) 2017, First Encounter With Standing I first heard about the idea of long, static, standing meditation in 2017 from Lam Kam Chuen's book "Way of Energy". One evening during my deployment to Africa with the UN, I couldn't fall asleep. I thought to myself "okay, let me try this standing thing". I stood up and did my best, and managed to stand for what felt "like a really long time", realistically it was probably between 10 and 40 minutes. My experience was that each time it felt like "it's impossible to stand any longer, my shoulders are burning too much, my legs are too tense" or whichever physical thing was annoying me, I used my willpower to keep standing anyway. Each time I managed to "hold on", it was as if a kind of breakthrough happened, and the physical tension was relieved by a surge of energy. This happened maybe 5-10 times, and each time I felt energy surging in my body. When I finally finished and laid down to sleep in my tent (yes, it was a primitive army camp), I had the best and deepest sleep since maybe my teenage years. When I woke up in the morning and felt so incredibly refreshed, I made a mental note to myself "I must remember this standing meditation, there is really something here, some day I will explore it further". 2) 2018, standing as a supplement to lovemaking In 2018 as part of a daoist lovemaking and sex qigong retreat in Asia, there were some general qigong exercises taught to supplement the sexual exercises. There were 2-3 moving exercises which took about 5-10 minutes, and the other part was 4 standing, static exercises, each held for 5 minutes, totaling 20 minutes. When I tried these 20 minutes of standing, the instruction was not to blink at all during the whole time if possible, but if the eyes started watering, you could blink. To be honest I didn't experience anything at all, other than it felt kind of weird to just stand still and stare. Every 5 minutes you switched position, which was a huge relief on the shoulders. At this point I made a mental note to myself not to explore standing any further, as I didn't feel like it did anything for me. 3) 2022, 1 hour squatting monkey standing challenge I heard that the fastest way to build the lower dan tien and open the microcosmic orbit was through 1 hour standing squatting monkey. I decided to give it a go. It took me about 1 month to work up to standing for 60 minutes. What I experienced progressively during that 1 month while practicing was that I would get warm, start sweating, I would feel qi surging through my body, I would feel warmth in my lower dan tien, I would feel vibration in my microcosmic orbit, and towards the end I started seeing a light between my eyebrows. So I felt a lot of stuff going on energetically and spiritually. However, the posture didn't feel healthy to me at all. It felt like I was training my body to be slouched over because of the way you're standing, and the shoulders are slightly forward too. Instead of putting my physical body into alignment, I felt like I was training it to be out of alignment. In the end my conclusion was that I would revisit the practice in the future if I ever became desperate to work on my third eye, but for now I would discontinue the practice, simply because it didn't feel good for my physical body. I felt other practices I knew were faster, easier and just felt better physically. 4) 2023, 100 days standing like a pillar challenge This is the most recent, and is in progress. This is also what prompted me to start this thread, simply because I would love to hear your experiences. I'm about 31 days in as of today, and have had some quite interesting experiences. The first 25 days were progressively getting more and more hellish. It felt like my body simply was not designed to stand. No matter what I did, I just couldn't get my body into proper alignment, and especially my shoulders were killing me, no matter what I did. I searched online (including on this forum), and read everything I could about standing. I actually felt like there was not too much quality information out there; most was people either bashing it as a waste of time or downright dangerous, or people praising it like the holy grail. That's also why I wanted to make this post, I want personal, lived experiences, not people ideologizing. I want us all to share our own experiences to over time build potentially build empirical evidence. The only reason I didn't quit, in spite of me feeling like I was going through meaningless suffering daily, was that I found a facebook group called "1000 hours of standing". I joined the group and started reading. Someone had made the general rule "10 hours of standing will give results, 100 will give good results, 1000 will give best results". However, I would say I found the majority in that group saying that long standing is meaningless and just creates more tension in the body, or even worse, injuries. At that point I had accumulated almost 9 hours of total standing time, and I wanted to quit. That 10 hour rule motivated me to try a bit more. Lo and behold, a day or two after reading that post, something happened during my standing. Suddenly I felt my left hip "pop open" is the best way to describe it. It was as if there had been some kind of tension in there, preventing my hips from "hanging", and thereby preventing my lower and upper body from being connected and aligned. That same day, just towards the end of my standing (about 40 minutes), my right hip popped open. I was shocked! It was as if my body had been multiple different compartments of tensions, and with this hip opening (thanks only to time and gravity, it was completely outside of my own volition to do), it felt like my entire body became one, connected, physical whole. The last 4-5 days or so have been shocking to say the least. The hips both now "fall" open by themselves after about 5-10 minutes of standing, my whole body falls into alignment, and I can just stand and stand completely effortlessly. Everything has fallen into place. I stood 60 minutes yesterday, completely effortlessly! I am shocked. So I have something physical to show for it, at least for my self. Before I started, I just couldn't stand no matter what I did, it was literal self-torture. However, now my physical body feels more and more like one integrated and well-aligned unit, making it possible for me to effortlessly stand. I am yet to see what will happen from here energetically and spiritually, but I can see now how standing lends itself to meditation. The body clicks into position, and I can completely focus on simply meditating. I also feel very grounded after standing. But there are still about 70 days to go, so I will just have to wait and see what will happen (if anything). However, I would love to hear your experiences from long term, daily standing The good, the bad, the ugly, everything, just your personal lived experience. If standing cured your cancer, I want to know about it. If standing killed your grandma, I want to know about it. Look forward to hear from you! All the best

Thanks bro! God bless you

Thanks everyone, for sharing your experiences UPDATE: I've completed the 100 days of standing. In the MaoShan 100 days of standing, completing the 100 days gives you access to 4 spiritual goodies: 1) Mantra to open qi field of TienZun (One of the 3 purities or San Qing, the Daoist "Divine Trinity"). 2) Mantra to bless, heal and remove obstacles from all your living and deceased relatives. 3) Secret way of using standing spiritually to bless, heal and remove obstacles and debts from all your friends, family and acquantainces. 4) Secret talisman that can aid in removing qi blockages and bad energy. In other ways, completing the 100 days IS WORTH IT! If you join MaoShan and do the 100 days of standing, here are my tips: 1) trust with complete faith in the process 2) read, watch and understand as much as you can about correct alignments 3) get your own form as perfect as possible 4) once you know and have checked your form, allow your body and the universal qi to guide your posture 5) at this stage, set up your posture, then let go completely and enter into the meditation, allowing your body to take care of itself 6) prepare yourself for some days of incredible torture, mixed with days of incredible physical, qi and spiritual breakthroughs After the 100 days you can expect your physical body to have realigned itself and its tissues to a much better setting. Depending on your experience and background in qi and meditation, expect to "level up" in your qi and spiritual abilities.

Dear Dao Bums UPDATE: I've joined MaoShan and cultivated daily for almost 6 months now, slowly but steadily working my way through Jason Read's Jasper Lake Maoshan curriculum. It is legit! The only thing I would say if you're going to join, is to pay attention to the following points: 1) make sure you do physical exercise daily, ideally things like physical yoga, taichi or a moving qigong form to circulate your qi and maintain and strengthen your physical body. I understand why Jason has not included much of this on the online part, seeing that the physical aspect of qigong is very widely available on the market today, whereas the secret, magical and more esoteric aspect he so freely shares is not. So just make sure you tick this off and commit to a daily physical regimen. 2) don't cheat yourself, actually do the exercises in 49 day practice cycles, take your time, feel it, get into it, document it. Go at it with respect, dedication, commitment and as a true, authentic and commited quest for your own personal, spiritual journey. If you pay attention to these 2 points, you are set I am personally extremely happy and thankful for having found MaoShan - the way Jason teaches and explains complicated chinese metaphysics are simply unparalleled. It's so clear and crisp, I've never seen it explained in a way so easy to understand before. Further, the things he shares are pretty much impossible to find anywhere else. Lastly, the man is simply incredible - he works a normal full day job besides maintaining the school, and he still finds time to make new lessons for the students, translate chinese works, write and publish books as well as regularly posting never-seen-before bits on magic on his twitter and facebook. And joining MaoShan is a flat rate fee of 108gbp FOR LIFE! For all lessons. He is truly a giving and sharing person, God bless him Thank you Jason!

Dear Dao Bums, Question for you guys Do you have any interesting experiences with Jason Read and his Jasper Lake Maoshan Daoist Magic? I have seen a few posts here on Daobums about his books on daoist magic, but none about the actual daoist magic training with him. My own few observations A fellow qigong brother here on the forum that I'm corresponding with notified me about Jasper Lake Maoshan daoist magic training. I checked out his webpages and read all that I could, and am now reading through his book "Practical Daoist Magic". Webpages: I found the webpages extremely interesting, and I definitely felt what he's sharing to be real, authentic and substantial. I tried meditating on a talisman he's posted to connect with the energy of "the fire star" or Mars, and within 5 minutes I felt heat pouring into my body and getting heated up. I was extremely suprised how fast and powerfully it worked. I took this as a sign that what's he's sharing is truly legit! Book so far: The book is the same story in the sense that it feels very legit and authentic. All the history and mythology he's sharing is perfectly in line with what I've been taught by Master Zhongxian Wu (who I've learnt from for more than 6 years), as is his explanation for yin/yang, 5 elements, 8 trigrams (bagua) stems, branches etc. of course with some slight variations in their personal interpretations. His beginning practices "to cultivate magical power" is also similar to what I've learnt from Master Wu, namely building the lower dan tien, purifying & strengthening the 5 organ system, "retriving" or calling back the spirits of your organs as well as daily mantras for purification (mind, mouth, body, surroundings, pacifying spirits, calling upon the golden light etc). The idea of jing/qi/shen as well as mantra, mudra, visualisation and posture is also similar. All in all I feel it to be very real. What I especially enjoy is that as a westerner he explains things very clearly so that it's easy to understand from a western viewpoint. He also divulges the "secrets" of how things really work and explain the whole process as well as the end result. This is something my chinese teachers never do, they simply encourage you to practice, shoot down your questions, and never explain linearly and in a straight-forward way what things are, how they work, what the process is like, what the result will be or how to measure your progress along the way. The only thing that really made me stop and wonder, was that at some point in the book he says that 30 minutes before and after practice you shouldn't eat or drink (pretty standard advice), however then immediately after he says drinking "only cool water" is allowed. This is a huge shocker! Everyone knows that Chinese never suggest cold water, it should be either hot or lukewarm. This was a big suprise for me, and made me wonder and question how everything could be feel so real and authentic, yet this one basic thing was completely "off" for how Chinese qigong/TCM/cultivation usually rolls. Actually it was such a great shock that it made me question the authenticity of everything. Even though the fire star talisman worked (which I felt to build his credibility), and the explanations feel legit too (which also builds credibility) the advice to drink cool water was so off that it made me wonder and question everything about his whole story of training in China & Malaysia etc. This is what made me write a post here on the forum, I wanted to speak to my dao brothers and sisters and hear your experiences (if any) with Jason Read and his Jasper Lake Maoshan Daoist Magic training. I look forward to hear from you!

Update: In my first week of practice after the retreat, out of 7 nights, I've managed to have 3 nights of lucid dreams. Overview 1. Night After The Retreat - lucid dreams one after the other (about 3-4 in a row during morning time) 2. Night After The Retreat - no lucid dreams 3. Night After The Retreat - lucid dreams one after the other (about 2-3 in a row during morning time) 4. Night After The Retreat - no lucid dreams 5. Night After The Retreat - lucid dreams one after the other (about 3-4 in a row during morning time) 6. Night After The Retreat - no lucid dreams 7. Night After The Retreat - no lucid dreams So 3 out of 7 nights something happened since the retreat, pretty good actually. Still not as good as a couple of years ago with the bön method where it was every single night like clockwork for a whole week, but let's see how it goes. My first preliminary observations and conclusions 1) all my lucid dreams from tibetan dream yoga have only occured in the morning hours, e-g. 5-8 in the morning. I usually wake up once or twice in a night to turn over (I sleep on my side). The last time I wake up to turn before actually having to get up, after that turn is usually when I get the lucid dreams. So either it's because I have actually rested quite a lot already, and the built up energy is what allows the lucid dream to happen. Or it's because of the environmental energy shifting from yin (night) to yang (day) with the sun rising, which boosts the lucidity. Or probably it's both. 2) In all lucid dreams in my life, I've never been able to change the environment. I am simply lucid in a set of surroundings, people and objects already present, and then I can move myself around and choose how to react to what's going on, but I can't change it. Only once did I have "power" over the environment back when I did the bön method. This is something I always pondered, how come I am lucid, but cannot control the dream? Because when reading about lucid dreams, control of the dream environment was one of the things most people spoke about. However, now I think it's to do with how strong one's dream body is. In my case, my dream body was the weakest of my bodies, so it's going to take some time with continous medicine buddha as well as dream yoga practice to build it stronger. Maybe I will get a further boost to my strength when I learn and start practicing tummo. 3) My sleep quality was worse, and I would wake up not fully rested when I did dream yoga earlier. This was also the case the first 3-4 days, however, now I feel it normalizing more and more from day to day. My sleep quality is returning to normal, I also fall asleep more naturally (whereas before it took me longer because I focused too hard on the visualisation while falling asleep) and lastly my level of feeling rested and recharged when I rise is also very close to normal now. This is a huge thing for me, and I feel it to be related to my dream body strength growing, as well as of course finding the balance between visualisation effort and letting go while falling asleep. "99% sleep, 1% awareness" is what Tulku Lobsang kept repeating during the retreat. I was probably more like "100% awareness, 0% sleep"! Now I'm more relaxed, that helps a lot with falling asleep. Where To Go From Here Tulku Lobsang gives several progressions for dream yoga: Level 1) Stabilise your ability to have lucid dreams (have lucid dreams every night) Level 2) Start traveling around your environment in your lucid dreams every night Level 3) Start changing yourself in the environment (shift your own form) every night Level 4) Start changing the environment (multiply objects) every night Level 5) Start doing spiritual practice in your lucid dreams every night (this creates a "special dream body") Level 6) Create a "special dream body" (now you no longer travel within your own mind during dream yoga with your ordinary dream body, now you actually travel in the real, objective universe with a "special" dream body - more similar to what's normally called astral projection) - however, how to practice at this level he didn't elaborate on So I'm clearly still at the most basic level, level 1. It's probably going to take quite a while to complete each of these levels, so I'm arming myself with patience. Just stabilising lucid dreams every night would be a huge achievement seen from my current perspective. I'm going to keep on keeping on, and we'll see if learning and practicing daily tummo from next month or so will boost my dream yoga. Lastly, an underrated day practice that supports dream yoga is a kind of mindful attitude with everything that happens during the day, by saying to yourself "this is a dream, I'm dreaming". I've heard this from several lamas. I've not really taken it seriously, but I've tried to do it a few days. I feel like it actually let's you work out your dream body in your daily life. So it's like a "cheat code" to level up your dream body much faster. Now your dream body builds itself stronger BOTH during your daily life AND during your dream life. Each time you say "it's a dream, I'm dreaming" your start experiencing from your dream body, thereby feeding it experiences, working it out, and slowly building it bigger and stronger.

Dear Dao Bums, Here's my experience with Tulku Lobsang (known for doing Tummo in -5 degrees celsius on "Story of God With Morgan Freeman" on NGC). I'll share in 4 parts: 1) Intro and Background 2) Medicine Buddha 3) Dream Yoga 4) Wrap Up - To Be Continued 1) Intro and Background I heard about Tummo when I was a child from my dad. He learnt about yoga on a hippie island camp full of naked women burning bras when he was a child, forced to go with my hippie grandmother in the 60s. He had a life changing experience as a child with yoga and mantras, while on this naked women camp. So in his late teens when small yoga and meditation workshops started in the West, he started attending. Buddhism was super famous in my country on the spiritual scene, as it still is in much of Europe with the New Age crowd I would say. While I grew up, my dad told me of naked monks in the snow-clad Himalayas drying wet sheets with their body temperature through magical yoga practices. So now the family saga continues; as an adult, I've also pursued further what my dad exposed me to as a child. This time, I saw Tulku Lobsang with Morgan Freeman. Being able to be comfortable in a t-shirt in -5 degrees on television I took as a "good enough" show of Tummo skill, that maybe I could finally pursue this magical practice myself. However, I still had some doubts. So, when I saw he was coming to my country, I decided to go check him out. If he "checked out" I would be willing to give it a go and fork over my hard earned cash to flight, hotel and the Tummo workshop (when the time comes). With the intro out of the way, let me share how it went! The first day he taught Medicine Buddha. The following 2 days it was one long workshop on Dream Yoga. 2) Medicine Buddha He gave us the mantra and we all chanted together for maybe 5-15 minutes. Then he instructed us step-by-step in the visualisation. After having stabilised the visualisation, we resumed chanting together (we were maybe 20-30 people). During his transmission, I felt a special kind of energy coming into my head center. I felt like it made it easier for me to visualise. I also felt the energy from each of the lights we visualised in all of my body, and felt pleasantly relaxed. Since this day, I've been doing a minimum of 108 reps of the mantra and then the visualisation meditation procedure he explained. Already on the second day of the practice, it's like the energy had increased in power. Now it's growing day by day with my daily practice. So far so good! He's definitely legit. 3) Dream Yoga My dad took me to a dream yoga weekend workshop when I was about 18-19 years old with a Rinpoche visiting my country. I thought the whole idea of lucid dreams and using them for spiritual practice was extremely fascinating, and even at that young age I practiced quite consistently for about 3 months (while also reading his book). However, I had no results whatsoever. Then again when I was in my mid 20s, I picked up the book again and decided to give it a go. I practiced again for about 2 months, but zero results. In my late 20s, I again read yet another book by a tibetan teacher on dream yoga. I tried it again. No results after 1 month. All of the above practices were the usual "visualise a red drop in your throat chakra, surrounded by a white lotus flower with 4 leaves". In this book there was also a tibetan letter on each leaf, and you said them one by one as a kind of mantra for a while, then proceeded to only visualise until falling asleep. However, at the end of this particular book was also a shamanistic bön practice for lucid dreaming. After 1 month of failing with the vajrayana buddhist practice, I tried the shamanic practice. After about 7-14 days, it happened! I was super excited. Then it would happen every single day like clockwork for about a week. However, with each day I felt like I got more and more tired. Like I used up energy while sleeping, instead of regaining it. I remembered a warning from a daoist qigong teacher who had (as usually) dissed buddhist practices, especially their dream practices. He said "night is for sleeping and resting, that's what nature intended". So I thought maybe my bön lucid dreaming practice was sapping my energy and discontinued it. Lo and behold, now I'm in my early 30s, and I was faced with yet another tibetan vajrayana buddhist practice of visualising a red drop in my throat. "Here we go again!" I found myself thinking, however I still had an open mind during the workshop. During the workshop I felt Tulku Lobsang transmitted different states as well as different energies. I also found him to be extremely grounded in Being, never losing connection to himself, even if some of the people were weird or asked weird questions etc. He remained in Being, very relaxed, very present and extremely grounded and Embodied. I was quite impressed! However, no succes with lucid dreaming, neither during the nights between the workshop days, nor during the workshops when we actually slept for 10-30 minutes under his guidance and blessing. I really felt he transmitted a lot of energy during these sleeping sessions on the workshop, but still no lucid dreams. However, now after the workshop, I have actually had 3-4 lucid dreams so far using the typical tibetan buddhist vajrayana practice with the red drop! Something that's never worked for me, even though I've tried it on/off since I was 19. So that also tells me that his transmission is legit! 4) Wrap Up - To Be Continued So to wrap up, Tulku Lobsang is legit! He's extremely grounded in Being, in Presence and in his body, and he really does transmit states and energies. There's no more doubt in my mind - I will glady fork over my time and cash to learn Tummo from him when the time comes

Dear Dao Bums, Let me share an update with some insights gained from daily practice in 3 points: 1) Medicine Buddha, 2) Dream Yoga, 3) Take Homes So Far 1) Medicine Buddha Practicing the mantra cultivates your speech, and practicing the meditation cultivates your mind. Further, you don't only cultivate yourself, you actively connect with a lineage mandala field, where the medicine buddha is one particular part of the mandala related to healing. A specific dimension if you will. Once you connect to this dimension, the energies from that dimension flow into you during practice, and over time builds your own energies stronger. Like your house being plugged into the larger, local electrical grid and powerplant, allowing you to use your share of the energy. I felt the white light in my head center and in my entire body easily in the first few days. I take that to mean my mind energy is balanced and purified. Likewise, I felt the blue energy entering my heart center also spreading to almost my entire body, just a few places here and there are not reached yet. That means my body is almost completely healed and purified, however just a little more to go. However, the red light entering my throat could only fill up the left half of my body, and had a really hard time entering the right side of my body. After a few days, I start to feel the message is that my speech is not purified. After some more practice, I reflect "why is my speech not purified? I am very mindfuld of speaking truth, avoiding lies, speaking positive words to others, and I have practiced mantras since childhood". Then I understood that speech is a kind of "mantra energy", and that it's not my current actions, but karma from previous lives that determine how much practice we need to purify our body, mind and speech. And apparently my mind and body karma is okay, but there is some bad speech karma. I then suddenly remembered a vedic astrology reading I had about 2-3 years ago, where they specifically said my worst past life karma was using the science of mantras in an a-dharmic way! Suddenly it made sense; my current experience with medicine buddha's 3 lights of pure body, mind and speech, and this experience of the red light not being able to fill my whole body could actually fit quite well with past life karma! Pretty interesting! Of course continued practice will help alleviate that karma, as well as of course continuing to stay mindful of speech in daily life, and maybe find a way to use mantras to help alleviate the suffering of others, to generate a new, positive karma, that over time can help balance or even cancel out this old negative karma. 2) Dream Yoga During dream yoga practice, you visualise a red drop of essence in your throat chakra. And as you read above, I never had succes with this practice until now. It now makes sense that the negative karmic burden of a-dharmic use of mantras in previous life times was just too heavy, and much more practice and purification was needed until I could use this method. It also makes sense that our speech body could in some way also be called a "mantra body", generated by millions and millions of mantras we've said in this or previous lives. However, in my case, I've hurt others in previous lives with this energy, so of course the karma is that my speech body is not fully functional due to this burden. Hence only after purifying it and cultivating it will I be able to grow in my dream yoga practice. Lastly, I also got progressively more tired when I succeded with dream yoga practice a couple of years ago with the bön method! Because I'm running a marathon with just one leg! I'm doing physical work with a handicapped body, weighed down by negative karma from previous lives. Only by repaying that debt and then rebuilding a normal dream body (speech/mantra) can I then continue to grow by actually building it stronger and stronger by continued practice. Further, my dream yoga is much better if I do the medicine buddha practice just before lying down to sleep and do the dream practice. Makes sense, as I strengthen, purify and recharge my body, mind and speech. 3) Take Homes So Far - The force of karma is real! - Only the combination of spiritual practice and mindful daily, virtuous living can alleviate/purify this over time - The dream body seems very related to our speech/mantra body - If you don't practice medicine buddha, maybe you will have a harder time with dream yoga, as medicine buddha replenishes and purifies your body, mind and speech. If you don't have a source of replenishing and nourishing, dream yoga could just make you more tired. All the best!

@Chang dao ling I've not practiced astakshari mantra. I've a tiny bit of experience with dwadakshari mantra. I felt it brought peace. But maybe that was also because I prayed to God that it would bring peace to the souls of my ancestors. I found it very powerful.

Dear Dao Bums, Let me share some of my experiences with the highest level of Sri Vidya: the Navavarana Puja done on the Sri Meru (3D pyramid version of the well-known 2D version Sri Yantra also known as Sri Chakra). I'll share in 3 points: 1) Intro to Sri Vidya and Sri Meru 2) My own path to Sri Vidya and experiences from each level 3) My experiences with the Sri Meru Navavarana Puja 1) Intro to Sri Vidya and Sri Meru Sri Vidya translates literally as "auspicious knowledge" and is related to Goddess Worship. Sri Vidya has been kept secret for millenia because of its unique methods allowing the accomplishment of both yoga (spiritual liberation) and bhoga (material enjoyment and success). Sri Vidya has several origin stories: 1) It was given by Shiva to his most beloved consort Shakti as the ultimate means of acquiring everything both spiritually and materially, 2) It was given to saint Agastya as a boon by Vishnu's Hayagriva form, because Agastya asked for a way common people could easily and quickly reach ultimate liberation without renunciation and multiple-life spiritual practice, 3) It was given directly from the joint incarnation of the Trimurti (Brahma, Vishnu & Shiva) Dakshinamurti to a student, who then passed it on to Parashurama (Vishnu's 6th incarnation out of 10 incarnations). Adi Shankaracharya a very famous preacher of advaita vedanta & an unparalleled yogi personally installed Sri Yantra in temples all across India. Sri Vidya gives unique methods of reaching both bhukti (material enjoyment and success) and mukti (spiritual liberation) in this current incarnation. What is then the Sri Yantra / Sri Chakra? It's a 2D version that is called "Yantra Raja" or the "King of all Yantras". The 3D version is called Maha Meru and is in a pyramidal shape. The story is that this yantra holds all other yantras in it, it contains all Gods, all Goddesses, all Gurus, all spiritual powers (siddhi) as well as all the necessary means for complete fullfillment of purushartha (dharma, artha, kama and moksha, the 4 goals of human life). 2) My own path to Sri Vidya and experiences from each level I was exposed to Hinduism from early childhood, and it was always a big part of my life in early childhood as well as my teenage years. This was due to family. In my twenties I followed along the footsteps of my family and got mantra diksha (mantra initiation) and performed a "maha-purascharan" which in my case took 4 years of daily mala japa (mantra chanting with a rosary) to complete. At the completion of each purascharana, like clockwork, that very night I got a dream of the form of Almighty God I was worshipping. I would get life guidance. After performing 6 purascharans and getting these dreams I was quite content spiritually. At that moment I came into contact with SKY (Simplified Kundalini Yoga) which is a direct energy and transmission based meditation system. SKY blew my socks off; on top of deep meditation, I felt it gave "tangible benefits". By meditating on the chakras I got much better health, sleep, energy levels, mood and even better meditation than before, whereas with mantra japa I got a dream once or twice per year, but other than that it was adrishta-phala (unseen fruit) for me. No visible, tangible result. The tangible benefits of SKY reeled me in, because it seemed to give much more much easier and with lesser effort, so over time I slowly tapered down my japa until I completely stopped. After several years, my hindu family member sent me an invitation to an online Sri Vidya workshop with mantra diksha. It had no impact on me whatsoever - inside myself I thought "I've already tried mainstream religious hinduism with my years and years of mantra japa. It's a great way, but it seemed that SKY was simply superior in all ways. However, for some reason I read a bit on the webpage over a few days, just to give my family member and Sri Vidya the benefit of the doubt. At that point I saw a photo of Bala Tripura Sundari (the teenage form of the Goddess) and something deep in my soul stirred. I couldn't say what it was, but I felt something very deep and profound stirring. I felt a kind of attraction unlike anything I've ever felt before. After a few days of this deep feeling I decided to give it a go. Since then I've completed the rituals and mantras of each level of the Sri Vidya given by Parashurama and freely shared with the public by Guru Amritananda Natha. It's taken me several years of blood, sweat and tears to complete, it's been quite tough and demanding to be honest, but worth it. Level 1: Removal of Obstacles, Starting the Worship of the Goddess, Protection Ganapati the elephant God removes obstacles from your spiritual and material path and grants stability Bala Tripura Sundari is the teenage version of the Goddess, so you start your approach towards the Goddess Chamunda (Durga) gives you material and spiritual protection Level 2: Attraction, Joy, Love & Acceptance By worshipping Raja Shyamala Devi, the feminine side of the Goddess, you become enormeously attractive. In a group of the opposite sex, at least one from that group will be attracted to you after you've worshipped Raja Shyamala. It gives you profound pleasure in meditation. Further, it attracts more goodness towards you, materially and spiritually. In the end, this attraction and pleasure is said to actually be the Goddess' way of attracting you further towards her! Level 3: Healing, Protection, Destroying Bad Here you worship Varahi Devi, the masculine side of the Goddess. You heal your physical body, destroy black magic, protect yourself from enemies and spirits. You destroy and push away badness and bad energy from your spiritual and material life. Level 4: Here you finally worship Tripura Sundari in the Sri Meru with Navavarana Puja with her panchadashi mantra. Level 5: You get a higher mantra for Maha Tripura Sundari called Maha Shodashi, it's simply an add-on to the Navavarana Puja, and a big level up spiritually when you meditate with it (japa) I've detailed some of my personal experiences with each level in this thread here: https://www.thedaobums.com/topic/53122-sri-vidya-yantra-mantra-tantra-mudra-guru-karunamaya/ 3) My experiences with the Sri Meru Navavarana Puja I've recently started my first mandala (41 days) of Navarana Puja. I'm blown away! There are 9 layers or levels in the Meru, each called an avarana. The first 3 levels are one group and represents you as a seperate individual Level 1 represents the waking state and the feet. By worshipping it you're no longer helplessly thrown around by 8 negative feeling as a spontaneous and uncontrollable reaction to what you see and experience in the world, namely anger, lust, delusion, jealousy, greed, envy and possesiveness. Furthermore, it gives the 8 siddhis. Level 2 represents the dreaming state and the thighs. By worshipping it you eventually gain control of your dreams and get guidance in your dreams. You get aligned to cosmic cycles, namely the cycle of the moon. It is also said to satisfy all desires when worshipped. Level 3 represents the deep sleep state and muladhara chakra. It is said to end all agitation. The next 3 levels are one group and represents the powers working in the universe Level 4 represents the 14 worlds (chaturdashi loka), where we live in the 8th world (Bhu Loka or the Earth), as well as the swadisthana chakra. It is said to bless you with all auspiciousness. Level 5 represents the 5 karmendriyas (action organs) and the 5 gyanendriyas (knowledge organs) and the manipura chakra. It is said to bless you with all wealth. Level 6 represents the 5 elements and their 5 attributes and anahata chakra. It gives all protection. The final 3 levels represent Almighty God and his powers Level 7 represents the 8 most basic constituents of energy, the first outpouring from transcendent reality into primal, material existence, as well as the vishuddi chakra. It gives all healing. Further, it gives astral powers (seeing the past and the future, seeing every on planet Earth through your third eye, and later it gives the power of astral travel, i.e. leaving your physical body behind and travelling freely in the universe with your astral body. Read more here https://forum.amritananda.org/d/349-spiritual-reality-meditation-journey-within-by-guruji) Level 8 represents iccha (will), gyana (knowledge) and kriya (action) shakti, as well as agnya chakra. It gives all siddhis. Level 9 represents complete, pure bliss, God, sat-chit-ananda and the sahasrara chakra. It gives God realisation. When you add the Maha-Shodashi section on top of the regular puja, also on the same level of the Meru, it also opens dwadasangham chakra (above your head), allowing you to reach Thuriya-Teetha or the state even more beyond. My Personal And Tangible Experience The Navavarana puja takes between 1.5 and 2 hours to complete, so it's really, really long compared to the earlier pujas, where the longest (Varahi puja & Varahi tarpanam) took me about 50 minutes. The very first day I tried it, I got kind of tired because there are so many preparatory steps, new and unknown mantras as well as parts of the vedas and much more. However, the higher I reached on the pyramid, the higher I found a feeling of bliss and pleasure increasing at the corresponding chakra. When I reached the throat chakra, it was so intense that I could only describe it as a mix of deep meditation, ultimate sex, explosive orgasm and feeling drunk. When I reached the agnya, sahasrara and dwadasangham chakra, I was so slow in moving the spoon to give the Meru milk, because I was so incredibly blissed out. It isn't like that every day, but the more days of the 41 day mandala I complete, the stronger and more intense it grows, and stabilises more and more from day to day. I'm so incredibly surprised! I really feel "it was worth it" to go through years and years of blood, sweat, tears, rituals, mantra japa, purascharana and much more to get here. So far my feeling is that they weren't just marketing when they said the Meru is the ultimate.. I feel they were right! All the best! Sri Matre Namaha (salutations to the Goddess)

Thanks everyone for sharing your experiences Recap on my own standing process It's been over a week since I started this thread. As mentioned I'm doing 100 days of standing. First 30 days were hell, then there was a physical shift - my hips relaxed, my whole body aligned, and I could stand effortlessly and painfree for 60 minutes with no issues. When this shift happened, my body "faded into the background"" of my awareness, so now I could focus on just meditating. I was meditating all along, but the physical pain had a disturbing effect. The meditation in the standing I'm doing is a visualisation: 7 color pillar (like a rainbow). You visualise holding onto a rainbow colored pillar made of light, which extends down into the Earth and up into Heaven (the universe). Update on my own 100 days of standing Suddenly one day, I really felt as if the pillar was there. Then after a while, there was a feeling of energy exchange between my personal qi field and the qi field of the pillar. I felt energy circulate between my arms and heart and the pillar, as well as up and down my legs to the heart and back to the pillar. This continued for some days. Suddenly one day, instead of this general feeling of energy circulation in my body, it became very detailed. I suddenly felt the energy going into one particular meridian at a time, slowly going in and out of it (between the meridian and the pillar), cleaning it, until it reached the organ of the merdian. Then it would work on the organ. And finally, when the meridian and organs was cleaned, healed and balanced, it would go to the next meridian. This was extremely interesting, as I clearly felt/saw each merdian and organ cleaned, as well as what had been blocking it. I was quite surprised that the vast majority of the blockages were simply formed due to impaired circulation. Then slowly over time, more and more "junk" would simply accumulate in that meridian. Health Realisations Brought About by Standing I had a period of about 3 years where I was highly inactive, because I got 2 herniated discs in my lower spine, I couldn't move as I used to. This period was actually what got me into qigong, in hope of healing myself. But in those 3 years, the stagnation started, and in spite of me getting into daily qigong towards the end of those 3 years, still to this day, a lot of that stagnation was still there (albeit of course much better compared to if I had done no qigong I would imagine). That was the physical layer of the body, it had become blocked due to physical causes, e.g. insufficient circulation. The qi layer of the body was packed full of "foreign qi", simply meaning when you hang out with people, you talk etc, you exchange energies. For some reason, this can also get stuck in your system. This was actually the most problematic, it took several days for it to clear out: I even saw some events from my teenage years where the energy was still stuck. Lastly came the spiritual layer, which was the quickest to clear, but it was quite interesting to see the things that "hurt your spirit", or at least what had hurt my spirit. It's mostly people who feel strong negative emotions towards you for some reason, somewhat similar to the "evil eye", but just done spiritually. There were also some lifestyle and herb choice realisations, because I saw/felt the individual problems of each organ and meridian one by one. Some had cold, some had dampness, some had heat, some were deficient, some were stagnated etc. Now it's like this process is complete, so now each day when I stand and finally "connect" to the 7 color pillar, the cleaning of everything happens in a few minutes, all at once. It's not detailed like before. Now it feels like I'm simply meditating - just resting in a state of peace and stillness. I'm very, very positively surprised by the power of standing so far, I never imagined any of this was even possible! Conclusion on this post It all just happens by itself with no volition or intention of my own. Firstly the "settling into" the proper physical position could only happen with time, I couldn't do it by myself. It was just suddenly one day my hips relaxed and let go, then they "fell" into position by themselves. Similarly with this whole healing process: I'm just meditating on holding a pillar of light, then suddenly the energy circulation starts happening by itself. And now, after almost a week of this healing process, now it just feels like meditation - abiding in peaceful stillness. Very interesting indeed!

Hey @Maddie Let me answer in 2 parts: 1) Alchemy 2) Desire 1) Alchemy It's a big subject with a large variety of opinions. I've gotten into a lot of trouble and attacks when I've shared my opinions here on this forum before. But this is my thread now and you asked a question, so let me try to give some simple answers. 1. What is the purpose of alchemy? The end goal is Ren-Tien-He-Yi - man becomes one with the universe. Nowadays we would say "person becomes one with the universe" 2. What does it do? It's a stepwise, progressive approach of firstly bringing harmony on the physical level (health of the body), then the energetic and emotional level, and lastly the mental level. When these three are cultivated into a harmonious states, this reveals the spiritual state of affairs, a conscious, felt and experiential oneness with the universe while we go about our daily business. 3. How does one go about it? The genius of true, authentic daoist lineage practice is that all steps are fully contained in every single step. That means just one correct and authentic form can take you all the way, given that you keep at it 4. Why would one want to do this in the first place? What is the goal of life? We each need to feel/find that for ourselves, what we feel to be the right way to spend this precious time on Planet Earth. Some feel driven by music, some by money, popularity, or maybe having a family. We're all different. Daoism said (in a simplified manner) "do all that you want, just have the daily "side-project" of attaining cosmic oneness all the way". Desire I agree with you! I have had to regulate my sexual qigong quite a lot, because too much sexual desire can simply take over one's life too much. Honestly, that's what I've felt happened to many of the sexual qigong teachers. For me, I see it as a way to stay strong and healthy until death. It's simply a supplement to my health regimen. I think the former gentleman who commended my elderly teacher talked about practical sexual function in old age, more than the desire itself. The desire is in the mind, whereas sexual function is of the body. E.g. the physical capacity to eat and digest food in old age is commendable, whereas mentally craving food (more than you need for health) is something in the mind. So I would suggest a differentiation between increasing or lessening desire, and then having or not having a particular physical function. Of course mind and body is related that's why we're here on this forum, but simply for added clarity in this particular matter All the best!

Haha, yes, true, he was maybe even more horny than me, even though he was 70-80 years old. We sat on a bench waiting to be picked up after a teaching session. It was outside, in a park/playground area. I talked and asked him about qigong and meditation, how to cultivate energy to achieve inner peace and connection with the universe. He was closely studying and then commenting on how juicy and sexy the ass of one of the hispanic moms in the park was :'D and what he would do to her. So, all the lovemaking and sexual qigong does work for maintaining sexual function into old age About a year later, when he blew his hip out and had to be in a wheelchair for about a month, he had to stick to just the women riding him :'D But he came back strong after! Haha

@dwai super cool, thanks for sharing

Hey @dwai, Thanks for sharing! Standing & Moving I think it's a super interesting information about moving meditation combined with standing. I do remember thinking about how these two should balance each other out. My sexual qigong and lovemaking teacher actually had some hip and shoulder problems (he was also very elderly), and I just remember I felt that it was due to too much and too long standing, without dynamic exercises. I saw him standing one day, and it just seemed his body got more "locked up" physically, even though he was connecting to universal qi. I feel it too myself, that if I don't maintain normal dynamic exercise after long standing, I could see how my body would also slowly become more stiff in the hips and knees. Qi Circle I got curious about the qi circle! Sounds very interesting. Which lineage and which sifu practice the standing qi circle method you mentioned? I do believe that cultivators can do great things together if they combine their energy, however these synergistic methods are not that often taught or used openly from what I've seen so far. For partnered methods I've seen back-to-back meditation as well as of course sexual methods between a man and a woman, and I'm blown away at how the qi synergistically affects each other so powerfully. The other method I've tried is group talisman healing, where 5 healers surround the patient, each standing in a direction: North, East, South, West & Center, and then they each channel and transmit the healing talisman and energy of their particular direction to the patient. This of course means that each healer needs to have sucessfully completed a 49 day cycle with that talisman in order to have its healing power. Look forward to hear from you again, all the best!

I feel you @Kojiro! It's super interesting to hear from different people how their body responded to ZZ. For me it was the shoulders, it was 1 month of hell, and suddenly my hip "let go", and everything fell into place. I had my wife try it the other day, because I told her how it was now starting to help my body, and for her it was the calves, knees and hips really paining. I asked her "what about your shoulders?" "oh, nothing, it's fine". I was shocked, because I had just been through 30 days of hell :'D So we're all different and unique

Hey @Creation, My current 100 day cycle of standing is in the "pillar" or "post" position, zhang zhuang, where the arms are held out in front of the chest.

Hey @Sahaja, Thanks for sharing Very interesting insights about the joints, tissues, muscles as well as acupoints! Also very interesting point about the mind/awareness being inside the body, and the connection with karma All the best!

Hey @ChiDragon, I appreciate you sharing your thoughts! However, I would also note that even though you did your best to share your experience in your post, I still feel like you came off as judgemental, belittling others, and then having a little "teaching moment" telling everyone how it's done, even including specific angles. I of course see and appreciate your intention of helping others out with your tips and tricks! I know you're simply trying to help. I also appreciate your effort in following my intention set out for this thread. I want to avoid that people simply say ZZ is the bomb, and if someone didn't become a God by doing it, they're doing it wrong. This approach is what I generally found while scouring the internet, and I find it religious and dogmatic in nature, which I feel is in complete contrast to what Daoism is. From my perspective Daoism is much more scientific, meaning it's based on observation, always observing, and yes, drawing conclusions, but always being open to change them if new observations come along. The whole point of this thread is to gather observations. It's not to either "defend" ZZ as great, or "attack" ZZ as bad. It's neutral in its intention, it's simply to gather knowledge, experiences and observations. And facts are, nothing in this world is 100% good, 100% of the time, for 100% of the people trying it. No matter how good qigong, yoga, meditation, herbs or ZZ can be, it's not going to be that for everyone all the time. Some people are going to get hurt, get a bad result, it's normal, it's natural. Similarly, some are going to get no results. Some are going to get good results, some even great. The whole spectrum is there. The idea that the world is black and white, some things are pure evil, some are purely good, e.g. ZZ is either God, or ZZ is the devil, that is simply not true. I welcome your own personal experiences, and I welcome you on this thread, but please stick to the format; leave people alone, and focus on yourself instead: what is your own personal experience? That is actually what is always advocated in Daoism: always come back to yourself, focus on yourself and your own cultivation, don't drain your energy by focusing so much on what other people are doing.

Hey @Maddie, Thanks for sharing! Every personal, lived experience is valuable