freeform

I think it's a huge achievement. In fact, I think the transformation of the very core of who you are is a foolhardy endeavour! Many people think that spiritual transformation is all bliss and gratitude and coasting through life on a cloud of angels - but it's really not. To develop Gong - to build this inner ease and comfort in your mind and body - to have this emotional resilience and wellbeing, no matter the circumstances - to have enough vitality so you can be patient, smart focused and relaxed even under pressure - all of this is a crowning achievement for any life. And no spiritual transformation is needed for that! In this case, the glass ceiling is simply a nice skylight - keeping out the draft and lighting up your life

Oops! I just violated your copyright!! As far as I can see you're just repeating the same pointless crap - just slightly more sober and a little less rude. So congratulations! You've managed to tone down the rudeness! Your "High Qi Kung" is clearly doing you good But all you've demonstrated is willful ignorance and an inability to form a coherent argument and make yourself understood... Just as Pointless as before.

Already covered: That's the extent of courtesy I'm willing to extend to a rude, disrespectful goon such as him Already covered: However - Neigong is still not spiritual cultivation (in the term I use - which is the cultivation of the Original Spirit) - this cannot be done by energetic mechanics - as I'm sure you already know You shared your perspective and made yourself understood in a polite and respectful manner - which to me demonstrates a level of ease and equanimity... Your @Spotless friend, however, failed in that miserably.

Really good question... although you are asking someone whose "understanding of Qi Gong almost none at all." So I do have something to share, but I need to make it clear - that I'm not anywhere near this level of practice! So what I have to share is based on my (most likely) faulty understanding - so needs to be taken with a big pinch of salt. So regarding the dissolution of the ego. It actually depends on the lineage, timing and the particular attainment you want to achieve. What I mean is that (to simplify things) we can separate practitioners and lineages in primarily two camps - lay practitioners and renunciates. Lay practitioners will, in general, live in society - but take retreats away from society regularly. Sometimes these retreats can last years. Renunciates leave their social lives behind completely. They will either take on the vows of a monk or go live in a mountain hut in the wilderness for the rest of their life. What confuses matters is that we read classical texts and instructions, and often we don't know the context of the text - sometimes the practices described are for lay practitioners in society sometimes for lay practitioners on retreat and sometimes for complete renunciates. Generally, the practices developed for renunciates are dangerous and completely incompatible with normal life! For example, you'll have renunciates that go into a kind of 'suspended animation' state - although their biological processes are active, they're as good as dead - but during this stage, they're very vulnerable... usually, you'll have people to come look after your wellbeing - make sure there aren't any rats eating your toes or insects taking residence in your nostrils - that kind of thing Similarly, dissolution of the ego is not a pretty sight - you're not able to function in a normal way - everything has to be taken care of for you. If you don't have these things in place then you'll not last long. As far as I understand the renunciate path is the more direct, faster path. You just need to juggle your circumstances. You don't necessarily even have to transform your character - you just have to develop your Yuan Shen. The path that interests me more is the path of the lay practitioner... complete ego dissolution is not part of that path - but transformation is! Meaning that instead of shedding your ego, you balance it and cultivate it in such a way that the virtues (De) spontaneously arise and permanently transform one's nature - from self-focused to 'saintly'. However even lay practitioners go on retreats, and 'dissolve their ego' for periods of time to achieve certain necessary aims at certain stages.

Spot on. And if they're not, then the school has sadly lost the connection to their living lineage - and turned into a pantomime.

aaah - a proper discussion on a Daoist discussion board - how novel Great questions. Daoist names for things are very important. So for example when you say "the goal of qigong"... 'Qi Gong' is the goal - we think of qigong as the practice, but it's actually describing the goal - practice is what achieves this goal. Same with Taiji, Neidan, Neigong, Shengong - even Dantien. When you look at Daoist terms through this lens (that the name of a thing is the 'final destination') - then some interesting insights start to come to light. Building the qigong body is certainly a big part of the goal of Qigong - but only a part. I think of it like this... Ever seen a world-class pianist practice? I've had the pleasure to. And it's quite incredible - the subtleties they'll be practising are almost imperceptible to most people - they'll be working on like the 'pregnant pause' between notes... or like injecting a certain complex mix of feelings into a single chord. But that's because they have mastery of playing the piano. They can, for example, have an in-depth conversation while playing the most amazing piece of music - their fingers a blur across the piano keys. There is no effort in their playing. You could say "play the same thing but with a tinge of nostalgic sadness" and they do it - without thinking or planning or even any willful control - it's just there for them. It's like they're 100% fluent in communicating through the piano. This is mastery - Piano Gong To achieve piano gong takes many years of hard, laborious work... The pianist I had the pleasure of meeting would practice (or actually be forced by his parents to practice!) for 6 hours a day from the age of 7 - whilst also going to school... when he finished with school, he'd practice 8 to 10 hours a day - every single day. His hands, fingertips, wrists and forearms had a very interesting shape and quality. Because I have a (slightly weird) fascination with how the body changes with mastery of a skill, I asked if I could palpate his arms and feel the jing jin lines running to his fingers. Interestingly they were somewhat similar to a highly skilled internal arts practitioner with a 'steel wrapped in cotton' quality - although the lines were quite different. Unfortunately, the rest of his body is completely unconnected - but we're working on connecting his fingertips into his full structure - soon he'll be playing the piano with his dantien not his fingers. The quality in his hands is equivalent to the quality of the qigong body. In that you need to build the physical foundations - and it takes time, is hard work and quite uncomfortable. But mastery isn't just the body! In the case of the pianist, he must understand music, his mind must become fluent in musical theory and practice - the ability to hear and perceive subtlety. The ability to hear and produce the qualities of emotion... starting with the big crude emotions - anger, sadness etc... then moving onto very nuanced, emotions - the bittersweet feeling of meeting an old girlfriend after many years - one who you parted with on good terms etc... This is the development of Gong. And Qi Gong is similar. But there is an endpoint in development if your aim is spiritual cultivation! Once you can 'effortlessly play the piano whilst having an in-depth discussion on the side' - you've developed enough Gong to continue down the path. The point is - that even though it's extremely difficult, for those that dedicate much of their life to it, it should be possible to move beyond watching the breath or connecting mind and body - in a reasonably short period (certainly under 20 years)... If you're still absorbing into the breath 60 years into dedicated practice then something has gone wrong - or you've not had correct teachings - or you've not had a good teacher etc. Once you've reached Samadhi, there is no point concentrating on the breath anymore - you've outgrown that practice! It's the same with Qi Gong... once you've built the YJJ principles into your body, opened and cleared the major channels, built some Qi and have the quality of fluency and effortlessness in governing your Qi, you must move on - or you'll be stuck spinning your wheels - if spiritual cultivation is your aim! So onto the specifics of your questions, Creation. With the teachers I've trained under - Qi gong is the beginning - building the body, clearing major pathogens, building a little qi, developing fluency in governing qi etc... Qi gong is a kind of outside-in practice - you move your outer body to affect your 'internal body'. Yes, it opens the major channels of the body - and usually the Du. Neigong is the next step - you develop your internal body further. Neigong is internal mastery - you use the skill you've developed with qigong to now work inside-out. You might be completely static, but your internal body is fully alive, moving and transforming you. You start to work with congenital aspects. You start to open the deeper congenital channels - including the central channel. Some people call this 'spiritual qigong' - I assume this is what Pointless was referring to. However, this level of practice does not develop your spirit - your Yuan Shen (which is what spiritual cultivation is)... It does develop your capacity to develop spiritually - but it doesn't develop the spirit - might seem pedantic, but it's very important to understand the difference. Marrow washing straddles Neigong and meditative practice. Neigong is when your channels become like thick conduits, able to transmit, receive and generate Qi beyond the 'ordinary' amount. Neigong is where your qigong body becomes stronger, even more 'physical' - this is where the steel wrapped in cotton starts to develop (and if you palpate someone's body as they're practising neigong, you can feel these 'steel cables' moving and sliding beneath the soft muscles) This is when your Dantien starts to form physically. Neidan - is the step after that. Here you're dealing with congenital jing, internal transformations etc. Where before you worked to clear energetic pathogens from your channels, now you're clearing the root causes for those pathogens - causes that are beyond your current lifetime etc. And of course, as you progress with Neidan and meditative practice you start to work on the Yuan Shen level - and hey presto - you're doing spiritual cultivation! Anything before is only building the foundations to work on that level. It's important to understand the terms and the progression of development of your teacher and your lineage - often terms will be different. Often there will be overlap between qigong and neigong etc. Terms are important - they're not metaphorical, in the sense that they always have very concrete meanings in their own contexts. Yes, you'll have plenty of spiritual experiences before beginning cultivation on the Yuan Shen level - but this is not 'cultivation'. Again - might seem pedantic - but it's important to be clear about the difference. Yes - sort of. Yeah - definitely. Depends where you're headed... (authentic) Qi gong builds robust health, emotional resilience, vitality, a sense of inner ease and comfort, mental focus etc... For most people that's more than enough! But that does not transform the very core of your being! Neigong might help you achieve superhuman levels of vitality, intuition, 'abilities' a connection to different spiritual aspects of reality... but this still isn't cultivating the very core of your pre-heaven 'Self'. Each practice has its place... you need emotional resilience, vitality and inner comfort... you'll need a large 'amount' of qi and a spiritual connection to progress to cultivating spirit... etc. You can even see it in terms of body posture... first there is a lot of moving, sweating, shaking - then more gracefulness in movement - then more standing, mudras, maybe mantras - then more sitting, usually some more sweating, inner movement - then quiet sitting, stillness, no effort - then the same for days on end without breaks Of course, you can keep doing qigong to keep the body and mind sharp, supple and aligned - but its capacity for further development has reached the glass ceiling - usually at the intermediate stage of practice.

You seem very concerned about me! How sweet. I tried - but clearly you have nothing to offer the discussion

I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you have a different definition of Qigong - but as far as I’m concerned - if you’re still attempting to open your channels and govern your Qi after 60 years then something’s gone wrong in your training. Bit dramatic You never struck me as the emotionally sensitive type before. I didn’t intend to offend you. ‘Utter dismissal’? Where did I utterly dismiss anything? What I said is that there is an end point to Qi Gong - once you’ve mastered Qi in your body, you’ve mastered it. That’s still a pretty difficult task and the vast majority of Qi Gong practitioners aren’t anywhere near mastery. But if you have the right teacher and the right methods and you put in several hours of daily practice then you should have mastered qigong in 15 to 20 years max. Yes you can learn other skills like fa Qi - but your skill will be limited if you don’t move onto Neigong and Neidan.

Discussion is a lot more interesting when you make a point along with your disagreement.

I think there are several ways this could happen... It's possible that you can create this ability by being very skilled with Yin and Yang qi... This would be a 'mechanical' way to achieve this... Another possibility is spiritual development. At a certain stage when you fully attune to the way of things, you realise and start functioning from the perspective that all is consciousness - including our material reality... this is where the rules of physics, biology and chemistry are be broken... from footprints in stone to teleportation, levitation, physical immortality etc. These become byproducts of having achieved full control and consciousness on the deepest levels. Pretty much an impossible task

Bagua has a neigong element to it - so it will open up certain 'more spiritual' channels that are difficult to open otherwise. But again it isn't in itself a spiritual practice. Opening the capacity for spiritual development isn't in itself spiritual. I think that's important to remember. You can have great capacity for spiritual growth - but not achieve any spiritual growth at all. Each practice has its own benefits and downsides. Each one develops the body and mind in a different 'shape'. Often they are trained somewhat together. But that's tricky when you have to work

It's quite an in-depth topic - more suited to a thick book than to an online post. If I was to summarise, I feel I'd be doing you and the topic a disservice. What you've touched upon here (and in many posts before) is quite right. There is a degeneration... Or rather a movement from the spiritual to the material... The plus side is that we're materially more comfortable and healthy than ever. On the downside - we've lost our connection to the spiritual nature of reality. I've been reading about the Yugas - the cycle of ages. We're in what would be called Kali Yuga - the dark days of spirituality... full of false gurus, delusion, ego and degeneration. This is, in fact, the reason that we need practices like qigong, nei gong and alchemy - to create the right internal conditions for spirituality to unfold. In the days of the Buddha, you're quite right - he would speak and the very insight gained by understanding his words would be enough to liberate you. Those days are long over Now we need to laboriously build ourselves up to even get to 0...

There is just as much potential for harm with meditative practice. Possibly more so. Especially if not combined with other inner practice. The up side is that hardly anyone has the patience to do ‘enough’ sitting practice to cause harm.

😔

Practically speaking - taiji is almost impossible to ‘get’ without a teacher - not even the earliest stages. Qi Gong’s earliest stages are accessible without a live teacher (but with very good information). Taiji is mastery of yin and yang. Qigong is mastery of Qi. With teachers I’ve trained with neither of them are ‘spiritual’ practices of their own accord, but certainly complementary - and for most people even necessary precursors to spiritual practice. Taiji is almost infinitely deep in terms of practice - you can practice for 60+ years and still have depth to explore. Qigong generally has an end point in terms of depth of exploration. At a certain stage you will have ‘accomplished’ qigong and then it’s just a matter of upkeep.

I think of it this way - we’re always doing something wrong... but hopefully a little less wrong with each passing hour of practice. Doing it ‘right’ is when you’ve finally reached mastery and become a wise, enlightened sage yourself. Which, for me, is quite a way off You're right though - if you have a good teacher they’ll be able to help correct you. There isn’t one correct position - not really... the body goes through changes - what was correct for you yesterday may be incorrect today. That’s why it’s impossible to communicate these intricacies in a book. Standing practices are really quite complex. Internally you’re always dancing on the edge between release and inner connection, between stillness and movement... You’re always hunting for a certain equilibrium that takes you deeper and deeper. It is not standing in a certain structure and grinning and bearing it until your timer rings (although that’s usually how it starts). If you finish your standing and you have to sort pry yourself out of the posture like pulling off the stuck lid of an old paint tin then something isn’t right. If you feel numb or stiff and need to move around to get the circulation going again then something isn’t quite right. If you walk away feeling sore, clothes soaked in sweat but feeling vital and calm and the body feels big, expanded and bouncy like a spring - then you’ve done well.

ZZ is (in general) badly taught. Most instructions place you in a structure that is incorrect for your body and negatively impacts the spine and the nerves. This then causes numbness and pins and needles. I believe that no one should be starting with ZZ practice. It is useful at the intermediate stage of practice - for building certain mechanics into the body - but at the start it is generally detrimental.

It’s not just that... why would someone invite such scrutiny into their lives with absolutely no payoff!? It’s like inviting paparazzi into your life but not get the fame and wealth along with it. People with achievement have nothing to prove. They see the reality of the situation - that science is run by people and people are mired in their preferences and delusions - enough to imprison and kill a man for showing that the world revolves around the sun... So why bother?

Oh, and it's not kundalini - it's just qi moving

There is an attitude that you must take with this that's important. The most advanced teachers I've seen use this powerful process with the following attitude: It's just a natural reaction of your body and mind as it lets go of tension, mental and emotional debris and habitual patterns and traumas. It's similar to a sneeze. What's important is not to indulge in it... not to get too attached to it or to find meaning and importance in it - just as you would not do that with a sneeze. There is an end to this process... eventually, most of the debris that can be gotten to with this process will be cleared out - and you will reach a kind of ease and stillness in yourself. This is the goal - not more movements, not more experiences or anything like that. I have come across schools both here in Asia and in the west that use this process in exactly the opposite way - they indulge in the spontaneous movements in such a way that creates more layers of attachment. They effectively get stuck in this process - just going in circles... Like a continuous sneezing fit They treat it as something special, something desired, something spiritual - they layer it with a sort of self-hypnosis and wishful thinking. And this state is particularly susceptible to that because it opens up (and starts clearing and 'acting out' the debris in) your subconscious mind. Often it's followed by illness and all kinds of issues showing up - which, in a couple of these schools, they treat as negative karmic patterns leaving your body - they are not - they're simply creating illness through over attaching to this practice and doing it constantly and making themselves ill.

So first of all Qi Gong is 'Mastery of Qi'... Qi isn't in itself 'spiritual' - but mastering your Qi enables you to use the extra vitality, inner resilience and ease for more spiritual pursuits. Similarly, 'telepathy' and other such abilities aren't in themselves spiritual. In many cases practising Qi Gong at a very high level will develop 'special abilities'... however that's just as a result of functioning at a very 'efficient' level and tuning into aspects of reality that are unavailable to people functioning at a 'normal' level. Again not really spiritual. Spiritual training is generally meditative, alchemical or even religious training - and is quite different from qigong. Spiritual practice is very difficult and requires an almost superhuman capacity for successful practice. So Qi Gong is a great pre-requisite to help with that.

exactly. Qi at its most fundamental level is 'transformational information in process'... it isn't a thing - it's a process... it isn't so much a substance - it's 'information' (with the caveat that it behaves like a substance in some contexts) - it's information that's putting change into action... But this explanation probably confuses more than enlightens. So it's best to consider qi within its context - not as something separate or objective like we tend to want to do in our western approach to understanding things. The qi of feng shui - the qi of Chinese medicine - the qi of taiji - the qi of qigong - they all have the same fundamental nature - but they're all different and have different qualities and mental models within their respective contexts... The idea of qi shouldn't be considered or conceptualised in isolation from its context.

Yup - afraid so. It is possible to train with weights once the Qigong body is established (after a long time). But it still has negative effects. They can, to some extent, be compensated for and counteracted - but unless Dwai finds a way to use Song for weights (rather than contractive force) he will probably find that his body is developing in the wrong direction. But Dwai knows what he’s doing - so I’m sure it will be fine As a beginner doing weight training and qigong together is pointless (for the qigong side). Just choose one path of development and enjoy

respectfully disagree Yes - an important point. Love (reciprocated) is fundamental for any dual cultivation to be healthy. Still - orgasm (for men) isn't. It doesn't mean that it ceases to be 'the greatest power of creation'. Having children, breastfeeding etc is also highly damaging to the jing of a woman... but also a fundamental aspect of life. I'm sure you know plenty of brains damaged by pleasure. Pleasure and pain are not of much consequence... development is developmental - pleasure or pain, or any other experience are just byproducts.

Oh there are certainly some genuine classics in relation to dual cultivation - and as you say, they are not publicly available... What is publicly available has gone through a lot of mixing/filtering and reinterpreting - particularly to fit male interests. Sex can be used beneficially... but however one spins it (and they do spin it a lot!) - orgasm for men has no benefit - it depletes and damages (to greater or lesser extent)... male writers and translators tend to translate these parts ‘creatively’ so that it panders to their interest. Then there is some difference on the subject between true ‘cultivators’ and the ‘vulgar people’