Nei Dan: A Beginner's Experience or How I Learned to Stop Asking a Million Questions and Love Meditation

[Taoist Texts]

54 minutes ago, AugustGreig said:

Extraordinary. I've been gifted a masculine, energetic, sensitive body. Shouldn't I use it to defend the weak? Or at least, to be prepared to?

 

[AugustGreig]

On 10/18/2018 at 1:30 PM, freeform said:

 

Depends what you mean by somewhere. Depends also on the quality of sitting. Depends also on the other aspects of practice - moving, standing etc. 

 

The ‘fastest’ way is doing all three for a total of 3 to 6hrs a day (sometimes more isn’t better, sometimes is) - it would take about 3yrs to get the foundations down. (That’s the physical structure, fully active DT, most obvious blockages and stagnation dealt with etc)

 

At this point you can start Nei Dan which will work on the deeper aspects of your acquired mind and deeper channels and aspects of your energy body.

 

Keeping your practice up for 10yrs would ‘build the qigong body’ almost completely. From then on qigong is mostly redundant and your practice tends to be more sitting and standing - Nei Gong and Nei Dan.

 

At this point you’d be well past the 10,000hr mark, but still only the early stages of alchemy and meditation (and intermediate stages of neigong).

 

So yeah - it’s a long road. It also means quite difficult, focused practice every day, not just taking it easy and enjoying the floatiness. That’s why ‘gong’ is translated as ‘skill acquired through dedicated practice over time’.

 

Saying all that, with the right school you should experience some ‘extraordinary’ effects within a few months. It just takes a long time to achieve the deeper more profound transformations we hear about. Like the De (the virtues) - which according to Chia is achieved in a few breaths by making sounds and imagining the inner smile

 

 

It's interesting you mention the hours... Have you seen the studies on people with over 62,000 hours of meditation? Apparently there are no words to describe what their base experience is like, and they ask them to meditate. I'd imagine people like that don't meditate anymore, they are either think or not thinking, sitting quietly or not. Their brains are constant gamma waves.

[yuuichi]

For the neidan practitioners out there. It is clear in Daoist scripture that having Xing without Ming leads a person to become ill and become a ghostly form afterwards in the afterlife, but what does having Ming without Xing cause? Can Xing deplete, like Ming, and if so, what causes it?

[freeform]

On 28/10/2018 at 7:41 PM, AugustGreig said:

Have you seen the studies on people with over 62,000 hours of meditation?

 

I’m usually rather disappointed with scientific studies of meditation. It’s mixing models of understanding - rational reductionist methods with wholistic processes of transformation. This is how you get the idea that acupuncture works by giving you a rush from the pain of inserting a needle 

 

The truth is that many long term meditators don’t get anwhere. It’s just empty sitting - for 62,000hrs. Some of course do get somewhere - but that can only be judged by viewing their accomplishments through the mental model of their system. (Scientists have to use hours because they cant judge quality) - There are always very specific, objective milestones (which are usually ‘inner door secrets’) which tell you at what level the meditator in question is at. It’s not hours sat...

 

2 hours ago, yuuichi said:

what does having Ming without Xing cause? 

 

You get the rather common Qi gong master that can do extraordinary things but then sleeps with his students, gets drunk, picks fights and lusts after money and power... sadly.

[freeform]

Another perspective regarding having a genuine teacher.

 

You already have one... Or rather you have dozens. Hundreds maybe. These teachers are aspects of your acquired mind... they’re that anonymous dude on 4Chan... they’re the random passages you remember from Ekhart Tolle and other writers... they’re posts on this forum... they’re the countless of other people and influences you have.

 

Whether you like it or not all these things are guiding your spiritual path.

 

And it’s worth asking - have these people/thoughts/memories/books achieved or on the way to achieving what it is you seek?

 

Are they heavily interested in having you achieve what you seek?

 

Are they able to give corrections, lessons and transmissions that will guide you through subtle, confusing and difficult terrain - at the right time and at the right points in your development?

 

Have they lead others along the path? And have the others achieved or are on the way to achieving what it is you seek?

 

You already have teachers. Most of them should be fired  If none of them cover the criteria above, well maybe you need to find one that does?

[yuuichi]

13 hours ago, freeform said:

 

You get the rather common Qi gong master that can do extraordinary things but then sleeps with his students, gets drunk, picks fights and lusts after money and power... sadly.

 

Yes, but does having a lot of Ming compared to Xing have any negative health effects?

[AugustGreig]

On 10/18/2018 at 8:51 AM, freeform said:

Ahh Nei Dan - the pinnacle of Daoist internal arts. The practice that you reach after decades of intensive neigong and Qi gong practice. This is where you move onto once you’ve found, activated and built your Dan Tien (the real, physical thing), cleared most of your channels, built the soft tissues into the correct shape and set up a smooth, strong circulation. You’ve also cultivated the correct quality of mind and breath through thousands of hours of sitting practice and now you’re finally ready to go onto firing the furnace... few ever get to this stage...

 

But hopefully this is an accurate picture of your current level of development! But something tells me it may not be (I’m certainly not there yet!) 

 

Red flags for me:

1) doing internal training with no teacher (it’s like learning surgery from medieval books written in Latin)

2) lots of perineum squeezing in the past (Chia?)

 

I really don’t mean to sound harsh, but it is what it is. My best guess as to what’s happening is that you’re stimulating your perineum and it’s creating internal heat. If you’ve done a lot of Chia’s stuff, you’ve probably built a connection between perineum and heart. If I’m accurate (which is not that likely to be fair) and you carry on full-force with this practice you’re most likely develop sexual deviancy and then fuel it until you go nuts  

 

Or just find a good teacher and you’ll do great!

I know I quoted and responded to you already and pointed this out, but I didn't directly ask the question, so I'm going to ask it now. How did you know about the sexual deviant behavior? Because it really did cause this and in fact, I had a friend who wanted to look up Kundalini yoga and the breath of fire (which I presume is basically what I did) and I warned him against pursuing it for exactly that reason, that I became overwhelmed with sexual and sexually deviant thoughts an they didn't go away until I actually put myself in a very risky situation as a recovering addict to have sex three times over the course of two weeks with a girl who is addicted to heroin and was shooting up right in front of me in my house, and I allowed it because I knew she couldn't have sex while she was in withdrawals, and she left a bunch of needles and some fentanyl at my house and stole some money from me, and I was 5 days in to Suboxone withdrawals because I decided it was time for me to stop taking it.

 

So yeah, I put myself in a position to relapse jus for sex, and the sex itself was even consentually violent and degrading, but wasn't nearly as bad as what I was contemplating the night before, when I was stuck with a hard on I couldn't get rid of and watching gross pornography, which is not like me, and masturbating but not ejaculating because I was convinced I need my semen to keep pursuing this. Luckily, I had sex and my meditation went back to normal.

 

TL;DR- How did you know about the sexual deviance? I find this pretty remarkable and is one of those things that removes doubt and skepticism in my mind when I find out how manipulating the subtle energies in my body can have real and predictable results. Thank you, I appreciate it.

[AugustGreig]

14 hours ago, freeform said:

Another perspective regarding having a genuine teacher.

 

You already have one... Or rather you have dozens. Hundreds maybe. These teachers are aspects of your acquired mind... they’re that anonymous dude on 4Chan... they’re the random passages you remember from Ekhart Tolle and other writers... they’re posts on this forum... they’re the countless of other people and influences you have.

 

Whether you like it or not all these things are guiding your spiritual path.

 

And it’s worth asking - have these people/thoughts/memories/books achieved or on the way to achieving what it is you seek?

 

Are they heavily interested in having you achieve what you seek?

 

Are they able to give corrections, lessons and transmissions that will guide you through subtle, confusing and difficult terrain - at the right time and at the right points in your development?

 

Have they lead others along the path? And have the others achieved or are on the way to achieving what it is you seek?

 

You already have teachers. Most of them should be fired  If none of them cover the criteria above, well maybe you need to find one that does?

That's so cool dude, because this is exactly how I think about it. I mean exactly how. So even when learning to play guitar, I would just print out tabs from the library an play along with my favorite bands and guitarists, so it became them who were teaching me. And when I'm talking to people on forums I often think of them as just different aspects of myself. I think of all people like this really, ever since I had a sudden and profound spiritual experience six years ago. And I just recently got a teacher, but she lives three time zones away and we met for the first time the other day via Skype. I worry I won't have enough money to pay her though. I'm poor, as in well below the poverty line, so I don't know what to give her for an hour of her time. I told her I'd like to give her $60 per hour, per week we meet, but this is like 20-30% of my whole paycheck. She told me to give what I could afford and what I felt the sessions were worth, also noting what the standard is for such things, but I don't know the standard. But she also said that she don't want me to go without food for the week or even something I would like to buy for myself. It's been bothering me and I don't know what to do about it. Any advice?

[Taoist Texts]

21 hours ago, yuuichi said:

For the neidan practitioners out there. It is clear in Daoist scripture that having Xing without Ming leads a person to become ill and become a ghostly form afterwards in the afterlife,

It is not clear

21 hours ago, yuuichi said:

but what does having Ming without Xing cause?

"There are those who have completed Ming, but not yet Xing, so they are not able to slough off the illusory bodies , and they keep their frames to reside in the world. "

21 hours ago, yuuichi said:

Can Xing deplete, like Ming, and if so, what causes it?

Yes. The Father Time.

5 hours ago, yuuichi said:

Yes, but does having a lot of Ming compared to Xing have any negative health effects?

No.

[yuuichi]

42 minutes ago, Taoist Texts said:

"There are those who have completed Ming, but not yet Xing, so they are not able to slough off the illusory bodies , and they keep their frames to reside in the world. "

 

But how is this different to ghost form, or how the Daoists say, being a hungry ghost? I remember a Daoist story where a Daoist (who had form) criticised the Buddhist (who was the form of a ghost) because he practiced incorrectly and so became a ghost in the afterlife. So the Buddhist became reborn as an ugly princess, who practiced Daoism.

[Taoist Texts]

1 hour ago, yuuichi said:

 

But how is this different to ghost form, or how the Daoists say, being a hungry ghost?

it is different, because not all ghosts are hungry ghosts. The buddhist in the story was an immortal ghost, which is a tremendous achievement, one the ordinary people can only dream of.

 

[yuuichi]

Just now, Taoist Texts said:

it is different, because not all ghosts are hungry ghosts. The buddhist in the story was an immortal ghost, which is a tremendous achievement, one the ordinary people can only dream of.

 

Is this immortal ghost what one attains when one reaches nibbana? How is that different to a hungry ghost? Does every common person become a hungry ghost? Thanks

[Nintendao]

5 hours ago, AugustGreig said:

I just recently got a teacher, but she lives three time zones away and we met for the first time the other day via Skype. I worry I won't have enough money to pay her though. I'm poor, as in well below the poverty line, so I don't know what to give her for an hour of her time. I told her I'd like to give her $60 per hour, per week we meet, but this is like 20-30% of my whole paycheck. She told me to give what I could afford and what I felt the sessions were worth, also noting what the standard is for such things, but I don't know the standard. But she also said that she don't want me to go without food for the week or even something I would like to buy for myself. It's been bothering me and I don't know what to do about it. Any advice?

 

There is that famous saying "When the Student is Ready, the Teacher Will Appear." It is the truth and doesn't even need to be some mystical law-of-attraction deal. The more energy you put into something, you should naturally eventually find yourself in places where nearby people of similar passions end up. The best quality and longest term instruction i ever got was from someone that i was already associated with for completely different reasons and only later found out that they knew gongfu. It sounds like you have a decent and kind enough coach to at the very least make sure your foundation is sound. Keep following your dreams and dont fret too much over formalities is my suggestion. and, BE SAFE ♥

[Taoist Texts]

34 minutes ago, yuuichi said:

Is this immortal ghost what one attains when one reaches nibbana?

Nibbana is the end goal, immortal ghost is one of the stages leading to it

34 minutes ago, yuuichi said:

How is that different to a hungry ghost?

Immortal ghost is not hungry for ancestral sacrifices, he can survive in the beyond on his own

34 minutes ago, yuuichi said:

Does every common person become a hungry ghost? Thanks

Yes, for a while, until he dissipates for good.

[yuuichi]

18 minutes ago, Taoist Texts said:

Nibbana is the end goal

 

So you’re a Buddhist? I didn’t realize, sorry.

 

23 minutes ago, Taoist Texts said:

Nibbana is the end goal, immortal ghost is one of the stages leading to it

 

Are you saying that people who are Sotapanna, Sakadagami or Anagami become immortal ghosts, while people who are arhats (attained permanent nibbana) become something greater in the afterlife?

[Taoist Texts]

41 minutes ago, yuuichi said:

 

So you’re a Buddhist? I didn’t realize, sorry.

No i am a confucian

41 minutes ago, yuuichi said:

Are you saying that people who are Sotapanna, Sakadagami or Anagami become immortal ghosts, while people who are arhats (attained permanent nibbana) become something greater in the afterlife?

yes

[yuuichi]

14 minutes ago, Taoist Texts said:

No i am a confucian

 

I’ve always been quite skeptical of confucianism. I mean, look at modern China. People in a position of authority, whether it be a parent or party member, will always use that authority for their own greed or individual purpose, whether that would be using state funds to buy a nice watch or house, or try to get one’s son or daughter to marry into wealth or have a strict education, even if they aren’t keen about it, just so one can have a comfortable retirement. Do you have any sources to learn about real confucianism that may address these probable midunderstandings about what Confucius wanted?

 

So the Sotapanna, Sakadagami or Anagami are immortal ghosts, the arhat is a better kind of immortal ghost, what is the Daoist, who was greater than even them, because (as was stated in the story) he had form?

Edited October 31, 2018 by yuuichi

[Taoist Texts]

44 minutes ago, yuuichi said:

 

I’ve always been quite skeptical of confucianism. I mean, look at modern China. People in a position of authority, whether it be a parent or party member, will always use that authority for their own greed or individual purpose, whether that would be using state funds to buy a nice watch or house, or try to get one’s son or daughter to marry into wealth or have a strict education, even if they aren’t keen about it, just so one can have a comfortable retirement.

If the waters are too clean, no fish lives there

 

Quote

Do you have any sources to learn about real confucianism that may address these probable midunderstandings about what Confucius wanted?

https://ctext.org/analects/ens

 

Quote

 

So the Sotapanna, Sakadagami or Anagami are immortal ghosts, the arhat is a better kind of immortal ghost, what is the Daoist, who was greater than even them, because (as was stated in the story) he had form?

Lu dong-bin, a confucian immortal

 

Edited October 31, 2018 by Taoist Texts

[freeform]

9 hours ago, AugustGreig said:

TL;DR- How did you know about the sexual deviance? I find this pretty remarkable and is one of those things that removes doubt and skepticism in my mind when I find out how manipulating the subtle energies in my body can have real and predictable results. Thank you, I appreciate it.

 

This is where an authentic teacher helps.

 

This is a classic Qi Gong deviation. Usually known as ‘Poison Fire’... The idea is that whether through Qi Gong sexual practices or long term sexual abstinence, you develop this ‘poison fire’ which then begins to ‘infect’ your heart.

 

Basically all your base desires begin to affect the part of you that connects with people, has empathy, feels romantic love, compassion etc. The manifestation of this depends on your nature. Common ones are an insatiable drive for power over others... wanting to sexually manipulate and domintate others... and sadly at its worst wanting to sexually corrupt innocence - peadophelia.

 

It’s common (to various degrees) amongst Qi Gong practitioners that focus on retention and sexual practice. It’s also common amongst people who develop some power over others (politicians, celebrities etc). And seems particularly common amongs people who hold ‘spiritual power’ (priests, gurus, therapists).

[yuuichi]

45 minutes ago, Taoist Texts said:

If the waters are too clean, no fish lives there

 

I’ve been wondering what you mean by this?

 

and the thread you posted was what I was talking about. The immortal ghost is the yin spirit, but Lu Dongbin doesn’t really explain what happens as a result of melting Xing and Ming together. What is the final form? As the story says, it is not a ghost form, but a physical form.

Edited October 31, 2018 by yuuichi

[freeform]

9 hours ago, AugustGreig said:

Any advice?

 

(For anyone scanning through the posts, as I do sometimes, this answer is relating to AugustGreig asking for advice on how to afford a teacher when on a low income)

 

Daoists are a practical lot.

 

If you can’t afford a teacher then you need to make more money.

 

If you can’t make more money then you need to dedicate your time or be of extreme value to a teacher.

 

To make more money you need to save more money. I know it can seem almost impossible when your income is barely feeding you, but set up a way where you can automatically save at least 10% of your pay check. For example I made a standing order so that when I get paid 10% automatically goes into my savings account. I don’t even see the money. I don’t think about it and I manage as best I can with what is left.

 

Humans are pretty adaptable. If your pay was cut by 10%, you’d find a way. So just imagine your pay is cut by 10%. Eat rice and beans if you must. Don’t buy coffee or other drinks. You do what you have to.

 

Secondly - find a side income. Go to a wealthy neighbourhood and offer people to walk their dogs, shovel their drives, trim their hedges etc etc. Find a way.

 

Another way is to make yourself valuable to a teacher. Some teachers need help. Whether you go cook and clean for them, work on their land or find some other way to be of value, they’ll often appreciate your dedication and teach you for free.

 

If it’s something you really want, then commit fully to achieving it and work around the walls stopping you. I’m sure you’ll do great.

 

If if you want to train by yourself to be ready for a teacher, then learn to open your body - thorough stretching routines, opening the joints etc. Work particularly on shoulders and hips. There’s a lot of free content.

 

Doing internal work without a teacher is not recommended.

 

Good luck

[Taoist Texts]

9 minutes ago, yuuichi said:

 

I’ve been wondering what you mean by this?

If the river is too clean, you will catch no fish. The saying implies you should not be too hard on crooks

https://www.ft.com/content/88d03210-ffb0-11e4-bc30-00144feabdc0

https://enlightenmentward.wordpress.com/2009/02/27/water-which-is-too-pure-has-no-fish/

 

 

9 minutes ago, yuuichi said:

 

and the thread you posted was what I was talking about. The immortal ghost is the yin spirit, but Lu Dongbin doesn’t really explain what happens as a result of melting Xing and Ming together. What is the final form? As the story says, it is not a ghost form, but a physical form.

the final form is Dao incarnate. Dao encompasses the physical and the intangible worlds, thats why Lu who joined Dao could be physical or intangible at will. You can say he melted the two worlds together, just as he did with xing and ming.

[yuuichi]

1 hour ago, Taoist Texts said:

the final form is Dao incarnate. Dao encompasses the physical and the intangible worlds, thats why Lu who joined Dao could be physical or intangible at will. You can say he melted the two worlds together, just as he did with xing and ming.

 

This is a good answer, thank you for your help. Just to be clear, by melting xing and ming together, one acquires the ability to become an invisible ghost, and then also return as a physical body? How come talented meditators who have a lot of Xing, do not have the ability to become a ghost then, even if they cannot return? Thank you.

[Taoist Texts]

20 minutes ago, yuuichi said:

 

This is a good answer, thank you for your help.

oh no no, thank you. I am doing some boring work on my comp, so thank you for an intermittent respite.

20 minutes ago, yuuichi said:

Just to be clear, by melting xing and ming together, one acquires the ability to become an invisible ghost, and then also return as a physical body?
 

yes

20 minutes ago, yuuichi said:

How come talented meditators who have a lot of Xing, do not have the ability to become a ghost then, even if they cannot return?  

like who exactly?

[yuuichi]

6 minutes ago, Taoist Texts said:

like who exactly?

I haven’t heard of any person who probably had a high level of Xing (like the Buddha, famous Buddhist monks throughout history, etc) who had the ability to become invisible/a ghost. There are a number of famous magical powers associated with meditation, but becoming a ghost or invisible isn’t one of them, at least not from what i’ve heard.