Imagination or Visualization is never a good method

[exorcist_1699]

Imagination or Visualization is never a good method to starting a taoist practice.

 

Maybe some people find it easier to have such a starting point ; it seems , at least they can find something to begin with , and , it appears to be a little more interesting : imagining flower, fire ball, tai chi ball , moon.. ..etc arising from their bodies or coming from outside.

 

However, once you are accustomed to it , you are entangled by it and it is difficult to get released. The real , what should naturally come up symptoms ,will then be replaced by your imaginations; truth mixed up with falsehood , illusions intermingled with real feeling ... it spoils many gifted guys' lifetime practice.

[宁]

if people would be kind enough to study a little basic psychology, they will find out that not everybody perceives and describes the world in the same way

 

- a lot of us are VISUAL types

 

- another lot of us are TACTILE types

 

- another lot are AUDITIVE or sound-oriented

 

- there are also OLFACTIVE-oriented

 

- there are also types that TASTE the world

 

for each basic type there are methods that suits them.

 

NOW, IF I EVER READ MORE CR..P LIKE THIS ABOVE, I WILL START TO USE VERY DIRTY LANGUAGE

 

[三江源]

.

Edited April 19, 2015 by 三江源

[sheng zhen]

The way I understand it, what exorcist is talking about isnt what kind of sensory type you are, it is beyond that.

 

Think of it this way. Visualize lifting your hand. Do it many times. Then lift your hand in real life. It feels completely different and you dont use visualization at all.

 

It is the same way with spiritual things. Once you get it, it feels completely different and you throw away the visualization and just do it. So if you are stuck with the visualisation, believing it is the visualisation in it self that does the moving, you will never be able to lift your hand.

 

You can visualize an aura around people, but once you see the real thing it is completely different than what you have visualized. If you are stuck with visulization believing it is the real thing, you will never see the beauty(or uglyness) of the real aura.

 

Visualization is only a tool to help you open yourself to the possibility. It is not the real thing. But it is helpful to guide our brain to accept the real thing.

[witch]

Witchcraft is like 80% visualization. It's the accepting of a thing that's the hardest part, that's why visualization is vital. At least from my point of view.

[rex]

Imagination or Visualization is never a good method to starting a taoist practice.

Since chi follows yi this is a moot point.

 

In other endeavours imagination is a source of knowledge, communication and inspiration. To deny the imagination is to deny the human spirit.

[doc benway]

Imagination or Visualization is never a good method to starting a taoist practice.

 

Maybe some people find it easier to have such a starting point ; it seems , at least they can find something to begin with , and , it appears to be a little more interesting : imagining flower, fire ball, tai chi ball , moon.. ..etc arising from their bodies or coming from outside.

 

However, once you are accustomed to it , you are entangled by it and it is difficult to get released. The real , what should naturally come up symptoms ,will then be replaced by your imaginations; truth mixed up with falsehood , illusions intermingled with real feeling ... it spoils many gifted guys' lifetime practice.

Your first statement needs careful consideration. What is the definition of "taoist practice"? If you are referring to a specific cultivation technique (MCO and beyond, neigong, and related practices) then I would argue that all require imagination of some sort initially. Visualization perhaps but it's definitely more than just visualization. It's a degree of imagination that is very detailed, specific, and pseudo-scientific (I mean that in the sense of organized, progressive, reproducible from a subjective perspective).

 

Now, if by "taoist practice" you mean praying to gods, lighting incense, exorcism, diet, holidays - that is also imagination and visualization.

 

Now, if you mean philosophical "taoist practice" - I don't know if that really exists in a definable way that we can all agree upon. I know what I consider that to be but we might not all agree. But if we could, would that not also require an imagination to approach it the first time?

 

It's only later, after the practice is established. Then it is certainly better to experience than to visualize or imagine. Then the thought process can be let go perhaps. But the imagination has to get you to that point, I think. Perhaps it's more accurate to say, it helped me get started.

Edited February 16, 2008 by xuesheng

[Taomeow]

Little1, I'd like to hear you use "very dirty language!"

 

I am predominantly kinesthetic, which means I relate to space itself with more ease than to "stuff" in space (any stuff you can see, touch, smell, or hear). A no-visualization meditation is a no-brainer for me. If I don't remember how to spell a word, I never "close my eyes and see it," instead I let my hand feel how I would write it in longhand -- it's instantaneous but if I were to translate it into verbal, it's something like, "down to the left in a curve from upper corner to the lower -- then from 3/4 the height, a bit up and then down in a left-ward curve again, then sharply straight up, down, curve to the right -- then from 1 and 1/3 the height straight down, and a right-ward curve, and cross horizontally... C-A-T.)

 

However, I spent some time in the past meticulously developing and honing my visualization skills, which didn't come naturally but which I knew I needed for certain purposes. I used to be so bad at it! And now I'm pretty good! I started with the simplest most basic images. An egg. A white egg, what can be easier to visualize? Took me a while. Then when I got it I gave it little chicken legs and made it dance a bit. Then I dressed it in a yellow polka-dot bikini. Then I got it to crack and let the Big Dipper emerge from it. And so on.

 

For cultivation work, one can't settle on just being this way or that way -- it's a mistake to think that such separation into preferred modes of functioning is "natural," while in fact it's the outcome of early unnatural conditioning; in the real natural state, we are supposed to be equally good at "all of the above" -- visual, auditory, kinesthetic, olfactory, and so on, and flexible and free to use either one -- or all of them simultaneously. So anyone who is heavily a certain way would benefit from cultivating specifically the opposite skills, focusing on perfecting what they "normally" suck at.

Edited February 16, 2008 by Taomeow

[Starjumper]

visualization methods seem to be the only real way to get into the world behind the veil, the mystical world, and this is a definite part of Taoism. Concerning energy work, both visualization and non visualization techniques can work, but they work best for different things. Visualization can open up pathways and energy centers but does it create more energy? I doubt it but would like to hear if some people think otherwise.

 

It seems to me that the methods for cultivating more energy are based on physical exercises, many of which can be somewhat strenuous. As I've stated elsewhere, in the Tai Chi classics it says that when a person has a lot of energy that it feels like they have ants crawling all over their bodies. Not key words 'a lot', and 'all over'. It's not like getting a flow going in the MCO or into a certain energy center. It's ALL OVER, and it's A LOT.

 

Thank you, I'll get off my soap box now. In my system we do have some visualizations but it's nothing like the Chia style stuff. I used to be better at it but lost it. i think I've been motivated to work on my visualization abilities.

[Taomeow]

Visualization can open up pathways and energy centers but does it create more energy? I doubt it but would like to hear if some people think otherwise.

 

 

I've seen a study where they measured blood flow to the visual cortex under ordinary conditions and in the course of visualizations. Guess what -- visualizations increased the blood flow to the area ninefold. Yi moves qi, qi moves blood. It didn't create more energy, rather it created a command for the flow of internal events telling them where to go, what to do there.

 

Some of the goals of visualization, just like some of the goals of ordinary external vision, are "homing," "zeroing in," "navigation." Plenty of energy is good, plenty of good ways to make good use of it is better. When you drive a car, having more than enough gas to get where you want to go is no guarantee of getting there -- you also need to look at the road. A blindfolded driver may not live to regret having had a full tank.

[sheng zhen]

In my school we were drilled to be synetetics. We had to work on getting every impulse from one sense over into another sense. Smell colours, listen to taste, touch taste, etc. And move everything around at will.

 

Eating food at a good resturant can be better than a philharmonic concert! And a burger at mcDonalds better than any thrash metal concert.

 

This crosswiring of senses makes the mind very lucid and flexible, and it gives you a whole army of tools to use when you work with subtle energies and visualization. If you have a hard time cathing a feeling, try it with sound of with smell a things will open up.

 

Also, if you use all of these senses in visualization, it will be a thousand times more effective.

 

But, visualizarion will never be able to replace the real thing. So like the first post intended, dont get stuck on visualizations.

[Taomeow]

What's "the real thing?.." Different things are real on different terms. A live dinosaur is real but there's no immediate sensory access to one -- we are not intersecting in time. A dragon is also real but there's no immediate sensory access to one either -- we are not intersecting in the rate of perceptions. Motion in a movie is not real, but appears to us as really happening -- again due to our rate of perceptions which the frames of a film match while a dragon does not. An electron is real but there's no sensory method to directly verify it -- you can only visualize it in order to notice it. At the same time, it would be mighty idiotic of me to visualize my morning coffee instead of making it. And it would be equally without merit to look for Lady Chang-O walking on the moon through a telescope. If she's there, she will manifest her presence by using her own proprietary methods, and that's how I will know. But I do have to visualize her in order to contact her, or else she simply won't notice me. Just like my synapses won't notice any coffee if I don't interact with them on their own terms, i.e. by actually drinking it, instead of trying to do it on some "higher spiritual" terms which they don't buy. To each his/her/its own.

[sheng zhen]

What's "the real thing?.."

 

The "real thing" that I talk about is the difference in seeing the aura with your real eyes instead of visualizing it. Or feeling the central pillar in your body instead of visualizing it. Like I said before, the difference is like the difference between lifting your hand and visualize lifting you hand. And visualization dosent get any more "real" the higher you go in the spiritual realms. Visualization is a way for the mind to try and understand the impulses of the higher realms, it is not the impulses themselves. And when you get "higher", you drop visualization and start acting.

 

I want to point to the fact that visualization is not the "real thing", its a tool you have to throw away once you've reached that which you try to reach by visualizing it.

[exorcist_1699]

The highest method/way is something natural as we are already told in " Laotse" , yet people always forget it .

 

Simply speaking, if qi can rise naturally , why we bother adding our subjective , deliberate effort to make it faster or work as what we like ?

 

Imagination may give you an impression that you can get qi quicker and manipulate it more freely, however,its drawbacks are always larger that its benefits. People who already experienced how qi behaves under the condition of mindlessness , of course ,can hardly endorse the imaginative way .

Edited February 17, 2008 by exorcist_1699

[三江源]

.

Edited April 19, 2015 by 三江源

[宁]

@SJ, there are a lot of people out there that think they know what is Chia all about, but it just their own private and particular ideas of it. Now, with all due respect, you are not an exception.

Like i said before, even if it is the most popular taoist system around, it is the least understood. Even by high level instructors. There are fiew of them that even begun to dig inside the immensity of the Nine Alchemical Formulas. I used to be really pissed at people that throw garbage at what they cannot understand. But I saw that Chia himself is often a direct target, yet he doesnt mind, and takes this as normal.

So, therefore I'm not here to put up someone, so try and take this friendly.

 

 

@TM, in writing i can go as dirty as the unoficial taoist saying: "Oh snap!" and "Knock yourselves out!"

 

From what i remember, taoists were really some kind of explorers of reality. Whatever concepts and methods they worked with, were only some kind of mnemotechnical tools. Compared to other systems of training and philosophy, they didnt hold tradition and scholars in higher esteem than the everchanging Book of Nature.

The dead words of the scriptures werent a priority for them, but mainly to aquire enough understanding of what was happening now, in real-time life and action. You could extract from there tons of philosophy and practice. They werent bonded to old and dusty chronicles. They were the fresh guys, that denied all traditional accepted wisdom, no wonder Chan their later creation.

 

Now, just for the record, visualisation is only a small part of what Chia teaches. Really small. What is the rest? I had a really hard time trying to figure that out, and I'm not yet ready to share it with you. I can only tell, most of the criticisers never went beyound the superficial layer.

 

 

L1

[affenbrot]

[三江源]

.

Edited April 19, 2015 by 三江源

[Starjumper]

Edited February 22, 2008 by Starjumper7