aeon

Yes, I have. Don't worry so much as there are so many more variables to an occurrence than your mere ego thinking about them. Through mantra you are merely coming across your own subconscious thinking patterns and illuminating some of the violence within you. Being aware of this will teach you to have compassion on yourself which will emanate outward as well as you overcome these inner patterns. Don't give your inner thoughts so much power... seriously, they are not that important. Don't let them control your more altruistic intentions.

thank you very much for this thoughtful reply. so are you basically saying that I should try to continue the mantra practice, and just not pay attention to my negative thoughts and distractions?

Franz Bardon, in his book Initiation Into Hermetics goes into this a bit. Basically, what's important for magical work, and to that extent, some kind of mantra repetition work, is focus. You've got to develop a point where you are focused completely and totally on your goal, and nothing else (positive or negative). Because if you've got extra thoughts floating around in your mind as you do a mantra, it could weaken the effects you are trying to produce, or even put effects you don't want in there (good or bad).

 

So from this point of view, the prerequisite to mantra/magic work is focus. Before you do some kind of mantra/magic work, do something that helps clear your body and mind of extra influences (externally coming from others, and internally coming from yourself). If you don't feel like you have a focused mind yet, stop doing this stuff entirely until you feel like you can.

thank you for this. This looks like sound advice to me, I am not too concerned about the mantras not having a strong effect, i am much more worried about them having adverse effects.

thanks to everyone for their contributions

For the past few years I have been using some mantras to help my concentration as well as to use their magical properties to cause positive changes in my life and those around me.

I have had dramatic sucess using them for their magical purposes I believe, however recently I have been worried because I think that the mantras I use can fulfill my wishes, both good and bad. I am worried because I think that some of my subconscious desires and wills are carried on the mantras i use and tend to become a reality somewhat in my experience.

Although I would never wish harm on anyone in any kind of way I am fairly certain my mantra practice helps turn my desires into reality. I tend to get angry easily and a week ago I got angry at my friend, and his house caught on fire. Another time I tried to use the mantras to send my intent to heal another friend but he really pissed me off, and although i still tried to help him with mantra usage to help his knee he instead became violently ill with a fever.

As a result of such experiences and others I have become paranoid and now a lot of times when i do mantra practice i am afraid of harming people and because of this i somehow uncontrollably imagine bad things happening to them for a few seconds at a time. Does this make sense? And i can imagine this can only make things much worse.

Also I guess these are the reasons why many mantras were hidden and not to be used by everybody. and /or required a transmission or guidance in their usage

I dont know what to do at this point i dont want to stop doing the mantras but if they will result in people getting hurt i guess i have no choice but to stop.

anybody ever run into anything like this?

thank you all

SFJane, I find what you write about your experience fascinating. If you get your book published let me know and I will go to the bookstores in my city that has spiritual books and ask for it and recomend they take it in if they haven`t. They tend to by a couple of versions of stuff people ask for to see if more people are intereseted. If it gets to the level where it might be published in diferent languages I can get it read by a sympathetic publisher and if it is published I can get it in the hands of a journalist or two that has some understanding of meditation. I have already tiped my meditation teacher of about you and he is soon to do a phd on the effects of long term qigong and meditation practice. I think people who belive in it, people on the bums for example, can do a lot to spread cultivation type stuff by doing what one can to spread stories like these to the right people.

 

Aeon, one thing he can do with absolute safety to get chi down is pilates. Because one learns to move from and initiate movement from the dan tien one learns to get the mind down there and so the energy sinks as well. In general it structures the body and the movements of the body in a manner that creates harmonious flow of chi. But it does this in an almost purely physical manner. It produces very little chi so it is perfectly safe. It takes a long time though. 60 min 3 times a week for three months will do a lot. It will not help much in opening the front channel but chi will sink.

 

Another physical method is various balancing exercises that do not focus on chi. the four corner balancing exercise that is at the end of Sonnons intuflow beginner series is a good example that I do everyday for precisely this reason. You can find it on youtube. It will get his focus down to the bottom of his feet and help him sink the chi.

 

There are also various squating type exercises that are very grounding and I think several bums know some of those. Tips anyone?

 

Trunks site alchemical taoism has some tips on opening the front channel. But he should get a teachers help for this though. Why not take a short vacation in Miami and see Santiago or Tao or both. Then they could tailor some stuff for him that not only helps with the front channel and grounding but other aspects of balancing and healing him that are not aparent to you or us now. They are available through skype though so you could do it the lazy way.

 

As for wheter a male could get more balanced by having sex with females or just being arround them I belive they can. As far as I understand the theory mostly agree on this it. It has also been my experience. When having sex with women I have found in addition to the loss of energy from ejaculation I get quite a lot of energy of a very cool and balancing nature. Recently I had a sexual encounter with a girl that actually has some energy from cultivation work and can project it and that was a whole different level. I felt much more cooled of and balanced. A week later I still do to some extent. I have also found that after I started cultivating there are energy exchanges going on all the time with people arround me and that I get/suck in cool yin energy from females and they get hoter more yang from me. Especially if i sit close to a female friend or If I take a massage with a female massage therapist it can be quite strong. It gets less intense the less I practice energy stuff. I can manipulate it to some extent and increase or decrease it somewhat but don`t bother to do it. Not planning on becoming a small level Drew Hempel just yet:)

I could not find the 4 corners excercise i think this video clip is the end of sonnons beginner series right?

I also personally find similarities between what you said regarding interactions with females as well

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVZ1bhM5vRU&feature=related

I was researching a bit about nitric oxide since trunk mentioned it on another thread along with Dr. ignarro's formulas

it made me think of another L-arginine researcher named Dr. Allen who apperantly sells a very high grade l-arginine product.

http://www.freewebs.com/proargi_9/

I was wondering if anybody has experience with either Dr. allen's or Dr. Ignarros formulas??

http://catalog.herbalife.com/targeted-nutrition/heart-health/niteworks-powder-mix

You are very welcome Trunk. I know my posts are tl dr but I'd rather say too much than not enough.

 

 

Aeon and I chatted for a bit and I don't think he would mind (i hope not) if I shared my thoughts on it.

 

Psychosis is a funky subject. The simplest definition is: Cognitions or thoughts that are not based in reality. That is pretty broad. Psychosis is often considered to be the end product of a manic episode. It can be caused by many different kinds of drugs, toxins and even diseases like encephalitis and lead poisoning. The subject of whether or not so-called spiritual or religious experiences are psychosis is hugely polarizing and controversial. Many spiritual experiences seem to mimic clinical psychosis.

 

How do you tell the difference between an enlightenment or quickening experience or a psychotic experience? Very tricky subjectively speaking. There is not a whole lot of literature about it. As we all know the processes involved in meditation and chi kung can cause both psychosis and spiritual experiences. For us, it's even more critical to be able to tell the difference.

 

Some factors to consider are: How does the aftermath of a spiritual awakening experience effect you and affect you? What are the immediate ramifications? What are the long term consequences?

 

Caution: generalizations ahead.

 

A spiritual experience usually leads you to a healthier relationship or understanding of your life, other people or the nature of reality. That kind of experience can come with a huge rush of energy that races around you inside for seconds or even days. That may be a sign of opened energy channels, freed energy blocks or a higher vibrational state has been attained.

 

A psychotic experience can also have intense energy sensations. When I had psychosis my thoughts subjectively felt like barely contained rage fused with lightning. It felt godlike. I once became obsessed that if I stared at anyone for longer than a few seconds that I could make them explode. I had a fixation that I if I looked at cigarette lighters or cars they too would explode. It's awesome to feel like that. My temper was explosive.

 

The training I was doing at the time I had those kinds of psychotic experiences involved a variation on what is commonly called 'cleansing of the 5 senses' or something like that. I had an interesting twist though. After I would do an hour or two of stopping every stray thought in my mind for awhile I would try to focus on objects and try to make them move. I was taught this exercise when I was 13.

 

Not too long after I started those practices I began to hear voices.

 

I have also had spiritual experiences and I've occasioned to call them either quickening or stillness experiences. Quickening experiences makes your hair stand up in places. It feels like liquid electricity is running up and down your spine and you feel like you can fly if you just exert a little effort. Usually, after such an experience I felt calm and had a better understanding of whatever I was contemplating or working on at the time. You settle back down pretty quickly.

 

Stillness experiences are exactly what they seem. Some giant frozen chunk of dark matter calves like a glacier and falls away out of your interior landscape and the noise in your mind spontaneously or gradually abates. You feel real and peaceful and centered and totally happy just Being.

 

After both those kinds of experience you carry on with your life. Usually for the better. You have a better attitude or become more attractive or successful.

 

Spiritual experiences and psychotic experiences can both make your energy intense. People will notice it and may comment on it. That you fill up a room all by yourself with your presence. Cultivation and madness can both have that effect on you for different reasons.

 

A psychotic experience can morph into paranoia and delusion. If that happens your social and self care skills can go south in a hurry. Some of the more obvious incidences of psychosis are people you hear about walking around naked at night claiming to be Jesus or the Virgin Mary.

 

There are subtle forms of psychosis where your mind just interprets everything wrong. If you really want to see a good example of a continuously psychotic mind take a gander at those EBM videos. I am sure you all have heard of the phenomena of Epic Beard Man by now. Despite his actions and the popular support he enjoys as a meme right now, that guy is not completely in this reality with the rest of us. His mind interprets data differently than what the rest of us see.

 

For example Tyrone (michael) approached EBM with a cigarette in his hand. In EBM's mind it became a knife. EBM stated that he knocked out Tyrone for 22 minutes and some seconds. We all saw that Tyrone did not get knocked out at all never mind 22 minutes. Nor was Tyrone a murderer on parole. EBM is quite clearly psychotic. There is another video about Soulja Girl "I'm pressin charges!". She is also psychotic in that video.

 

Those are examples of psychosis. Cognitions not based on reality.

 

What I did to deal with psychosis was learn to sink my chi.

 

If you sink your chi into your lower dantien and your feet the chi will drop out of your mind. It will naturally complete the downward current. If you practice sinking your chi it will keep you grounded. You end up feeling more real. More here. More solid. When you practice the downward current and sink it will severely curtail so-called manic episodes.

 

Folks, I respect the fact that a lot of you have some experience with internal energy.

 

Consider these symptoms:

 

Inflated self esteem.

Pressurized speech.

Irritability and or psychomotor agitation.

Derailment.

Incoherency.

Flight of ideas.

Grandiose thinking.

 

These are some of the classic symptoms of mania. The so-called manic portion of bipolar disorder.

 

Using the TCM model, what do you think causes that?

 

Excessive energy running around loose in the brain has a spillover effect in our subjective experience of the mind.

 

Which makes more sense.? Cover up those symptoms with drugs that don't change the reason for the energy imbalance? Or correcting the imbalance?

 

You can practice moving with downward current by doing palm/sole breathing. And by focusing on the Yin aspect of the microcosmic orbit.

You can project energy from your tailbone into your feet and move from the balls of your feet to your heels again and again.

There are some moves in Dragon and Tiger chi kung that cause you to move chi downwards with your hand movements.

You can use the breath. (longevity breathing)

You can literally place your hands in front of you and wash your chi down ward from your head to your belly.

Marriage of Heaven and Earth does that perfectly.

Ba Gua walking and putting your mind in your feet and below the ground can drop your chi.

Just doing The Commencement of any tai chi form causes energy to move up and down both inside and outside your body.

The book 'Opening the Energy Gates of Your Body' has several techniques that are useful.

 

There are many ways to direct your chi to sink down. Start with one of them and work on it. Make it a habit to sink your chi into your belly and feet and use that as your maintenance drug or as a counterbalance for energy building and circulating practices. If your chi is stable and flowing well it won't race around uncontrollably to the point of making your thoughts and emotions go crazy. That's been my experience.

Thank you once more, I wish I could express to you how grateful I am for the time and energy you put into helping me and explaining to others this issue. For many of us it is a very bewildering thing to deal with especially since we have no point of reference for what our friends are going through.

From your post I take it that it is ok for individuals with psychotic symptoms to do any form of sinking the chi from the head or higher regions to either the lower tan tien or the feet?

when one finnishes such excercises is it ok to keep the energy in the feet?

You can project energy from your tailbone into your feet and move from the balls of your feet to your heels again and again.

does this mean one directs the energy from the tailbone through the front of the legs to the balls of the feet to the heels and then through the back of the legs to the tailbone and repeated? or does it mean direct the chi from the tailbone and just circulate it in the feet?

You can practice moving with downward current by doing palm/sole breathing

is this just concentrating and moving energy to those 2 areas respectively?

thank you once more

I will never recommend them to anyone, ever. You don't learn a damn thing about your mind or emotions from using them. Not only that, the longer that you use them the more you flirt with disaster.

 

SSRIs? Lead to being divorced from the ability to feel love. Causes weight gain. Can cause acute suicidal or psychotic impulses in people. Cause sometimes irreversible impotence in men and women. Nice. This will be remembered as the era when we medicated people who were suicidal with drugs that cause suicidal impulse. Asinine.

 

Antipsychotics. The leading treatment for bipolar with psychotic features and schizophrenia. Proven to cause brain cell death. They perform an effective chemical lobotomy. Totally not holistic or healing. The worst drug you could ever take if you are a spiritual person. Causes death of personality and organically damages you in mind and body. Seriously poisonous. I've been on them. I know. I felt it first hand.

 

Lithium. Has some kind of effect on people with severe mood swings. Over fifty years of treating manic depressives with lithium and still the exact mechanism of action on the mind is unknown. Causes obscene weight gain. Damages your nervous system right away. Hand tremor, jaw tremors, mental fog. Seriously folks, all that drug induced mental fog has to be dealt with when you get into meditation. That fog stays inside you and obscures your consciousness.

 

Have any of you, Mr West, anyone? ever been on lithium? How about you take 500mg of lithium 3xs daily and watch as your body becomes toxic. Your sweat and your tongue taste like metal. If you didn't have a chemical imbalance before, lithium will give you one. Causes kidney, thyroid and nervous system damage folks. Sometimes permanently.

 

I've been through it. I know how it feels to be utterly divorced from thinking and feeling as a consequence of being forcibly treated with both lithium and antipsychotics and consequently tried to kill myself while I was on them to escape.

 

Anti-seizure meds. Neither schizophrenia or manic depression have been proven to be seizure disorders. Some folks have beneficial results from them. Anti-seizure meds work by reducing the sodium channel ion action that causes an electrical impulse to result in a physical action. Every thing you do with your body from masturbation to sparring to using your keys to open a door uses these sodium ion channels to induce movement. Some people come down with CFS and permanent muscle and nerve damage as a consequence of using anti-seizure drugs.

 

Folks, these drugs do nothing but harm you. Big Pharma is not interested in your well-being. They want to make money and they will lie through their corporate teeth to convince you to take their drugs forever. They call it 'maintenance treatment'. Absurd.

 

I am living proof that it is possible to overcome manic depression without using polypharmacy or counseling. I have a mother with chronic depression and a sister who takes lithium for bipolar 1. Neither of them are happy nor do they have my training. Mental illness flows in my family. I've heard all the bullshit pseudoscience on this. I've been told, while inpatient, that I had an incurable genetic disease caused by a chemical imbalance. What a crock of shit.

 

There is no proof of these chemical imbalances. The serotonin theories have been debunked into the ground.

 

The real honest to god truth is this:

 

No one on this planet knows what causes the symptoms that end up being called manic depression. No one knows. In over a hundred years of science there has been zero advances in understanding what manic depression is or what causes it. Having new drug treatments is not an advance in understanding causes. Having a few well designed studies that show some shared genes in people with the diagnosis is not an advance either.

 

What is known is that the prefrontal cortex acts a 'referee' for thoughts and emotions in the brain. The prefrontal cortex has been fingered as being underdeveloped in people with both schizophrenia and bipolar.

 

Meditation has been proven in many studies to directly effect the prefrontal cortex. It makes it denser. These brain changes stick around even if the person stops meditating.

 

You take lithium and antipsychotics for bipolar and you will move further and further away from being healed.

 

You meditate long enough and your brain may simply grow out of it. Your brain will grow controls over your emotions and your thoughts and psychosis will be a thing of the past.

 

I was diagnosed with manic depression with schizoaffective tendencies at age 14 in 1989. I started with BKF's stuff in 1996. By 1998 I had been depression free for 2 years. By 1999 the mania and the Voices were gone too. In 2001 I celebrated my victory over my dual diagnosis with five years depression free without the use of counseling or polypharmacy.

 

It is now 2010 and I am still fine. I've written a book about how I recovered. I've done exhaustive research into the state of modern mental health science and meditation brain science as part of the background for my book. It's in the process of editing and getting it published will be the hard part.

 

I am neither antipsychiatry or antimedicine. I am not even antidrug. I am pro personal responsibility. I am pro self-healing and I have absolutely no patience with people who trot out all the latest Big Pharma sponsored studies on chemical imbalances or their skewed and slanted clinical studies that show their latest Blockbuster drugs as being effective. Especially since the inevitable class action lawsuits will prove in the course of discovery that Big Pharma was cooking their studies and lying wholesale to the public about negative side effects or actual efficacy versus placebo controls.

 

You want more information on how badly the consuming public is getting railroaded by Big Pharma's lies I can go on and on. I can machine gun this thread with a deluge of studies and exposes on Big Pharma's lies and bullshit. I shouldn't need to. Google is your friend.

Thank you so much for your long and thoughtful post. I am incredibly pleased to hear that you have effectively dealt with your issues. This is all extremely helpful to me. When your book is published please do let us know!

You know one thing I did not bring up here on this thread is that even if we find solutions (real solutions, not drugging to sedate or kill ones personality) for the ones we know with psychotic disorders, we may not be able to convince them to try them. Often these individuals will not want to listen to anything anyone offers to them. It seems that one has to find the right time to approach them when they are in a calm state. And it is difficult to know when they are in a calm state, or to know what will trigger them to go from a calm to an agitated state.

Female essence is very balancing.. how does it factor in this case?

Yes for males i was wondering the same thing, i would think that a male with a psychotic disorder who had sexual interactions with females may be able to swap some energy and use some more "yin" chi to balance himself out?? Any techniques here?

To the OP:

Whether or not this birth control practice caused the problem did you learn your lesson about trying to teach something you don't understand? Unfortunately this type of "teaching" seems to be the case with many. One reason there are so many myths concerning qigong.

yes i certainly did learn my lesson from all of this, for this reason I am very wary of many schools of energetic and otherwise "spiritual" practices. I have become much more critical, and it saddens me to see that many students of real masters sometimes water down their teachings or create their own systems and teach them before they have mastered the said system of whomever taught them. I am not directing this towards chia or anyone in particular it is just a trend I have noticed. I think chia's system can work for some, and for those it causes problems in, it could cause such problems for various reasons not all of which Chia can directly be blamed for.

I know psychological problems can have many causes, but I think in my cousins case he is extremely energeticly unbalanced due to semen retention. I also practiced retention before and was imbalanced, but not to the point of mental illness.

I will check out BK Frantzis

The area I dont think matters, I can get him anywhere in the country if anyone has any particular suggestions

thanks again to you all

So does anybody know of any tcm practitioners or anything of the like that can help with psychosis?

I am really trying to find an acupuncturist or a chigung guy that can possibly check my cousin out.

Is it possible for an acupuncturist or anyone highly skilled in chigung to open his front channel?

thanks again

thanks all for the responses

yes you all brought up some valid points, such as practicing chia's methods properly is very important, and how maybe semen retention was not to blame as the primary cause for the problems

yes i think these are all possibilities. I dont know. I think retention might have not been to blame totally for this, but i really do think it probably aggravated things at the least.

no neither i nor he learned from a teacher.

hello all, I have lurked around this forum quite a bit to see if I could get answers to my question, but I have not been able to get enough detailed and precise information on the subject, only a lot of conjecture

my question is what can i do for psychosis caused by semen retention? i taught my cousin to never ejaculate at age 14 hes 18 now and has severe emotional/mental problems.....i think he is bipolar.

he also did a limited amount of microcosmic orbit stuff and managed to open up the back channel but not the front, but didnt practice that regularly at all, meaning his only real practice was not ejaculating and having sex without ejaculating.

I can only guess that since the back channel was opened and not the front that too much energy could have got lodged in the head. However its kinda strange because he never really channeled the energy there, he really only practiced retention....thats all

His case is fairly severe, he no longer practices retention however, all his symptoms are still here.

I am looking for solutions to specifically take care of this problem that do NOT require chi-gung or other types of related practice, besides possibly opening the front channel.

Honestly what I am really looking for is some qi-gung healers that are experienced with insanity issues, but any advice is welcome too

i guess i did not make it sound really bad but the problem is really quite severe and I am fairly sure it was caused by the semen retention.

hi im aeon, and i have a serious problem i taught one of my younger cousins not to ever ejaculate (semen retention) when he was 14.

Now he is 18 and has severe emotional/mental problems. I am pretty sure it is from not ejaculating although other factors could be involved. I am going to post in the discussion section on it furthur....

thank you