EagleShen

Same. eg movement is a natural and spontaneous arising, eg the planets, stars, galaxy etc, they move without effort, thus true stillness must encompass movement, and visa versa. Natural movement is stillness, natural stillness is movement.

Reminds me of the story of Guatama Buddha and the flute, where he met a young boy in a village playing a flute and he asked if he could play it. The Buddha hadn't played flute since he was a little boy, and he played note perfect an incredible heart opening piece of music.

That's a curious question to attempt to answer, and probably doesn't have a clear cut answer and yes may well take a whole book to define it, there are many different methods of cultivation in Taoism, and some of them do require you to simply sit for decades, although this is a lot less prevalent than in some other systems, Buddhism for example. You could answer it quite simply and potentially not very helpfully by saying that it's an approach to the cultivation of the human being that was developed from the indigenous shamanic practices within the region now known as China. I guess the most helpful answer i can think of right now is that Taoist meditation and yoga has an emphasis on stillness in movement, whether this be movement and stillness of the body, mind, spirit or energy, it's the idea that when action arises spontaneously from a natural state of being it encompasses and manifests as both movement and stillness.

I'm actually going to do his course this weekend, mostly because i've been wanting to learn Dao Yin from a teacher (rather than through books etc), i'll tell you how it goes and will ask some lineage info!

It's not the question that's the problem, it's expecting an answer that your rational mind can understand that's the irrelevant bit, it's a powerful contemplation with infinite depth.

Been using it most days for a good year and a half, learnt it from the DVDs. It's a great form, a lot of subtlety to it, i feel it's going deeper and deeper... knowledge of the I-Ching and five elements really helps a lot to go deeper. I'd be interested in your report of the weekend, I'm interested in doing the course at some point (for teaching interest), but to be honest after watching his DVDs i'm really not so sold on his teaching style, but that could be influenced by the quality of the product, which is a bit slapped together. Enjoy!

With either retention or ejaculation, if you aren't dealing with the underlying emotional blockages you are likely to cause problems, hence the necessity of semen retention as a part of a whole practice, and really should only be done when energy/emotional blockages have cleared enough to allow some energy flow out of the pelvic area. IMO this is componded when the practitioner has a sub-conscious desire to ejaculate, but has decided that he won't/shouldn't on the conscious level, thus causing a tension which is likely to cause harm.

Part of the problem of course is that people always assume that there is only one world to end, and that 'the end of the world' means that everything goes. Anyway, as i understand it, the Mayan calendar doesn't actually end (it's just the end of a cycle), and the change period is over about 6 years, it's not a singular 'clock ticks and then boom!' type thing. Too many Hollywood movies getting mixed up with the Mescalin i think. And there will always be an end of 'the world' to look forward to! Anyone want to start a 'the real end of the world is in 2018' movement with me?

I never had a great amount of success with the Binaural Beats, but i've been having more success with the Isochronic Beats, i like not wearing headphone's when i'm meditating! Totally agree with the training wheels analogy, gives you a taste, a glimpse, but i'd suspect you can go deeper when you take the training wheels off. Has anyone achieved 'enlightenment' with Binaural Beats? Re the dreams, i've heard a number of sources say that when you cultivate high enough you don't dream (don't have any on hand to refer to though). I assume this is due to the sub-conscious realms becoming conscious.

LOL

Awesome thread, i've done a little 'holding the ball' practice years ago, but this thread has really inspired me to get into it again. I also practice Kriya Yoga, and have been doing it standing up over the last week or two after doing wuji gong, and it's been really quite amazing in grounding and opening up some blockages i've been working through. My standing Kriya practice has usually been about 20-30 minutes, so i'm hoping i can just drop straight into a good long Zhan Zhuang (although i expect it will be quite different simply cultivating emptiness). Thanks!

Wow, totally awesome, thanks so much for your contributions!

Good info moon knight. Slowly circulating the energy in this direction (up front down back) can be useful for clearing blocks particularly in the Yin channel, but I wouldn't try 'spinning' the energy up the front and down the back. I've not come across any techniques that encourage circulating in this direction beyond that though.

Great discussion. Ethan Vorley's Tantric Secrets book gives you the basics of Chia's stuff in very simple terms, can be a great way to get someone's head around the basic technique before going into more detailed stuff. Tantric Sex. His implication that Tantra is all about sex does irritate me though, but i can let go of that. Chia's stuff tends to be very Yang i find, the 'hard draw' is not the be all and end all, in fact in my experience is it's only a starting point, you want to get to the point where you can feel the energy naturally flowing through all your channels. After all isn't the point of Taoism/Tantra to cultivate a natural state of being? When you clear the stuck emotions and blockages in the lower chakras orgasm arises into the whole body quite naturally for both sexes. IMO the point of conserving and cultivating Jing within your own body is that you have so much more energy and love to share with your partner and yourself. If unconscious 'stuff' is mixed up in it then the whole energy exchange gets a lot more complicated. Imbalances will occur if one partner is cultivating and the other is not, the story that started this thread is an extreme case in point. The guy had better know his stuff or he's in for a very rough ride with his karma. As i see it the point of dual cultivation is to support and enhance each others spiritual growth, and you can help each other past and through the blocks and then sex opens up into some incredibly multi-dimensional spaces. It all gets back to love, and cultivating love is the 'real' practice.

Re protection, i've been playing with this a little recently. A simple but very effective method i've just started experimenting with is: Focus your attention on muladhara chakra (at your base) and feel your connection to the earth - ideally all the way to the centre. Now focus on and feel into manipura chakra (at the solar plexus) Tune into your own aura and expand or condense it to about 2-3 feet around your whole body See your aura bathed in golden light (from above) till your aura is filled with this golden light Now see an intense violet light surrounding your aura, sealing it into an egg like shape It's good to practice this when not in the vicinity of negative influences initially while you get the hang of it, it should quickly become quite tangible. With practice this can become second nature and quite effortless. Oh, and when you're done, be sure to ground it by doing step one again.

Not sure about depossession, but the pain body is rooted in a shamanic concept that your emotional/psychic pain actually forms an energetic body, and that this pain body can run your life, indeed it pulls the strings of pretty much anyone not endeavouring to be conscious of their 'stuff'. It's a way of locating and tackling the unconscious pain that informs so much of most people's reactions. Eckhart Tolle uses the concept, but the best examination of it that i've seen is in Arnold Mindell's 'The Shaman's Body'.

The voting didn't work for me for some reason. I've been doing a daily practice for about 9 years now. Totally essential, it's the launching pad for your everyday life being your daily practice. Took me quite a few years of going boom and bust with various forms of yoga and meditation before i finally cracked it. The key is loving it, even if you can only find a couple of minutes, keeping the habit is the gold. And discovering tai ji, it inspired me.

Great thread. Inspired my first posting. I'd agree with the general gist that they're different approaches to the same thing. The deep traditions emphasise the necessity to align your will to God/the Tao/the Great Spirit/etc. and that practice and phenomena are just what they are, steps on the path. I'm not really familiar with either of those guys work, but here's my two cents worth on a more general level and in response to some of the stuff that's come up. On the psychological level, generally the East has been more concerned with structure, and the west with content. The Eastern approach is that if you sort out the structure, then the contents will sort themselves out. The Western approach is that if you sort out the contents, the structure will sort itself out. Hence more emphasise on dissolving all that stuff directly. And in western magick you dissolve it through the stuff. Any practice has it's learning curve though. In the apple example, engaging with an object like that so that it fully engages all your senses, do that enough so that it's no longer a conscious process and you start merging with the subtleties and presto the 'stuff' dissolves and you step into the emptiness. You go through the stuff. How different is this to learning Tai Chi though for example? You got a lot in your head when you first start, it's part of reprogramming your mind to stop the incessant grasping and hibituated thoughts. How different is this to chanting mantra? And is this so different to learning about emptiness and the practice of emptiness? If every sense was totally focussed on the experience of an apple for a couple of days i reckon you'd pretty deep in. You require a will and determination beyond the ordinary to be able to master any spiritually realised state, ie the gift of a strong (but doomed) ego. The Western Tradition is more explicit about how to build the ego up perhaps. As i understand it, Western magick has an emphasis on placing the ego into the service of the higher self/soul, whereas traditions of the emptiness path emphasise destroying the ego. Many Indian traditions have the same approach in this as the Western Traditions. On some level i suspect they are all actually the same thing.

I basically agree you can't really draw much conclusion, and i'm sure for every short lived master you can pull out a long lived one, eg i studied with Prof Lun Wong here in Melbourne, he's about 90 now and can still take out anyone on the martial arts mat, he smokes like a chimney and is the happiest and most contented person i've ever met. His main philosophical statement is: 'don't worry'. Anyway, i'm digressing, i actually wanted to raise the point that a lot of high profile energy workers have been motivated to embrace the healing arts so intensely as they had some kind of a debilitating illness as a child, which they overcame by practising intensely X practice, but you'd think surely this would influence their life span. Would be interesting to see if this is the case for any of those you've listed. I know my life and consciousness is of a far higher quality when i'm practising solidly, and that's what interests me more than anything.

Hey Dao Bums, Dropping the intro in, been using the board occasionally to check stuff out, thought i might as well jump in to the soup. My main passion is cultivating consciousness, currently through an intense interest in and fusion of Taoist, Tantric and Hermetic Internal Arts. My background highlights: 18 years of actively trying to work out how to drive this body and consciousness thing i'm in. 8 years training in Tai Ji Chuan, Wu Gong and Judo with Professor Lun Wong in Melbourne 4 years intensive practice with Ipsalu Tantra (now a teacher) Exploring Healing Dao and Hua Ching Ni on and off for 10 years or so 1 year of practising WuJi Gong pretty intensively Currently wrapping my brain around New Hermetics and Western Magical practices. Looking forward to being a Tao Bum!