idquest

On 29/04/2024 at 8:24 AM, Lataif said:

Please:
 

(1) I'm looking for info about a psycho-energetic technique that, when directed at a mental, emotive, or somatic state, dissolves entanglement of the personality with that state.

 

(2) The technique might be associated with the color black.

 

(3) Anyone recognise such a technique in any tradition (?)

 

Thanks . . . 

You might want to look at Kabala Letter U as per Franz Bardon / Mark Rasmus. THis letter U represents (as per Bardon) akasha/vacuum which is highly dissolving by nature, and one of the attributes of the letter is color black.

I must warn that everybody states it is quite dangerous to meditate on this letter U, so I'd suggest doing thorough research before doing anything at all.

5 hours ago, RobB said:

Has anyone had any experience with his teaching or his online courses?

If you feel connection to WLP system, Nathan is a good teacher. In fact, Nathan has practiced and learned much more than WLP system, but this is the only one Nathan teaches. Nathan's advantage is that he is fluent in mandarin and he has talked with WLP a lot.

On a personal anecdote, there was an incident one time after his class when he wanted to demonstrate something to a student and accidentally released some amount of qi that was more than he wanted. The student had to sit and wait for 5 minutes before getting back to normal. When people develop their internal qi, it is no joke.

Thank you for the report, @Nuralshamal, very interesting. It is interesting that some students did not feel any transmission at all. Transmission is real. What is more interesting, transmission is real even via internet. I was really surprised when I discovered that.

Did you feel heat/warmth as in increase in temperature in your body parts or was it as a generation of energy that would flow inside the body? 

On 02/04/2024 at 7:41 AM, NaturaNaturans said:

So I am in the procesd of finishing my degrre in economics. I am very demotiveted, and If i was not so close to finishinging, Id probally quit. Id like to do something in care (feels more rewarding,) or maybe practical work like fishing bout or electrician.

 

Any thoughts?

Regardless of what qualification/degree you get in your younger years, you will have to change or adapt it 2 or 3 times during your lifetime. If you feel strongly about your desired work place right now as an electrician or care, you could apply the credits you already have to the new profession. But finishing your economics would be good because you will have a degree that will be applicable to any change you might have later in life. Getting something finished is important.

On 17/01/2024 at 9:23 PM, Apotheose said:

I’d like to thank Neirong for the response.

 

However, I’d like to politely ask the forum to mention - in their responses - if they have ever seen real evidences of it. Maybe a reliable friend confirmed its legitimacy, or they saw it with their own eyes, or they even did it and succeeded in the effort of causing harm to others.

 

I don’t think theoretical responses would add much to the discussion, as there are authentic magi who believe it and authentic magi who don’t.

 

Thank you.  

What Hitler did to German people in 1930th is a good example of black magic. We don't exactly know what tool he used for that, but the result is well known.

Ultimately, it is the intent that defines magic is black or not. The same as technology and science. It is always intent. The older I get the more I'm a proponent of the idea that ethics and morale are the most important things to muster in life.

On 25/10/2023 at 11:25 AM, Sleepy Bluejay said:

Apparently, nobody believes that they can live for more than 100-200 years by practicing internal alchemy. They also do not believe that they can eventually jump over a house or split a mountain in half by practicing martial arts together with internal alchemy.

 

My questions are;

why do you/they practice internal alchemy?

What is your/their final purpose with doing so?

 

- A sleepy and curious bluejay

Practice evolves, and the goals evolve as well. This is a moving target. This is why it is more important to do something than not to do and just try to understand what exactly to do.

10 hours ago, Gerard said:

 

You won't learn 'gongfu' from courses and books.

 

Have you looked up available teachers in your area that teach in the park?

 

This is how traditionally internal arts have been taught since millennia. 

FYI:

 

"A person’s heart and mind are in chaos.

 

Concentration on one thing makes the mind pure.

 

If one aspires to reach the Dao, one should practice walking in a circle."

 

(Quan Zhen (Complete Truth) sect of Daoism - Taoist Canon)

 

 

 

I don't argue that traditional methods of education are wrong or bad, they are good, - it is just that life has changed so much in the last 100 years that traditional methods of education don't work for majority of students.

On 18/10/2023 at 2:29 AM, markern said:

I am considering learning Qigong/Nei Gong and Tao Yoga from Jesse Lee Parker that used to post here under the name Dao Zhen. Mainly because I really, really like the examples of forms on his webpages and YouTube channel. They look very appealing to me and it is very important to me that the forms I do are enjoyable for me to do. I was also always impressed by his posts so I have some trust in his judgement and experience and it is an added bonus that he operates out of Japan that is the country I most want to visit. But I don't really know much about his system or the lineage it is connected to and virtually nothing about his teachers. So I am interested in hearing perspectives from other bums. Have any of you studied with him or do you have opinions on his system, his lineage or teachers?

 

These are the websites of what looks to be his two systems:

https://taoyoga.jimdofree.com

https://www.immortalarts.org

He looks legitimate for me and his explanations have reasonable depth. Not too much not too little. The 24 movements form he teaches has movements you can come across in numerous neigong and daoyin sets; but this does not matter. What matters is how he explains and transmits his knowledge, and this seems to be reasonably good.

Have you bought it yet? A bit pricey.

If you enjoy reading, just read all the books, they are all good - Damo, Chia, Brine/Wang Liping.

If you want to achieve something real, stop reading and start practising. Reading does not bring any benefits if your goal is to achieve something with dao or yoga.

On 06/09/2023 at 2:12 AM, Ira said:

Hi! I'm 36, female. I'm Buddhist practitioner, my main lineage is Chinese Mahayana, Pure Land. I also have experience in Vajrayana.  I'm interested in Buddhism, Dao, Tai-chi, qi gong, nei gong, nei dan and bagua zhan. I'm Russian living in Balkans for quite a long time. I can speak basic Chinese. I'm practicing every day for several hours. My usual nian fo, reading scriptures etc, as well as qi gong, nei gong etc. I'd be glad you recommend me online and offline courses for serious practice. I've tried one year in Damo Mitchell's academy and like it's structure. I'm looking for masters with good ethical conduct and good moral code. It's the basis we should start from I believe. Right now I'm looking for something that is similar to Damo's Lotus academy. I need tons of explanations because they fit my mental structure  I'm interested in offline seminars as well.

You can look into one of Damo Mitchell's teachers Mark Rasmus. Rasmus uses different vocabulary from daoism, but essentially he teaches the same stuff. 

There is a perception of non-dual light/dao and there are preliminary practices that lead to this perception. Among the practices that lead to the perception are numerous neigong techniques, and visualization is no worse than any of those techniques. The only difference is that neigong trains 'feeling' area of brain, and visualization trains a different area of brain. So for the completeness,  one needs both. As for perception of the NDL/dao - one needs none.

On 13/07/2023 at 3:47 AM, Apech said:

 

Why must the knight slay the dragon and rescue the damsel?  And while you're at it what is that cave doing there?

Unravel the symbolism.

Let us try.

The cave is a treasury, the dragon is the guardian of the treasury, the knight is short of cash (as always) so he must rob the treasury. The role of the maiden is somewhat ambiguous, she might even be the owner of the treasury, but she can''t do anything against the brute knight.

15 hours ago, Bruce Qi said:

Hi , can I ask where abouts Nathan mentioned Nelson ?

many times personally. Nathan has studied with Nelson for several years.

44 minutes ago, Zhongyongdaoist said:

 

I had seen a topic on Rasmus' teaching a month or so ago and looked at it, and based on what I could determine from the descriptions it looks like it moved in the direction I was moving before I actually had the Golden Dawn material, which I bought in early October of 1970.  The Golden Dawn material is like a treasure casket of mysteries that as you search deeper into it, the more valuable things you discover, it makes anything that Bardon has to say seem trivial by comparison, however you do have to work at it to get to that level of understanding.  It also prepared me to understand the Daoist Ritual Tan ( 坛 ) as represented in works such as those of Saso, and that was very important to me also.  There is more to the formal structure of such systems than meets the eye at first acquaintance, and it is very well worth knowing.

 

ZYD

I"m actually quite impressed with what Rasmus teaches. here are some glimpses to his study material:

https://vimeo.com/markrasmus/vod_pages

As for the Golden Dawn, I've heard that there are literally several people (like fewer than 10) who actually understand the system.

9 hours ago, Zhongyongdaoist said:

Bardon's system and the Golden Dawn System are not mutually exclusive, particularly when you realize how dependent Bardon is on Aleister Crowley's version of it.  While Bardon calls his system Hermetic in the text, its English title adds the Hermetic to it, the original German Der Weg Zum Wahren Adepten obviously doesn't mention Hermetics at all and it is also a purely modern work which has precious little to do with the historical Hermetic tradition, but seems to be a very creative, expansion of ideas derived from reading Crowley and Alexandra David-Neel, whose works were originally published in French and Bardon could have read them in French or they may have been translated into German, a quick search did give evidence of that, but not enough to substantiate a significant number of translations at an early enough date to have been an influence on Bardon, as Crowley's books were, having been translated into translated into German by the Swiss OTO.  That said Bardon's system, is safe and practical, though hardly Hermetic in any traditional sense of the word, and it is shaped by and limited to the perspective of the magical revival of the Nineteenth Century, which threw out many "healthy babies" with the bath water because it did not understand them.

 

Back in the late sixties I was interested in and practiced together Bardon and Golden Dawn techniques, I was also interested in the qigong aspects of Taiji Chuan and its possible uses in magic, a subject I have dealt with in other posts on Dao Bums.  I eventually dropped Bardon for a qigong approach after analyzing Bardon's system, at least as it is in the first Book and deciding the qigong would be better for my purposes.

 

As for the advice about psychoanalysis, while I agree that a lot of people have gone totally bonkers by ill conceived and worse executed explorations of magic in its Golden Dawn form, there are ways that one can prevent such unfortunate results if one is actually sensible and careful, but few people who are interested in magic are either.  I can expound further on any of this if you are interested, but this is all I have time for now.

 

I hope this is helpful.

 

ZYD

Regarding Bardon's system and qigong & taiji, have you looked at what Mark Rasmus teaches?

5 hours ago, dmattwads said:

It was recommended that I turn a question I asked in another post into it's own post, so here goes.

 

Buddhism basically ignores the body in cultivation and focuses on cultivating the mind with the mind.

 

My question is aside from systems like Qigong and Yoga asana being healthy for the body, can they be used to cultivate the mind and if so, how so?

Assuming that the goal of your cultivation is enlightenment/nirvana/samadhi - nothing will bring you to these states as I'm sure you have heard. It is a qualitative jump rather than quantitative when you move from one level to another. What yoga and qigong do - they provide your body-mind with empowerment which may help your make this qualitative jump. Yoga is good for health if practised correctly, so it is a benefit by itself. Silent sitting could also be good for health is you include internal cavity practice in your sits. 

2 hours ago, JustARandomPanda said:

In the interests of transparency I have to admit I no longer do these chants. They are quite powerful. For me that was true. However, I now firmly believe it is better to have a guru initiate you into Name Chanting rather than picking one of more willy-nilly from a book or video.

 

At the time I first made this post I was unaware of some of the debilitating downsides to this practice if one doesn't have the backing of a guru parampa overseeing it. Not least is nasty karmic backlash that is completely unnecessary. Sadhguru actually has a Sadhguru Exclusive video about this. I had no idea at the time I made this that the need for a guru parampa prepared to go to war and defend their "young fledglings" is an actual "thing" - if you catch my drift. I was quite shocked when he said it's a real thing that gurus have to (to paraphrase) go to war with...uh...not-so-kindly...higher (ie...demonic) powers sometimes on behalf of the disciples under their care.

 

Some of the downsides of doing certain practices without a guru parampa are echoed by Rajarshi Nandy in the following video. Actually it's video 1 of a 4 video set that gives a good overview. Some nasty side effects could include things like...attracting not-so-magnanimous "beings" to put it mildly. Or you might tick off not only the deity who's name you are chanting but..uh...other deities who are adjacent or related in some manner to the deity (or Buddha) who's name you are chanting if you don't do it correctly. Apparently being ignorant of how to do things properly doesn't excuse you from the backlash the Universe throws at you.

 

 

 

So I guess I would say..if you do decide to Name Chant DIY anyway...proceed at your own risk. It's easy to get enthused about the benefits as I was. Much less easy to hear people speak about some of the not-so-great downsides.

 

FYI - the other 3 videos in this set are just as amazing - including one on Possession as explained by Yogis and Tantrics. (good reminder not everything of the more subtle Planes is all sweetness, kindness and light).

IMO chanting Hindu (or others) deities names is the same practice as done in Hermetics/Magic as invocation/evocation of various beings. But when it is done in Hermetics, there are a lot of security measures taken, and there is a list of friendly beings and not so friendly ones.

I don't remember any security measures in Hindu deities chanting, I could be wrong though.

What I'm trying to say is that you are right in a sense that poking into these practices could bring more harm than good; and following security protocols is better than not.

I don't think there is big difference, if at all, between feeling something in various parts of the body, and visualising certain things like colours, shapes, etc. Both are senses and I can't understand why one type of sense would be preferable to the other. Ideally we need to cultivate all of them.

I still voted for 'Other' to highlight two things. First - visualisation should not be used as imagination. Pure imagination is just a waste of time. Second - visualisation could become a waste of time either if it becomes a goal. As any somatic experience, BTW. 

4 hours ago, ChiDragon said:

FYI You do not have to cultivate to be a ghost.  A ghost is not considered to be an immortal. One becomes a ghost is when death occurred not by natural cause. For example, one was murdered. A person does not have peace of mind before death, then, the person will become a ghost until the mystery of death was resolved.

That was exactly my point. Some people become ghosts by way of unfortunate events, and some work hard to become ghosts.

On 25/12/2022 at 2:13 AM, Chang dao ling said:

In neidan and Qigong  we mostly meditate on lower dantian. However people who practice third eye meditation concentrate on upper dantian. My doubt is person who meditate on lower dantian refine jing to chi. Person who meditate on upper dantian what he is refining. 

A Third eye is not the same as the upper dantien. When somebody works on the 3rd eye, this is not necessarily the work on the UDT, although it may coincide.

When somebody works on the UDT, they may work either up or down. If down, they go from shen to qi. If up - they go from shen to wuji. At least this is how I understand things.

It is not advisable to work on the UDT until you get at least basic understanding of how LDT and MDT work.

The real question is this:

What is a danger of becoming a ghost immortal from doing daoist practice incorrectly?

In my understanding the danger is quite high, although I haven't come across meaningful discussions about this.

On 25/11/2022 at 9:08 PM, zerostao said:

https://markrasmus.org/

 

anyone have experience with any of these workshops?

prices being what they are;  (not suggesting price is high or low) does one get value for their $ ?

I'm studying his online curriculum. Very impressed. And I can compare to others...

Less theory, more practice. The more people talk and use professional jargon, daoist or not, the more dualistic they become. Talk less, practice more.

Open and Close refers to the fundamental characteristic of the Universe which is pulsing. WHile you cultivate, you find this quality of pulsing everywhere from physical movements to stillness meditation. It is fun to observe.

I'd agree that the goal in Daoism is to go XIAN 仙. The problem is that this is translated as 'immortal' to English which does not render all meanings of the character. Perhaps a better idea would be 'transcendent' rather that 'immortal'.

I dislike the idea of 'going back to source'. The whole life set up in the Universe is about going against the current of increasing the entropy; while going back to source would just mean to dissolve in the entropy which is, how one of the Daobums members put it - just become a cosmic fart. If somebody's goal is to become a cosmic fart - sure.  I personally don't find this motivating.