Barnaby

The way I see it, after the initial libertarian period, the internet has basically transformed everything into a commodity. Doesn't make me very optimistic.

I think this is key. It's only when we fully accept change and its inevitability – and thus let go of the fears you mention – that we can judiciously select the course of action that circumstances require. And this is where the Yi Jing enters the equation, no?

Really interesting... I have known people – one guy in particular, quite "disturbed" – who would interrupt the normal functioning of electrical equipment. You thought it had gone wrong, they leave, it starts working again. In his case, I always assumed it was non-deliberate, and related to energy fields. Fancy breaking it again?

Sorry, but I can't recommend anything. That's not the path I took.

To my mind: Competency? Err... Maaaybe... Expertise? No

See your other thread...

Nope, no way.

Whoa! Cool to see a newcomer asking the big questions right up front I have no knowledge of Mo Pai, so I can't talk about that. Also, there are people here with much more experience of these practices than me. But I do have some years' experience myself, so here goes... This is absolutely true. There are people out there using dubious credentials to extract large sums of money from the credulous. Otherwise sensible people do seem surprisingly capable of putting their critical faculties on hold in this field. I have direct experience of this. But I also have a second cousin who gave away all her money, savings, house etc. to a happy-clappy Christian group and left her kids with nothing. So it's not something that's limited to the Asian arts. My recommendation would be to be dubious of anyone who's selling the dream. These arts are like the martial arts or learning a musical instrument. The key to progress is diligent daily practice over an extended period. The investment you make in time and commitment has a much bigger impact on your progress than the up-front financial one. But for me, the specificity of the Daoist arts is that they are body-based arts. You talk about meditation, and that's cool with me (I'm into it ). But in my experience, it's not the cornerstone of the Daoist practices. They're much more concerned with energy, and thus the body. Now when it comes to meditation, I actually think you probably could learn it from a book. Purely in terms of techniques. But the thing about meditation is that if you commit to the practice, there are necessarily going to be times when you find yourself confronting stuff in your mind that you have spent a lot of your life trying to avoid. And at those times, it is valuable to be accompanied by someone who has been down that road before you. But like I say, the strictly Daoist stuff involves the body, and that makes it different. It's like, do you think you could learn the guitar properly off the internet? I mean, you could try, but you might end up with bad finger positioning or crappy timing. When there are really simple exercises that could have fixed that straightaway, if you'd had a teacher who could see how you were progressing and what stuff you needed to work on. So I suppose what I'm trying to say is that the fact you're right about the first part doesn't mean you don't need a teacher. Because technique is important. It's like with your dating stuff. If you wanted to devote your life to approaching women, I'm sure there are more and less effective ways of doing that. But I'm not suggesting you need a teacher to work out what they are...

This is the only one I know. It's all theory (and rather long-winded at that). Useful stuff to know, but it's not going to get you anywhere in terms of practice.

Something got lost in translation. I was actually being friendly. It was not my intention to be boastful, competitive, or patronising. Sorry if it came over like that. You said you wanted a conversation. I thought I'd contribute an alternative perspective. You didn't want to hear it. C'est la vie (...say the old folks ) Best of luck with your practice.

Pleased to hear it Personally, I find that breathing is a deceptively simple but really profound practice. It's taken me about five years of daily practice to get to the point where I feel my breathing is more or less relaxed, but I've still got a lot of work to do. Like someone said in another thread, it's important not to force it. I certainly made that mistake, wasting a lot of time trying to breathe the "right" way and only injecting more tension into the system. There's so much emotional tension that gets stored in the body. And it certainly feels to me like just as much – if not more – of it gets stored in the mechanism of breathing, as it does in the joints and muscles and sinews. Which would make sense if you consider how basic breathing is: the first thing you do when you emerge from your mother's womb, right? But the great thing about this stuff is that it works both ways. The emotional tension gets stored in the body. But if you work on relaxing the body, it releases the emotional tension. Like I said before, hang in there

Hi Subitai I've seen some of your stuff on rumsoakedfist. Good to have you onboard.

And this is what you call a conversation? You asked for thoughts. I gave you thoughts. Good luck with your practice.

What if I stay in and have sex? OK, that's a joke. Kid – and that's not condescending, that's just because I'm a straight male twice your age who's been around the block – I'm going to tell you what I know. So I'm not going to talk about the inside-baseball intricacies of Nei Dan theory and practice, because that's not my field of expertise: I'll leave that to others. I'll talk about the stuff of which I have direct personal experience. The way I've been taught, the number one cause of Jing depletion is the emotions. And if you, as a young guy of 23, decide to nullify your sex drive, what emotional impact is that going to have? I'm thinking aggressivity, short-temperedness, depression... And who's to say if the Jing depletion caused by that emotional impact might not outweigh any putative gain derived from the abstinence? What if after you conquer and explore it, you decide you don't want to discard it any more? In our modern society, sex is commodified, trivialised, denatured, and transformed into just another item on the supermarket shelf. Sex is where you came from, man. Sex is yin meets yang. Have you read the Yi Jing? What you're advocating isn't just like going on a gluten-free diet. We're talking about something fundamental, something elemental. OK, I'm just going to give it to you straight. It ain't going to happen. Forget about it. Go away and be a monk. But don't think you are going to have a satisfying emotional relationship with a woman without sex. I think the problem here is that you're treating sex – in the very "modern" way you mention – like it was some kind of object, like a be-all-and-end-all in itself. Like it was something really important. When the reality is: it's just a vector, man. It's just a channel of communication between man and woman. It's a means of expressing, sharing and experiencing a sense of deep connection with someone you love. It's actually the ultimate means of doing that. That's why women dig it And this is what you're looking for, right? So stop hyping sex up into this big dangerous thing that you need to rule out of your life. It's like, what's more important? Being a big powerful Nei Dan master of the universe? Or just being happy?

Way to go!

For me, it’s that whole post-Crowleyian project of projecting your will onto the universe, commanding spirit forces, and so on… Others may see it differently

Magick and martial arts, two other big vectors for this in my experience

Yeah, better watch out for that Jing depletion

Great stuff… Bring it on!

And compensatory masking emotions too... This is a vast and fascinating subject

OK, the stuff about desire I can follow. But talking about semen takes it somewhere far more specific. Does that imply that Yuan Jing leakage is more of a problem for men than for women? Or that these words are just cultural signifiers, referencing things that are more unisex?

So this is a fundamentally phallocentric model, then? I'm not being flippant. With all the references to semen, sperm and ejaculation, that would seem to be the case...

Man, speaking as someone who has inherited a certain amount of kidney deficiency, this is so bang on the money...

Like Freeform says, it sounds like you're already doing the right things. I hadn't realized you were feeling so stressed out. Re "Anchoring the breath", can you breathe all the way down to your belly in a relaxed way, or does the breath get trapped in the chest with a feeling of anxiety/discomfort? If it's the latter, then maybe it would be sensible to stop that too for the moment. No point adding more stress into the equation. But it's very hard to give any pertinent advice over an internet forum. I think you should probably focus on seeking out someone trustworthy who you can consult with face to face. Hang in there.

PS: if you were suffering from depression prior to the episode you describe, the above should help with that too.