freeform

Yes high level cultivators are said to leave behind such crystal structures (‘relics’) after being cremated. The pineal area is one, but there are others. Most revered stupas in Asia will contain at least one of these relics. I can’t remember the source at the moment, but I remember being told that high quality, fresh cod liver oil can help ‘decalcify’ the pineal. Incidentally cod liver oil seems to be very good for the soft tissues of the body - important for those of us practicing the internal arts. Sadly most cod liver oil is rancid. Some you can smell immediately (tell tale rancidity mixed with strong fishiness), others go through a filtering process to take away the rancid and fishy smell before being sold. I’ve smelled freshly harvested cod livers and they have a really nice, appetising fresh fish smell. If you freeze and defrost a cod liver, the oil separates from the liver tissue without going through chemical processing or heat and pressure processing. That’s probably the ideal source.

I think that would be pretty great, but in my experience of alchemical training from a number of different accomplished teachers in different lineages tells me that that’s probably a wishful interpretation. There’s nothing natural or intuitive about the internal alchemy that I’ve come across.

Very good post. You’re right there are different lineages with different approaches. The Daoists took a lot from Shaolin. All good Qigong uses the Yi Jing Jin principles for example. One of my old teachers used to teach alchemical operations by playing the Qin (big stringed instrument), and drawing calighraphy and expecting me to create the same quality internally. Although the calligraphy and notes clearly transmitted something that made my insides go crazy, I could not replicate it by myself! That relationship didn’t last long I am by no means naturally gifted in any of this stuff. Later when working with another teacher in the Longmen tradition, it became apparent that my foundation was not built fully. I got a few of the necessary qualities but there was clearly a glass ceiling that I couldn’t get past. So it was back to dismantling the shoddily built foundation (took a while initself) before rebuilding from the ground up. Except now I’m getting a lot more from the foundation practices including the electric Yang Qi coursing through my body (taserboy) which has actually changed my life a little - in the amount of energy and vitality I have every day - which can be directed into my training (and work/life). Its now clear that this is necessary for alchemical practice to be successful. I believe that 99.9% of people haven’t built their foundation properly - I am certainly one of them.

I’m a lowly foundation builder - not Neidaner So promise not to chew!

That relates very nicely to what we were talking about regarding emotions. The harmony that develops (the calmness and tranquility) is the De of the heart. To have achieved this virtue in a stable way is very rare and very good. Achieving all five virtues would lead one to becoming ‘fully realised’, ‘complete human’, ‘a sage’, ‘zhen ren’. This is what Lao Tzu was talking about. And as far as I understand that is Lao Tzu’s own level of attainment. But (and this blew my mind a little when my teachers told me this) It's still at a ‘lower’ level of attainment than where the later stages of alchemy lead. In fact it’s below the level of ‘full enlightenment’. It’s the perfection of ‘the self’. Whereas enlightenment and immortality are reaching beyond the self to primordial pre-heaven stage. In fact you can reach enlightenment and beyond without perfection of the self at all. That’s why there are stories of all kinds of low-lifes attaining immortality. I must admit that this doesn’t sit well with me. But that’s what I’ve been told.

Water is not one thing. Different things within different contexts. For example in a Qigong context water and fire mixing starts as soon as you can sink your mind to you LDT. In a Neigong context it’s a little different. In an alchemical context it’s very different. In a medicine context it’s different again. I disagree that water in the alchemical context is a good place to start. It’s like talking about the chemical composition of rocket fuel when you’re learning to build your first paper airplane. Unless of course you’re interested in a purely theoretical perspective - then of course it’s fine. It’s just worth bearing in mind that alchemy is procedural - it needs to be put into practice for it to be of any use (other than for mental entertainment). I think building the foundations is the best place to start and really focus on for about a decade before alchemical water and fire is of any relevance. But that’s just me. (And my teachers. And the classics...)

1. Have you prepared the foundation for Nei Dan? Connected body, open channels, quiet mind, Ting & Sung, built and consolidated Dantien, quiet, relaxed, slow breath? 2. Have you ‘lit the fire’ and kept it going? Is your LDT constantly nice and warm like a kettle on a slow rolling boil? 3. Have you acquired the congenital small water wheel circulation? Is the warm bubbling ‘liquid’ constantly circulating around your mco? 4. Can you enter stillness for more than 30 minutes? 5. Does the ‘white mist’ appear regularly whilst in stillness? 6. Has the white mist consolidated to a bright white light? ‘Shen Ming’? 7. Have you managed to anchor the Shen Ming light into your LDT? 8. Has the ‘martial fire’ breathing spontaneously started in you? ‘Wu Huo’ 9. Has the ‘warm liquid’ worked its way through all your channels and around your whole body? 10. Have you began to produce sweet fluid in your mouth on a regular basis? Yes? Well done! Way ahead of me! Now is the time to talk about mixing water and fire!

Ive had many

That’s exactly right. Sung doesnt mean relax. It means let go. Release. Sung is not melting on the floor in a puddle. There’s a balance to it. It’s releasing anything that’s not needed into a stable structure that you’ve already built. The building takes time. A long time. During that time you’re first mindful of structure and then Sung and Ting - letting go into your structure and absorbing awareness through the body. You can’t Ting if you’re thinking and directing. You won’t build anything without a proper structure. You won’t build proper structure without sung. Once the alignments are in place you don’t need to think about them, just as you don’t need to think about all the alignments involved in walking. But if you don’t build the alignments correctly then you will leak Qi at a later stage when it begins to build and pressurise. No it indicates that I do other things - sit, work, do gardening, physical exercise, sleep etc. Each of those will shape the body in their particular way. And I have to clear away this ‘shape’ every day, so that I’m a clean slate for my training.

Yeah, that’s a modern reinterpretation of Daoism. Which is fine. As I understand it, that’s used for ‘healing’ and emotional support/therapy. There’s nothing wrong with that of course. But I think it’s important to separate this sort of thing from the specific path that classical Daoist lineages offer. In the internal arts it’s taken for granted that you’re reasonably healthy already - both physically and emotionally, and that you’re willingly stepping on The Path. Which is difficult, arduous, full of pitfalls and requiring full commitment and dedication from its aspirant for life. It’s clearly not for everyone just as becoming a surgeon is not for everyone. The problem starts when one begins to mix this classical Daoist approach to spiritual development with modern therapy type influences or concepts that are a bit more to our liking. Because then this system of spiritual cultivation (which I believe is a real gem of human achievement) is watered down to such an extent that the original path that has been laid down and perfected over hundreds of generations by humanity’s smartest people, is lost forever. So of course go ahead and experiment with eliciting positive emotions and create therapeutic models as needed, but please understand and bear in mind that this is not the spiritual path as it was laid out and perfected by the Daoist sages.

You’re missing the obvious: Taserfoot :)

In the Dhammapada, the classical collection of the Buddha’s teachings there is a verse (213) about affection: Affection gives rise to grief; Affection gives rise to fear. For someone released from affection, There is no grief; And from where would come fear? The teacher who I learned Daoist theory from always loses students over these sorts of things - because she refuses to alter the classical teachings - but actually that’s also the reason I stay. It’s easy to think of the damaging effects of joy when overamplified. The extreme joy of the teenager high on MDMA for example - or the manic overexcitement of a kid on a sugar binge. Or that girl constantly craving new experiences, parties, risky situations etc. But I don’t believe it’s only the extreme joy or overexcitement they’re talking about I think they literally mean simple joy. I believe it’s only ‘damaging’ if your aim is spiritual cultivation. Joy or any emotion will move you away from stillness. It will make the heart engage and vibrate which will destabilise you. In normal life though, emotions (all of them) are useful - they all serve an important purpose and shouldn’t be negated. Although my interest is spiritual cultivation, I still live a normal life, I’m not a renunciate. I keep emotions out of my practice (unless they’re clearing reactions, although rare these days) I also guard against emotional impulsiveness in daily life. I may have an emotional reaction (to someone cutting me off for example) but I notice it and let it clear through quickly. My practices have certainly helped with that. I also don’t treat my emotions or my thinking under the influence of emotions very seriously. That idiot that nearly ran me over on a red light - of course I’m not going pull him out of his car window to beat the shit out of him (which is where my angry thinking takes me). Or the joy and pleasure that that charming salesman is making me feel doesn’t mean I’ll trust him. It’s very easy to be manipulated by your emotions if you put value on them and treat them seriously. That’s what our culture constantly encourages. Everything is about how you feel. It makes us wonderful consumers and easy targets for manipulation.

Probably something that negates my previous post 😬 Discernment? Dantien? Photography?

I think it’s worth putting Liu Yi Ming’s writings into perspective and in the correct context. As I understand it, LYM did not bother with writing about the preparatory, foundational practices. He went straight to the top - the highest levels of Neidan. Because that’s where the information was most inaccessible, hidden and shrouded in secrecy and misunderstanding at his time - whereas the foundational practices were (relatively) easily accessed through live teachers. In the modern day, it’s kind of the opposite. We have access at the click of a button to all manner of extremely high level classical texts on the later stages of alchemy or Jhanna practices, yet we’re lacking any real foundation for these things to either make sense or to actually be effective. So before we even have a cauldron (Dantien) or any Jing or Qi to speak of - we’re already trying to perform complex alchemical operations and accessing the Mysterious Gate. That’s the modern solution to this - the use of imagination (Healing Tao). But imaginary alchemy creates imaginary results. The truth of the matter is that 80% of ‘the work’ is creating the right conditions inside oneself... only then the 20% of the higher level alchemical work begins. LYM’s writings often seem harsh. In photography you often hear talk of ‘harsh lighting’ - meaning that when the light source is strong, it creates strong contrasts between the light and the shadows. It’s this difference between light and dark that is seen as harsh. It highlights blemishes, wrinkles and uneven ‘textures’. LYM’s focus is on discernment - separating the true from the false, it’s the central theme to most of his work. This contrast seems harsh, unfair, unflattering. It highlights our own imperfctions, stupidity and lack of virtue. As we know truth hurts sometimes. It’s the same with the Dharmapada and the Dao De Jing - there are sharp distinctions between right and wrong, fools and true cultivators... I’m guessing this isn’t just to be critical and hurtful, but that there’s a good reason for it...

Thanks for hunting that down Bindi. Yes it looks like the chart may have taken the Virtues (De) and reinterpreted them as ‘positive emotions’. Perhaps to simplify things for a western audience? As I’ve been taught, classically, the virtues are not emotions as such, but internal qualities or states. They are achieved through long term cultivation (or sometimes through divine intervention!) and over time replace the emotions - they aren’t present as a stable state in people normally. Even then, the De of the Shen the heart/fire is ‘contentment’ - not joy. It will also have a specific physiological change that’s indicative of the full transformation of emotion into De - much more accurate than judging mental states. They also have the water De as ‘calmness’, whereas I’ve been taught it as ‘wisdom’... The others correspond though. They also show a row for Mental Quality which I’ve never come across before and doesn’t seem to relate to either the De or the cognitive aspects of the Yang organs. I wonder what the source for that is.

Laughter and humour are a little different to normal emotion from the Daoist perspective. Laughter takes excess heat out of the heart. It’s a healthy thing. Do more! Humour has a very special place in Daoism actually. There are not many precepts in Daoism but Humour is one of them. It’s an important approach to life - finding the humour in things.

Yeah that’s probably correct from the TCM perspective. I’m a bit rusty on that. It’s also worth remembering that internal cultivation is different from medicine. Emotions are only really problematic if you’re a cultivator. Nothing wrong with emotions for ‘normal’ folk in my opinion. Although it is worth remembering that emotions are just ‘internal weather’ - not taking them too seriously makes life easier.

Yeah - just remember that it’s something you’re choosing to do. Don't pressure yourself. For me personally I found it useful to be a little forceful in just ‘turning up’ for my training every day. I’d have a specific time that I’d start and made an internal agreement with myself that if I did 5 minutes that would be my training done for the day - if I did more then I did more. I made the commitment to do that for 6 months. And I’d generally do about 1hr, but some days just that 5 minutes. After a while it was the best part of the day. I’d plan my training carefully. Make notes, keep tabs on changes and progress. And it naturally extended in training time. Now I’ve designed my life around my training - because it’s important for me. But I’d dissuade anyone jumping in this way when they’re just starting out (I consider at least the first 5yrs as starting out).

No - joy is considered a pathogen. As are all the emotions. I think ‘excitement’ is better description though. The virtues (De) are a whole different kettle of fish.

Or you use it as a way to control your liver anger Or too much worry is causing you grief and so you smoke. This chart is also a bit simplistic as it’s only dealing with the Yang organs... the Yin organs that correlate with each element also have a cognitive component that in turn affects the emotional component. For example for the lungs, the Yin component is the large intestine... And your large intestine deals with your ability to let things go. Can’t let go? That results in grief... and if you’re full of grief, you can’t let go... Can’t let go? You get emotionally and physically constipated (large intestine, remember?) Its a pretty sophisticated model once you get past the basics.

Oh that’s not from the Nei Dan perspective. It’s from the 5 element theory. In Daoist internal cultivation, the emotions are generally seen as damaging. That includes joy. Ive also stated earlier in the thread that guessing at Nei Dan is useless at best and damaging at worst. So I’d rather not discuss that.That’s just my point of view. The 5 element theory - which is pretty fundamental in Daoism from medicine to internal cultivation to ‘external’ cosmology.

Well in Daoist theory the emotion of fire is joy and excitement, the emotion of water is fear. But placing fear over joy doesn’t have the same nice message does it

I think that’s more than enough for most people. Don’t do more than is fun for you. Consistency is key really - better to stick to 30 minutes daily than 2hrs three times a week if that makes sense.

Haha you’re right of course. The majority of the teachers I’ve trained with use the Zifa Gong process to open channels. When they transmit at a Qi level the result in most beginners (particularly the uptight skeptical types) is quite extreme spontaneous movements (Zifa Gong) - generally looks like an extreme epileptic fit 😬 This sort of thing:

Most skeptics are not skeptical enough I reckon (about their own assumptions at least)