Jetsun

Over the last 6 or so years I have been experimenting with one technique or another from all sorts of traditions from Yogic and Buddhist to Shamanism and fouth way approaches, mostly trying to find healing although the spiritual interest seems to have progressed too almost accidently. I went through a period a few years ago of doing Qigong learning a few different forms like the 8 Brocade but I gave it up as it seemed to not go deep enough for me or bring me the healing I was looking for, but I have come back now to Taoist techniques again after reading some of BK Frantzis books about the Water Method which seemed to be a perfect method for me. Although initially I dived too quickly into the heavy Water Method meditation before strengthening my nervous system with standing methods which was a bit too much to handle, so I am taking it more slowly now doing the outer standing methods of Zhan Zhuang and outer dissolving. (alhtough I can't help myself doing the sitting once every few days as I sense it is powerful and im impaient to get to the good stuff ) So far after doing the standing for a just a few days I have noticed going to work is easier and I appear to be a bit more relaxed but obviously there could be a number of factors that cause that so I don't want to jump to too many conclusions.

All the English information on the web about this text Notes by Ge An by Nan Shiguis is on Falun Dafa sites, there is no impartial information about it. Not that all this is the slightest bit important really but for some reason I find all this doomsday prophesy and claiming exclusivity to salvation very annoying, it's like they are smiling at you while threatening you with annhilation unless you follow them, then claiming it is all about compassion I guess I need to have faith enough people will see through it all.

I am wondering whether anyone has done zhan zhuang training alone for any long period of time and can testify to its benefits? I have read a lot of the stories and myths around this practice such as it strenghtens you better than many martial arts etc but was wondering whether anyone can actually testify to its power, as some of the stories sound too good to be true if im honest.

I will join you with standing meditation although I'm not sure I will start off doing as much as you as I am a complete novice only having done a few days zhan zhuang and they recommend starting with short times, but I also intend to do dissolving meditation too so it might be hard to tell which of the practises benefit the most, but as long as I get results that's what matters I guess.

Good article, I will share this with some non believers I know, thanks. Perhaps they will start looking beyond drugs a bit more for some solutions to help people now.

I'm not sure where you got the theory about being able to handle pain in lotus equals high cultivation or less karma, but there are fakirs who can do all sorts of painful body manipulations for weeks but I wouldn't go and declare them the next messiah, I'm pretty some people could force their body to sit in lotus for long periods of time but it would be more about masochism and ego rather than merit. I guess a person who has purified a lot of their body tension could handle such positions better so it could be a very unreliable indicator of a persons body/mind freedom but I would hardly call it the gold standard of measure of someones cultivation level, there could be all sorts of factors at play which can influence how long they can sit.

I have, they say its "truth, compassion and forebarance", but there is no compassion in the theology that those "bad" people with too much karma will be wiped out and there is no compassion in the idea of a Buddha sitting in judgement on everyone... thats all just fear.

No this is not the truth, the Buddha would see someome who harms themselves as well as other people by their non virtuous actions when away from his eyes, he would see it as ignorance and just furthering their own suffering and thus he would have compassion for them rather than disgust. It appears from this post and others that you have the view of the Buddha as being judgemental, this suggests a lack of understanding of his fundamental teachings.

I agree with much of what you say about karma and the way it tries to work it out in day to day life but this isn't the only way to deal with your karma, there are certain masters who describe going deep into their mental realm during meditation into a cloudy area which the Buddhists call Alaya realm of consciousness, the other name for this realm is the "storehouse" which contains all of your karma or karmic seeds, but this area of your consciousness can be purified using meditation techniques before the karma has an opportunity to bloom negatively out in the world, so you don't neccassarily have to suffer to purfy your karma it can dissolved or let go of with the right approach.

So do you think the exercises in Falun Gong are the only ones which can bring you to the high levels you talk of? and is the only system capable of bringing humanity foward and reducing attachments etc? Because from my personal experience the Qigong isn't as powerful and purifying as other methods and the wisdom in the system is a fraction of that in some Buddhist schools.

These Falun Dafa ideas remind me more and more of Jehova's Witnesses every time I hear them, there is all this talk of apocalypse and the world being taken over by evil whereas in comparison to the 20th century the world we live in now is a much more stable, safe and peaceful place. Different groups have been preaching the apocalypse for hundreds of years but it never happens yet they continue even when things are getting better All this talk of evil and good and bad people is immature thinking, all the "evil" in the world is done by unconsciousness because if they were conscious they would realise how much they hurt themselves as much as other people through their actions. Bringing Buddha into this sort of thinking is ridiculous as he transcended this sort of black and white thinking and the general Buddhist belief is that everyone has the Buddha seed and is a potential Buddha so there is no such thing as a "bad person" only people who are less conscious than others, even one of the greatest Buddhist Saints Milarepa started off as a mass murderer so all this talk of bad people being wiped out and judged because of their unconsciousness is absurd in any sort of Buddhist context.

I have tried many different meditation techniques mostly Buddhist ones but currently I find the Taoist Water Method taught by B K Frantzis excellent, I don't know personally about end results of merging into heaven but you will be able to dissolve into void many of the tensions, restrictions, views etc which could be holding you back which other meditation methods might not tackle so easily.

I learned the Qigong of Falun Dafa a few years back but unfortunately it didn't have the power to bring me the healing I was searching for so I gave it up and experimented with many other systems and techniques until I found other practises which work on a much deeper level. It is ok Qigong but for me anyway there is better out there and the literature I found doesn't compare in the slightest to Buddhist texts like Santideva's guide to the Bodhisattva way of life in terms of wisdom and inspiration and is mixed up with strange claims like aliens and ancient cultures having nuclear power plants, which puts me off.

Osho was a very intelligent and perceptive person and in many ways was a master psychologist who I love reading, I'm not sure I would consider him a spiritual master though, as far as I don't see any of his disciples producing much good and I learned his dynamic mediation techniques and didn't find them that benneficial.

Perhaps it's to do with healthy boundaries which meditation etc doesn't help much with, I suffer similar issues and go to psychotherapy to try develop healthy ego defences with healthy anger so that I feel capable to push away other peoples energy so it doesn't feel so threatening to me. Emptiness and non separation and all that is good at a certain level but the foundation stone of that path is developing a mature healthy ego with healthy defences, I don't know if this applies to you or not but if psychotherapy isn't your thing doing fire energy based exercises will help combined with grounding.

Yeah I agree with this you need to make sure the energy is being transformed in the right way. Gurdjieff says some interesting things about celibacy saying that for some people it's useful and others it's not and some for only a period of time, but if you do go celibate you have to transform the energy or there are two consequences you can see in some Christian monks who practice it who don't have the correct exercises to deal with the energy and as a result they either go fat and lazy or thin and cruel/vindictive.

Hahaha Chairman LMAO did have a Buddhist mother, just goes to show I don't think anyone really understands how this all works

Not that I ever went to Tibet before the Chinese invaded but by all accounts it had a huge amount of monks and practising Buddhists in proportion to its population most of whom were dedicated to purifying their karma for many generations without being disturbed, by all accounts this produced a compassionate mostly non violent society with very few people in jail and no working army. Then they say their karma led to their demise, it just doesn't make sense to me, although my understanding of karma is probably way off.

I wouldn't trust anyone talking about karma on this level to be honest, I doubt they really know for sure what they are talking about. Personally I doubt a lot of what is said about karma is true, for example many Tibetans including high Lama's say that the suffering of their people and the devastation of their country is due to their Karma, whereas surely they aught to be one of the most Karma purified countries in the history of mankind according to the theory, so something doesn't add up if you ask me. I question whether anyone really understands Karma and I think maybe there are influences more powerful than it at work such as celestial or planetary influences.

I think for a lot of us westerners whether we went to church or not psychologically we are Christian, as if you are brought up in a Christian country you can't avoid it, so finding some peace with your native religion is important in my opinion even if you prefer eastern approaches. Personally I have found studying Gurdjieff and the 4th way invaluable for opening up Christianity to me in a more esoteric way, although officially it's not a Christian approach as such it has been described as original Christianity or Christianity before Christ. Gurdjieff says some faccinating things about original Christianity for example the term "God father" is now more associated with gangster films but originally every person would be assigned a God father in this religion to ensure the childs spiritual progress and initiate them esoterically. It's hard long work studying the 4th way system but I promise you will never be able to look at a Cathedrale the same way or read the bible in the same way again afterwards, and it will be clear the only way to see the bible will be as a incredibly high level esoteric document.

Hahaha I feel like saying that on this site sometimes. Basically when you are doing standing meditation it brings you more into your body than seated because there has to be more of an awareness in your body when standing or you will fall over and maybe hurt yourself.

After learning vipassana and a few different Qigong systems all I do now for practice is the Water Method taught by B K Frantzis. It is a meditation method more than traditional movement type Qigong and is not a quick method but it goes deeper than anything else I have tried. It works for me better than Vipassana because it is more grounding and works at clearing the body so it is good for healing.

I don't think Reich knew what to do with the energies he was encountering and they sent him insane, if he had a teacher perhaps he could have become a powerful Taoist

My view is that the superego is utterly essential when you are a child, as when you are a child you are completely dependent on your parents for survival and they are much more powerful than you so you need to adapt to learn how to fit in so they don't abandon you so you can survive and so they keep loving you, but then when you become an adult you are less dependent so it's not essential for the superego to retain so much of your power, but unfortunately in the majority of people it never loosens it's grip even after their parents are long dead. Whether you need the superego at all as an adult I'm not sure, perhaps the crazy mystics have dropped it completely

Id say its a force which keeps you honest to your parents and to societies moral values, which may actually be in opposition to your own