erdweir

R.A.W.'s eight modalities framework comes from Timothy Leary actually, he freely admitted this. Go to Infopsychology for the source, which is itself a rewrite of Exopsychology. I havent thought about RAW much, or Leary for that matter, in a long time. I first read them as a teenager, the first real esoteric/counterculture ideas I encountered. I'm pretty much over it now, but Enjoy! RAW's book the New Inquisition led me to discover Reich and Tesla, which then led me to other things, and so on. So it was a good stepping stone and introduction to escaping from consensus reality. Probably true for allot of people, definitely a good guy.

My problems were all in my thoratic region, I never had any trouble in the neck or head.

Bodri offers a cassette taped version of his stages material on his website

I dont know if there is a problem with this approach in general either, but I ran into trouble with it, and still find it problematic. There is a point were you are not forcing anything and it works better though. Nan and Bodri are just coming from a different school of practice, that's all. Nan makes some claim to have the "original" Taoist methodology, whatever that is, and places it at odds with the later devellopments of internal alchemy and such. I personally find his viewpoint interesting, but the way it is expressed is a bit dissapointing. You know a Turkish friend of mine told me about how you can go to these particular Sufis in Turkey and they will ask you allot of questions and then tell you what kind of Sufi you should go study with. It seems thay have a better grasp on how various styles of practice might be suited to different individuals than allot of Taoists.

you fooled me with the cute kitty

Allot of Bodri and Nan's comments on circulation and Qi Gong are a bit exaggerated, and it's just a fact that their tradition is a stillness one. They exhibit a good deal of prejudice on the matter. But if you dig through all of the stuff in Measuring Meditation, they actually admit several times that the different schools(stillness/movement, orthodox/esoteric, etc.) exist to help different types of people reach higher states of being. they even say for instance that younger people benefit from movement and so forth because theymay have too much energy to cultivate stillness. So they can show a pretty fair way of looking at it, even though it's often obscured or contradicted by polemics. There are places where they actually say it is of gret value that the Taoist tradition has preserved all of it's body transformation knowledge. They also say that even if one obtains enlightnment very quickly, that one still has to transform one's body. so one can either work on the body first, the mind first, or both at the same time. but the body has to be transformed one way or another. Their position is that it can be much easier for some to do it with zen methods, and if they are right, then circultaion is strictly speaking, not neccessary for everybody. BTW, Master Nan's bio says he was a martial artist before he began serious cultivation. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- As far as my personal experience goes, I had all kinds of trouble trying to direct circulation. If I just follow my breath, then it happens without my needing to interfere. I am in the same position as Cameron when she says that the trick now is to just let it happen without trying to mess with it. But this reminds me of some saying i cant quite remember where in the beginning the mind leads the chi and then.. i cant remember the rest of it. feel free tofinish my thought if you want. I have work to do.....

Oh Bodri and Nan just make a point of trying to straighten people out who get a groovy peaceful feeling while meditating and erroneously think they entered samahdi or something. Usually they are just relaxing and that's ok, but different from the real thing. They make the same point about Chi and Kundalini, which according to them people often think they are experiencing when they are just amplifying internal sensations or experiencing internal wind. I think their definition of Chi may have more to do with what is sometimes called "original chi" or "pre-natal chi", whereas internal wind would just be one of the five elements. ------------------------------------------------------------ on another topic, i keep slogging my way through this book, and I have a clearer idea of what they are talking about. There is allot of confusion of terminology, but their ideas arent as confused as their book, it just needs more editing work. Although their criticism of taosim and tibetan buddhism seems a bit biased at times, they admit in clear language in several places that the different schools exist for different types of people who need different methods. In other words, the same thing dosent work for everybody. Their criticisms of taoism are based on their perception that taoists get caught up in superpower achievements and the like, which certainly does happen. But then they also go the other way and talk about the true Tao. It's obvious that that are criticising lots of Taoist concepts and taking a differen stance about it, but only if you read carefully and also read between the lines sometimes.

Yeah I was up half the night pulsating with light

Yeah I dont know enough about tantra or buddhism to agree or disagree with you, but I found a similar problem when he was discussing taoism. He said at one point that the goal of "the Taoist school" (excuse me, is there just one Taoist school?) was physical immortality, which is just nonsense. Just to make it more confusing, he constantly says that attainments like immortality are "not the Tao", and then goes back to saying that Taoists have no high level culitvation and no understanding of emptiness, which is highly inconsistent and more nonsense. So "the Tao" is both the ultimate thing that lesser attainments are to be measured against, and Taoism is just a lower level "esoteric" or "form based" school? Like Darin says above, the man needs an editor. His rhetoric is confused to say the least. Underneath that, i feel there is a good understanding of some things, but I cant imagine buying one of his books (I am glad i got the free download), except maybe the 25 doors to meditation, which is mostly practical. the theory is a bit garbled to say the least, but I am interested in finishing it (on page 328 at the moment). Incidentally, I think his telephone course must have thousands of pages of reading homework in it, because the free sample he gives is a few hundred pages and it is just part of one lesson, and there are at least 8 lessons. can you imagine reading all of that crap?

Bodri and Nan actually parce out various different levels of emptiness in this book and i think the discussion is valuable. they actually warn repeatedly against practitioners thinking they have attained emptiness when really they are just feeling groovy from inner wind or some fake bliss and such.. But i agree with you that his descriptions of tibetan buddhism and taoism are biased. actually, the criticisms of there schools has a point, it is just overstated. How many times have we heard people get distracted by the pursuit of supernormal abilities and think they are the true goal? all too often. This is the main point he makes about what he calls esoteric or form based schools, that they get stuck in minor attainments and think that is all their is. one could make another criticism of Zen which would stress opposite weaknesses for that method. Here Bodri and Nan to their credit mention that it is better sometimes for people to enter "form based schools" becuse they cannot "let go of everything at once", but they dont constaly hammer away it like they do at the so called esoteric or form based schools. I think this is really a problem of over emphasis, they ruin a perfectly good point by overstating it.

speak for yourself, i am well aware of the bullshit factor

The basic idea is that you can transform jing (sexual energy) into chi, chi to shen, then to emptiness. you have to learn to conserve your jing first, and when you are full, trun it into chi, etc. women are supposed to lose their jing through their periods, and are not as prone to losing it during sex like men because they don't drop an egg every time they have sex. women dont automaticly harvest all the jing men lose through ejaculation during sex, theuy have to know how to collect it. I think the white tigress book mentioned above teaches this but people say this is a form of vampirism and i tend to argee. taoist and tantric female adepts go through something called "slaying the red dragon" where they actually stop their periods. I am not a big fan of mantak chia these days, but i believe his book on cultivating female sexual energy covers this. wang liping also teaches female alchemy at his workshops in china. the hindu tantric tradition is a bit more twisted, it gets into drinking menstrual blood and all of this crap, and had allot to say about it's powers. kind of similar to the sperm gobbling antics of Aleister Crowley's O.T.O.

Good question, I think for me the point is to somehow use my sexualtiy as a part of my spritual growth instead of being drained by it or dragged into a pit of never ending desire. I have also been bored with "normal" sex for years and am not into kink so I looked into taoist practices as a way to find something more profound. It's not about prowess for me, it's more about connecting with the woman and myself on a deepr level. I dont know how to use my sexuality as part of my spritual growth yet, but i am trying. my last girlfriend was interested in it at first, and i was able to give her a powerfull full body orgasm using only chi, but she didn't return the favor and endedd up wanting S&M instead, which is not where my head is at. We were able to trade energy when we weren't having sex (she had been doing reiki for 10 years) but she couldnt focus on it during the act. I would be interested in hearing more about the catalyst method you are describing.

Hey does anybody have a good alternative source for the taoist sexual techniques ? (I mean aside from mantak chia) I have never looked at james mcneil's stuff, and havent read the tao of health, sex, and longevity by reid. are they the same as chia's or are they different in any significant ways? Then there is the Iron Crotch website, but I cant take it seriously. as far as the original topic of this thread, I was telling a friend about taoist sexual stuff and she told me she had fucked a taoist before and he could contol his orgasms and so on. "it was hot" she said. I was talking to another friend about it and she asked me it i had read mantak chia's books and if i hung weights of my dick. So yeah there is some pop cultural dissemination going on.

what is this tract you are quoting?

This book is really informative, if somewhat biased in favor of Zen. I have noticed some inconsistencies in their criticisms of Taoism and dont agree with some of their statements, but I think the information in the book is worthy of serious consideration, and I plan to re-read large sections of it. What the book has going for it is a very clear exposition of the stages of spiritual progress that downplays the importance of superpowers and paranormal abilities. It also shows the value of internal alchemy practices even though it says that people capable of just letting go completely dont need them. It talks about how mind based schools like zen and more body oriented schools like taoism are really achieving the same thing by different means, which is interesting, but then it gets a bit tangled up in describing taoists and similar schools as not understanding real spiritual goals (which might be all too often true but is a bit too broad of a criticism for my taste). In that sense it undermines it's goal to be non sectarian, but it's cross cultural comparisons of different cultivation schools is actully really interesting if not perfect.

This is what William Bodri and Huai-Chin Nan say in one of their books, apparently the hair and nails belong to the earth element, which is the densest and hardest to transform.

William Bodri at meditationexpert.com has posted s free ebook link on his blog. it is for the title How to Measure and Deepen Your Spiritual Realization ("Measuring Meditation"). it's normally 97$ but he says that someone put up the money to give away 100 copies free. I just downloaded it. You just have to give them your email address and first name. that's all. enjoy link: http://www.meditationexpert.com/blog/

I get hung up on this one sometimes too. 11:33 makes a point that I had trouble seeing until a few years ago, I used to offload some of my responsibility onto my girlfriends. It kind of funny but when i decided to take a break from women and learn how to meditate for a year, afterwards I did meet someone who had been being doing reiki and yoga for over ten years. we had allot of fun trading energy, but she kind of blew me away when she started having sex with some energetic being! It didn't end up working out, but now I think I am in this space where I won't even be attracted to someone who doesn't have a spiritual side. And I dont mean that I interview them and then make a decision, it's all unconscious. every woman I have been with over the last few years has had this. When I look back at some of the more lost and angry people i used to date, I can see how I used to be, lost and angry too. you get what you give.

I am not sure Qi fits into the EM spectrum in any particular place. My guess is that a real intensive study of Qi will overturn a few concepts in or received wisdom such as the established laws of thermodynamics. of course this is just rank speculation, but studies that have tried to measure Qi have come up with allot of different results and I think this points to the outcome that our current view of things in full of holes. While Cosmologists argue about dark matter and superstrings, hadron supercolliders and new space tellescopes are being constructed that will surely reveal even more holes in our view of things.

The whole subjective/objective thing is just some dialectical stage you go through IMHO. Hopefully we will eventually get beyond it in our personal viewpoints and our life sciences. Right now if I get my arm ripped off in a car accident, give me a western doctor, if i get arthritis, bring on the TCM and Chi Kung. See what I am getting at? both traditions have their strengths. The allopathic model has some problems, i am not a big fan of it for allot of things, but hey man, you gotta admit esoteric systems didn't discover microbes, and microbes are important. Traditional medicines and cultures have allot of flaws too, like slavery, foot-binding, disease, etc. Taoism has never been able to really change the miserable conditions of most of the chinese people. In modern western culture we are beset with a different but overlapping set of issues. the west has done a huge amount of damage to the world, but also allot of work to reveal the truths of it and has raised many veils of ignorance. unfortunately it's paradigm is often too restrictive to interpret all of the results of it's own science, and it's wars and greed are as unsurpassed as it's finer achievements. but many western scientists have done serious work on bio-electrical fields, and Chi Kung practitioners in China have shown interest in testing their powers with the insturments of western science. intercultural diffusion is good for us all. I for one wold like to leave all of this east vs. west debate behind. I think we are looking at a amazing possibility, the chance to make a true fusion of the esoteric and empirical sciences. This east vs. west thing is another false dichotomy IMHO, just like subjective/objective. And 11:33, take note that this means I am not a taoist in the strict sense either, but I think it's philosophy and practices are important to the world and contain allot of truths. .

Yeah the last samurai sucked, dances with wolves gone japanese. More token white guys atoning for our collective sense of guilt over destroying traditional cultures. At least they didn't try to pass Cruise off as a Japanese guy like they did with Carradine, a minor improvement perhaps. And Bruce did have his time in the limelight anyway, good for him. They are now saying that Carradine may have died in some auto erotic asphyxiation accident, which for you vanilla types means that he was cutting off the oxygen supply to his brain to prolong orgasm.

Yeah Kung Fu was supposed to be a vehicle for Bruce Lee but the studio chickened out because they didn't want an asian leading man. Absurd for a show with an asian main character but that's the way they used to do things.

Cool, you are doing what I just decided to to. I have been in Berlin but I just decided to pack it up and go to China. I was thinking about Xian because of it's long history and I figured there had to be some good teachers there. Also I hear Xian doesn't have the nasty pollution problems of allot of the cities because there isnt much manufacturing there. I would be interested in hearing more about your study situation.

There is this book called the Field where the author describes a scientists work. The scientist (sorry cant remember the name) discovers that carcinogens have the surprising property of blocking a certain wave length of light. so he guesses that the body is emitting photons to control chemical processes and all of his peers turn on him and tell him it's impossible that the interior of the body would emit light. Years later someone invents a machine that can actually measure the body's light emissions and what do you know, they are of the same wavelength blocked by carcinogens. So the scientist says that the body is actually regulated by these photon emissions, blah blah but what are photons? photons are just convenient mathematical models that describe some observed phenomena rather well and others rather poorly, which is why sometimes a physicist finds it more convenient to describe light as a wave or ray instead of a particle. light is neither a ray, particle or wave, those things are just inventions of empirical science. Western science heretics like Mesmer or Reich have been working with chi for centuries. the descriptions of Mesmer's treatments sounds allot like John Changs's accupuncture treatments in certain specific ways. Mesmer used more "mechanical" means like baths with iron grounding rods in them and so forth but when he would touch his patients with his metal rods they would flop around like Chang's patents did. It's hard to say if Mesmer was emitting Chi in the way a Chi Kung master would or if he was only using these devices to get his results, but he had to be using his wand to make the movements in his patients occur. Reich also did allot of experiments with what he called the Orgone, his word for chi. His cloudbusting machines have some similarities to Mesmer's animal magnetism baths, with the metal rods in the water and such, but the devices were very different. Reich also focused his therapy on freeing the chroninc tensions and energy blockages in the body through breathing and muscular exercises. His methodology is crude in some ways compared to eastern systems of yoga, but you got to hand it to someone who went straight from Freud's inner circle to invent his own form of wester yoga. Reich ended up seeing matter as a kind of condensed orgone, a crystalized form of energy. His model was never examined properly because the FDA put him in jail and destroyed all of his work. I think he over reached but was on the right track. I agree with Gold that western science has allot of metaphysical assumptions hidden in it, and so does TCM, although TCM is perhaps more honest about it's assumptions. Western science tends to insist that its myopic nihilism is the only thing that can ensure objectivity. Instead what it insures is that certain results are to be favored. much of this is cultural as well, and not solely metaphysical, and there are some people on the other side of these prejudicial walls or else none of the studies cited int he posts above would have happened. People forget that we create concepts like matter, energy, and mind, and we can free ourselves from them as well. Concepts have their uses but they are all to often worshipped superficially by people who lack sophistication. Many of our most famous scientists are totally dogmatic and cant see past their own myopic viewpoints. Concepts like matter and energy have their uses, but they need to me seen for what they are, categories used for trying to stuff eternity into shoeboxes. Chi suffers from the same limitations as a concept. I wonder what will happen after a few decades or centuries more of studying chi with western science, maybe people will come up with a different way of looking at all of this stuff. Western physicists have already been arguing about whether to get rid of concepts like matter and space and replace them with the concept of the field. It can take a long time for sciences like medicine or biology to catch up with the cutting edge of quantum physics, but you can see that the thinking is allot less rigid than in it was 20 years ago. There are allot of possibilities we cant see yet.