My first post and a few questions for Michael Winn…

> 1. David Shen says on his website:
> [quote]Mantak Chia
> presently living in Thailand founder of the Healing Tao (now Universal Tao)
> system that collects techniques from diverse Qi Gong teachings simplifying
> them for westerners.
> IMPORTANT NOTICE
> David collaborated in the codification of many of the practices in what is now called the Universal Tao. Among other teachings, David instructed Mantak Chia and Michael Winn in the introductory part of the Kong Jing (Empty Force) and Jing Shui (Water of Life) practices in order to introduce to them these teachings in a simple form. They later, without permisssion, took it upon themselves to incorporate fragments of these and other of David’s teachings into the Universal Tao and Healing Tao USA systems.
>
> These teachings and others were blended and simplified by them, but in this
> form are ineffective in the completion of Nei Dan Shu, the very thing for
> which they were originally created. They do not represent in any way the
> original transmission of Dazhen or David’s other Masters, nor do they
> represent any traditional Daoist qigong cultivation method.[/quote]

> Michael, what’s the deal with this? Is it a lie or what? Is there more to the
> story that you can share?

David Verdesi was a young italian kid, an orphan, that took on mantak chia as a kind of father figure. I pushed him to develop his own thing, get out on his own. He had started channeling a taoist, who he calls Da Jen, but didn’t know he was channeling, he thought (and thinks) he is a real person. David is very ungrounded, to say the least, and has nearly killed himself mixing taoist and yogic sexual practices and taking them to the extreme danger points.

His channeled teacher has a very complex and interesting set of practicess that are designed for someone living under extremely arduous conditions to get out of earthly life, fast, and into immortal life. I am not personally interested in practicing his system, but several healing tao instructors did try for some years and all left him with the same report: some very dark, powerful, and heartless force was behind him.

I have tracked his teacher in the inner planes and found out that Dajen had cultivated himself alone, to a very high level, but never cultivated his heart spirit or sense of collective humanity. He got stuck in a certain high level because of this and is now trying to resolve it through David, who is an aspect of his collective oversoul. So David is working out his heart issues and abandonment issues here. Dajen is a case of someone who used only yin-yang practices, and did not balance the five phase cycles which restore full balance to humanity.

The only thing I learned from david was at a public course taught at a NQA conference I invited him to – a breathing method I had discovered 20 years ago on my own about the space between the breaths, and was surprised to find it codified. I have incorporated it for my own use because it employs the kan and li principles at a very simple breathing level. It qualifies as a foot note in my overall development of the system, and bears no relationship whatsoever to his system.

I wish David well on his journey, and think his case is a very interesting experiment. Part of healing his heart issue is overcoming arrogance
and resentment against all those who helped him previously…..

> 2. What are your feelings about Xingyi, Bagua, and Tai Chi? Do you feel it is
> necessary or not, or helpful maybe, to supplement the internal alchemy with
> any of the above?

Not necessary if you choose other qigong movement forms. everyone needs a movement practice, just need to choose carefully before investing so much time with possibly little result. I practice both bagua and tai chi, mostly for sheer pleasure. Bagua is closelyaligned with alchemy via the I Ching, but the neigong I teach with each level is more focused in its alchemical effects.

> 3. Do you or anyone know of Kwan Sai Hung and if so, then what are your
> thoughts about this being. Is he worth learning from or not?

I studied with him in the past. A remarkable trickster and good martial artist.
But I found his chi level to mostly physical, not high spiritual. He is a half-German orphan (seems to be a theme here), the novels about him are totally fictional unless you read the subtext of the third one : he worked in chiense restaurants for 20 years…..

> 4. Can you or anyone comment on the Magus of Java? What is it that he does?

The film of his teacher lighting newpaper with fire emitted from his palms is a well known chi kung fakery, uses a chemical form of phosphorus that invites with a little spit.

> The author of the “Magus of Java” said in his second book Nei Kung, that he
> developed dark circular scars on his palms, what is that all about? What is
> this Mo Pai system of his in relation to different sects of daoism?

Everyone in China calls themselves a Taoist, even most buddhists and confucianists and Mo Tzu was the same. Overlapping, but mostly different teachings than what we call “pure” or “early” taoism, pre-temple taoism.
But China is filled with curious and interesting lineages. He gives a good story, but I would not want to chase after his 72 level largely martial arts system….

> 5. Can you or anyone recommend any teachers of anything in Massachusetts?

Yes. a General anwer for a general question.

> 6. Do students ever take your entire line up of summer courses? Do you
> consider this a bad idea?

I don’t permit it. Those students who did this with Mantak invariably quit their practice, overloaded themselves with head food, too little digestion.

> 7. Is there an equivalent to Naropa’s Tummo Yoga in the daoist internal
> alchemy?

depends what you mean by equivalent.

> 8. When is your book coming out?

I have many books planned. Each is maturing and coming out as it needs to.
They have to fit into the unfoldment of my life, which will be long. No one ever got enlightened from a book. No one needs to read any of my books. It is just mental support and stimulation.
Everything valuable I have to offer is in my courses. so please don’t hold your breath for books. Get to work now.

> 9. Have any students had success learning from your home courses?

Based on emails I get, yes.

If I buy a
> home course now and then come to the summer workshops, can I get reimbursed
> the 50% discount that I would’ve received if I had taken the workshop first?

yes.

> 10. Do you offer private training? How about daily classes in your area?

$80. an hour for qigong therapy, only for my students or occasionally the terminally ill.

my schedule is posed on my site.

> 11. And now for a totally different type of question–about Buddha. A few
> weeks ago on the board you posted:
>
> [quote]It is pretty much built into to Buddhist philosophy that “life is
> suffering”, and body is, under the guise of attacking bodily desires, given
> much of the blame. I trace it all to Buddha’s mother dying during his
> childbirth. Its a heavy thing to transmute, your mother simultaneously giving
> birth and dying on you, and I think he ran in every direction he could find to
> get away from the problem of the body.[/quote]
>
> Forgive me if you were not being entirely serious. Everything I’ve learned
> about Buddha and Buddhism is from biographical material, and what you
> mentioned above just doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. If his mother was the
> issue all along, then why did the problem of body never come up (at least in
> the canons and biographies) previous to the time he left? Growing up, Buddha’s
> aunt took the role of his mother. He loved her just as any child or adult
> normally loves their mother. He was happy with the mundane life, winning
> weightlifting contest, philosophical debates and so on. He even got married
> and had a child. This dude was happy. It wasn’t until he was 30 years of age
> and witnessed someone suffering and die that he became determined to find a
> solution to suffering. So to my question, does the above quote from you
> reflect your current feelings? If so, then can you go a little deeper with it?

My comments were serious.

In my therapeutic experience, it is very common for people to suppress their core issues until their first saturn return, age 29. Then saturn/earth element pushes the conflicts to the surface and forces you to make life choices to resolve your core issues. So Buddha’s story fits this model perfectly.
Pre-natal trauma is essentially spiritual trauma, you have no defense against it because your pre-natal spirit is wholly merged into your mother’s post-natal bodily identity.

“Life is Suffering – and then you die” was imprinted on gautama’s consciousness, seared into him like a branding iron. Emptiness is a fast technique for relieving suffering – if life is empty, then your suffering is empty as well. A deep topic I will pursue elsewhere.

> Well, that’s it for the questions at this time. Sorry this post is so long and
> also if you’ve answered these questions before on the older message board.
>
> Thanks
>
> Rob

That’s all you are going to ask?

Feeling a little short-winded, perhaps?

Take a rest and come back again.

Lots of nice folks here who know more than me.
They will set you straight in case I missed anything.

Love, chi, and blessings on your journey,
Michael

>So should we forget these teachings of David Shen? I dont understand how they could be soooo dark. He stresses breathing twice per minute, something I think is cool? My yoga teacher said the same thing today, 15 in, 15 out.

I did not say or mean to imply that David himself is dark, or that his teachings are dark. He has a tiger on his back that is resolving a lack of Da jen’s warm hearted-ness. This is not an issue of evil. it is about the relationship between the function of humanity’s heart and the coldness of what is non-human (Earth or Heaven).

David is very talented and serious seeker, and I think his experiment may produce interesting and possibly useful results. I am all in favor of experimentation, and attempting to extract or test whether someone’s discoveries in another timezone are applicable here. I believe Dajen “sealed the senses” prematurely, before his post-natal shen had time to develop or complete their destiny. So this is the danger of “short-cuts”, and why the realm of form is necessary and equally important as the realm of formless.

> about Kwan Sai Hung. I won a scholarship to study his meridian chi kung at the Omega Institute. Perhaps if he is not what he claims to be, I should attend a different workshop instead?

I am not gong to rob you of the pleasure of choosing what is right for yourself. Every teacher has something to offer. Ask your shen which one has the most to offer you at this time. As the kahunas in Hawaii say, “No one school is big enough to hold all knowledge”.

I studied with dozens of teachers, and the scraps of their insgihts I have composted into fertilizer that has nurtured the foliage in my own esoteric garden of delights.

michael

I’m of two minds about this.

First, we all gossip. After a party or meeting or movie we usually comment about the different people we met and wonder why they have to be so nice/mean/fake, and why can’t they…be more like us! We all judge all of the time, and that adds alot of interest to the world. Gossip like this holds communities together, by identifying who we are not.

But, second, it is strange hearing such strong judgments, and such apparently ultimate insight into the nature of all beings, coming from Michael. As he wrote about meeting David Shen’s guide in the deep wherever, I thought “Michael, why can’t you meet the force behind your own shit?”.

Now, I love to be told stories. I was at a lunch a few weeks ago when some guy was telling all sorts of interesting stories. My colleagues all left, and told me that they did not enjoy being monologued to by some blowhard. Similarly, I love Michael telling stories on everyone else. And other teachers I have studied with do that to.

But as with that blowhard at lunch who apparently did nothing but amazing things, Michael, can we hear some more humility from you? I am awestruck by your knowledge, and can see no end in sight to being your student, but as with other teachers I have had, I am disappointed in your apparent arrogance and strong judgement of others.

And, here I am enjoying your judgments of others and her I am judging you. Sigh.

Chris

>Can you or anyone comment on the Magus of Java?

Can’t speak about the man or the methods, but I’m actually grateful for his book for a reason that I didn’t expect when i got it. You all might think this is silly and basic, but it was a big shift for me at the time.

Maybe it just appealed to my inner scientist, but that graph he drew to describe (I think) the character for kung fu got my attention. At the time, I’d had only had one live, community college teacher of qigong. He taught us how to do embrace the tree, and a version of 8 pieces of brocade. Not a lot of background on qigong, just something to try out. But I never did any of them regularly, just when I “had a block of free time.”

In fact, I had done most exercises I’d learned from every tradition I encountered this way and almost never made progress (no wonder I kept searching for new stuff all the time, eh?!)

What the author wrote, though, was that kung fu (or whatever the character was) meant something like, power/skill acquired over time and effort. Gotta do it every day, even just for a few minutes. I’d heard that over and over, but for some reason that silly little graph made me step back and consider why I hadn’t gone anywhere, that the moments of practice might add up to something, vs. waiting for some mystical, magical break-through when I finally found the ‘perfect’ spiritual practice, and the ‘perfect’ exercise for me within that practice. 🙂 Changed everything for me.

So, he managed to inspire me to try that. And I did what I knew for four months straight, as much standing like a tree as I could tolerate. And I finally got the progress I was looking for. (until I had way more energy pumping around in my body than I was ready for, causing all sorts of interesting and scary problems, but that’s another story. Basically – a healthy lesson in “More and faster is not always better” and “Chew and digest one meal before starting the next” 😀 )

Brian

This is some confusing heady shit. I wonder if I should study with Kwan Sai Hung or no. Perhaps there is a better teacher at omega this summer? I got a damn scholarship so I need to use it and I dont want to waste it. My favorite teacher is Master Chia, but he will not be there. What to do?

Rob,

Best I can tell, the practice doesn’t have to be insane. It only needs to bring up more than you can digest/process at the time.

In my case, this only meant 30-90 minutes a day of standing like a tree. Usually 20-30 minutes at a shot, but I went as long as 50 minutes a few times. It wasn’t even all that meditative most of the time. I got that far making it into sort of a game. I’d play chinese sounding music (I like the work published by Oliver Shanti) in the background and focus on holding that position thru “just one more track.”

That’s all it took though. My body eventually got used to the position, I relaxed, and things started happening. Lots of physical energy, restored libido to start, feeling of chi moving around… and all the other stuff that happens to meditators. The problems, though, came up as a result of that extra energy. Lots of really strange things, intense emotional states, lashing out verbally in unusual ways, lots of barely controlled behavior.

I didn’t have a handle on what was going on then, but my working theory is that all the extra energy was also empowering my dark painful side. That I had been consciously and unconsciously draining myself for years to prevent me from really seeing that side, to avoid facing it, from letting it affect me. Somehow in my mind I had made a connection that being ‘a good person’ and later, ‘spiritual’ meant throwing all my ugly shit in the basement and acting to the public like it wasn’t there. 🙂

Those things were always there, but they were just thoughts before. Now they had a little juice behind them! Eventually this practice began affecting my body, vibrations and pain which made it clear I *really* wasn’t prepared for whatever was happening, so I went cold turkey until things started to make some sense.

I don’t consider it wasted time though. I went on a quest to “get chi” and sure as heck that’s what I got, but I didnt get to keep it. The continually unfolding gift I got was my first palpable, conscious taste of the unconscious pain I was storing inside, my dark side.

Brian