Nei-Yeh as source of Alchemical formulas?

I’m not much into doctrinaire discussions anymore, so I beg your pardon for a brief viewpoint.

You’re both right, or the viewpoints of the masters you’re referring to are both correct, or some of us will unite into the One, and some of us will go on to exercise free will even after meeting/joining the One.

As above, so below. Essentially we’re arguing 2 basic viewpoints here. I assert that both viewpoints are valid and we are likely playing them out here. I suspect that each of us plays them out individually as well: sometimes just sitting, sometimes acting.

I also enjoy reading the canon. To me, it’s a story, especially in English. It becomes less of a story when I have first hand experience of what’s being described/transmitted. Until then I see no way that an absolute foundation can be constructed from them. And even then the foundation cannot include all of reality/humanity.

-ml

Here’s Dr. Roths Interview on a few goodies below.
sl

http://www.holosforum.org/halroth.html

>>”I dont deny your alchemical method, I just dont agree with a rigid intepretation of it as some seem to have and are so willing to be critical of other presentations.”

Your position is still rather unclear to me, but feel free to practice however you see fit. I prefer alchemical cooking coupled with the inner observer as it gives me a feeling of substance and permanence, that the process is continuing even when I am not “practicing the meditation”, when just observing the inner planes. I feel the effect is greater for me than just observing without the alchemical cooking, but that is my preference and may not be for everyone.

>>”I wish your alchemy will digest this once and for all. There is no dissouluton of the individual self, it comes and goes, its not a permanent thing, its your thoughts and the emotions and conditioning attached to it. Its real in the sense your experieince something, its false in that it is transient, comes and goes.”

Thanks for your viewpoint. I don’t necessarily agree with it. See explanation above.

>>”How much free will do you have? The dream of some tao alchemists is they will be like the dream of god, an immortal that can do anything they want. good luck with that dream.”

Thanks for your well wishes. We don’t know what is possible unless we try do we? It may be small or big or both at the same time.

>>”It never left the one, you cant be part of the one sometimes and not othertimes, its only your belief that your thoughts and emotions are really you that creates the false viel. The individual self does not have the ability to make that decision.”

I answered this in posts above, thanks again for your viewpoint. It is not one that I subscribe to.

>>”I have no interest in spirituality, I am only interested realization of one’s true nature, thats it, all else takes care of its self. And what ever method works I can support.”

Enjoy

>>”If that is what you need go for it, if this is the step by step method you need go for it, just dont imply everybody must follow that method. I’m open to the fact you need this model, and give you the fredom to do it, but not all will need it.”

I enjoy the gradual method that fuses shen with jing because of its substance, and the practice creates a permanent effect of digestion or “cooking” that lasts throughout the day and night.

>>”Can you personally confirm for a fact that you will scatter in the cosmos at physical death? Or is it just a belief you have?”

I only use my own experience during waking, sleep and practice as a gauge of my ability to be integrated.

>>”This view is so polarizing, so splitting, not all of us see or experience this type of dichotomy in our life. So if you need to travel that path great, but please dont demand we all follow this “human made” method. Basically this method seeks to split the life in tiny segements and tries to restore them into a unified whole, not realizing the unified whole already exsited.”

Please feel free to experience life as you see fit. Is your method “made by nature” and not by man, or is it just how you like to experience it? Each human has the freedom to choose how they approach that experience. Give thanks to all the previous teachers that made it possible by their will to pass on these maps, giving us the freedom to choose.

I think I explained it quite well in that we are born and die in each moment from the unknown source, yet how many humans feel such a close connection to it that they can be one in each moment? by mapping the birthing process, we also map the return, and by mapping the return bring both into the present (physical) reality. For me the goal is not realization but experience of the process.

>>Not quite sure what you mean by “life” and “essence”.<>I experience a much more tangible result from working with elemental forces than with practicing realization. It is my preference.<>Part of the question may be do we dissolve back into the wuji or does the dissolution result in those unresolved aspects coming back to further seek resolution (where the ancestral line seeks to resolve aspects from before it, “the sins of the fathers are passed on the the offspring”)?<>If a person can be “unified” with a deep dimensional level of self, with jing holding that high vibration of neutral force, it can unify and dissolve much of the extreme yin and yang that is now in the world.<>My point about validity of practice is that I get the feeling that certain people do not want to allow me the free will to practice this (to “give it validity”), and insist upon it being unnecessary.<<

… and my point is that, since they cannot at all *affect* how you choose to *use* this free will, it makes absolutely no difference. What someone else says about what is valid is entirely irrelevant if you know what you are doing is correct for you. Even Buddha said, ignore me if you think I'm wrong. Does Bagua say the same? Well he should!

It is quite clear to me that those who choose to try and convince others they are 'practicing wrongly' are doing so out of ego alone – presuming that those others are actually happy in their practice which you obviously are. Naturally different schools may have blind spots; individuals may succumb to self-delusion; difficulties may creep in that need resolution by reference to an outside point of view. That's why we all talk like this! All spiritual paths can help one another. But the idea that there is something *fundamentally wrong* with the whole *concept behind an entire spiritual path* is blatant rubbish of the first order. Anyone who says otherwise is barking mad! 🙂 🙂 🙂 That is not helping one another, it is correcting one another when no correction is needed.

To my mind your other questions are only trying to rehash the argument still further. j

Hello Nnonnth,

Thanks for your in-depth thoughts on the issue, I really am being honest in that I still do not understand what you mean when you say “life” and “essence”. Cleary was basically a buddhist and relied heavily on that even when translating daoist texts; that does not discount his skill as a translator, only that I am not familiar with the terms. If you talk in terms of jing-qi-shen transformation, then it makes more sense to me. I would see buddhist practice as focused mainly on qi, shen and mental body cultivation, and not transforming the jing as much (except for tibetan practices), but really I am not all that familiar with most buddhist practice other than reading some sutras and hearing about vipassana meditation.

“life” is a very general term, and essence can mean either jing or qi depending on the translator.

>>”‘Working with elemental forces’ is cultivating life; ‘practicing realization’ is cultivating essence. Substitute those into my original post and I believe I answered all of your other questions.”

this makes a little more sense.

>>”Answered in my original post. The answer is it depends on the free will of the practitioner. If you reach a certain stage you *choose* to come back and resolve more things, or you *choose* not to return but to dissolve yourself permanently. Until you have reached the stage where you can *choose* either one the whole conversation is entirely premature!”

Being at the stage of choosing to come back or not seems to be a high level of cultivation of free will. I was referring to the fragmented shen reorganizing themselves and coming back to physicality in a different configuration (different person) to try and resolve their issues again because it couldn’t be done before.

>>”Yes; my point was that this can occur from still sitting practices. Also that it does not *always* occur from those practices. Those practices which only ‘cultivate essence’ and do not concern themselves with ‘cultivating life’, do not try to dissolve these differences at jing level. Those practices which *begin with* cultivating essence may in the end do precisely that and (however much I dislike his very negative attitude towards practices like the ones on this site) Huai-Chin Nan’s practices are the proof of it. I repeat, *as I already pointed out in my other post which answers you completely*, *primarily* cultivating essence does not mean that you do not *come* to cultivate life, nor vice versa. When it comes to mastery both schools are one. The entire point of what I said is that (as Dolphin mentioned) you are both right. The argument is tired; I am not convinced there was ever anything in it.”

My point here is that I am unsure and would question whether realization practices do transform jing at a deep level. Whether both schools achieve mastery, I guess is also a question left up to those people who do actually achieve mastery from either school.

>>”… and my point is that, since they cannot at all *affect* how you choose to *use* this free will, it makes absolutely no difference. What someone else says about what is valid is entirely irrelevant if you know what you are doing is correct for you. Even Buddha said, ignore me if you think I’m wrong.”

True
🙂

>>”It is quite clear to me that those who choose to try and convince others they are ‘practicing wrongly’ are doing so out of ego alone – presuming that those others are actually happy in their practice which you obviously are. Naturally different schools may have blind spots; individuals may succumb to self-delusion; difficulties may creep in that need resolution by reference to an outside point of view. That’s why we all talk like this! All spiritual paths can help one another. But the idea that there is something *fundamentally wrong* with the whole *concept behind an entire spiritual path* is blatant rubbish of the first order. Anyone who says otherwise is barking mad! 🙂 🙂 🙂 That is not helping one another, it is correcting one another when no correction is needed.”

Generally someone who practices any kind of spirituality (“practicing virtue”) I think is positive except if they are of the missionary sort, or are trying to deny particular aspects of existence like physicality as being more or less than “our true nature”, it really includes both and everything inbetween. Realizing that there is a distance between “our true nature” and pure physical existance does not cause a split in my view, it just accepts the distance AND proposes a solution. Some people don’t need to “do the steps” of alchemy to complete their lives here, yet I believe that alchemy does accelerate the process and has the potential take things a few steps further than if someone just seeks physical completion. “going with the flow” seems to me to be somewhat different than “becoming the process of change” by acknowledging and embodying it.

Discussion is just more fire under the pot!

🙂

Finally catching up after my travels and teaching wuji gong this weekend. It seems that qigong practice followed by meditation produces deeper results that intellectual discussion, but we also seem to need both to keep our “life” and “essence” in harmony.

1. That is the first clarification, on Cleary’s translation.

Life = Ming, aka destiny in the world.

Essence = Xing, inner nature, aka spiritual destiny

2. Northern and Southern Schools are atttempts to simplify a whole range of practices. One Cloud probably left a Northern School order to seek his Way in the mountains of northern China. He was probably NOT out there teaching sexual practices to folks. It was assumed in his monastic tradition, at least the single cultivation practice (internal circulation of sexual energy).

The dual practice (couples having sex) was integrated by Mantak Chia from other Taoists. I support that because it is more relevant to modern adepts in the West – very few are living in caves/huts apart from sex/society.

3. The ongoing One vs. Many Debate

Just to clarify my previous position, I wasn’t attacking Buddhist for choosing to meditate however they chose to – I was disagreeing with claims made by Max that led to the same as Taoist alchemical practice.

And I was pointing out the post-natal impossibility of any two different people having the exact same meditation or any life experience, even though they may be drawing their experiences from a common primordial ground.

The above discussion of choosing to dissolve into the One vs. choosing to reincarnate, etc. must be viewed more realistically in terms of level of Will achieved by an individual at the moment of physical death. And please note that MERGING into the One and DISSOLVING into the One are not the same process; merging I belives preserves the individual will, albeit with total integration and harmony with the collective.

Dissolving into the One: I doubt this is an act of will by the individual, more likely it is a higher level of collective self ABSORBING its post-natal individual projection back into its greater self because that individual self has ceased its conscious evolution or has no furtaeher mission, i.e. it lacks the integration/will/destiny to continue and so is automatically taken by into its immediate higher level source where in a sense it lives entirely through the creativity of the collective (oversoul) that has absorbed it.

4. My concern about Nan Huai Chin type of Buddhists (Nothingness is All you Need) is that they are a kind of Fundamentalist Buddhist who seem to be expressing their desire to obliterate the process of both the post-natal Self and the pre-natal self (soul). That this anti-self desire, if expressed deeply enough in the life, might limit the options available to them at death.

I cannot know this for sure, it just seems a likelihood. It’s also possible at death they would suddenly experience the ongoing creative fullness of creation and choose to reverse their post-natal belief and achieve sufficient integration “from the corpse” to go on creating.

My other concern was that certain types of meditation practice might not address the binary nature of the soul, but simply choose to split it further through beliefs and practices that the “formless” or empty aspect of self was more real thanits form aspect. That by bypassing this tension in the binary soul, you don’t resolve it, and may exacerate the tension.

But I think Harold Roth interview put it really clear: the Taoists belive in continuous creation, there is no absolute emptiness to be achieved, only greater depths of “de”/spiritual power to be expressed.

This is why I find Bagua’s position on the One as being pre-existent and thus “already achieved” to be confusing the issue of post-natal practice/potential achievement.

The One is simply another name for the collective of creation, which apparently will endure no matter what we do. But the experience of each “cell” of the One changes the experience of the One. So One is also in process – we are part of that process.

I don’t think Oneness should be confused with the notion of the futility of the individual self seeking to deepen the One’s experience of itself. That implies the One is fixed, and thus somehow limited. Better to see individiual selves as reflections of the One, we hold the One inside of us and we mutually shape each other.

peace,
Michael

ps. I will get to other threads tomrorrow.

>>The above discussion of choosing to dissolve into the One vs. choosing to reincarnate, etc. must be viewed more realistically in terms of level of Will achieved by an individual at the moment of physical death.<>And please note that MERGING into the One and DISSOLVING into the One are not the same process; merging I belives preserves the individual will, albeit with total integration and harmony with the collective.<>Dissolving into the One: I doubt this is an act of will by the individual<>4. My concern about Nan Huai Chin type of Buddhists (Nothingness is All you Need) is that they are a kind of Fundamentalist Buddhist who seem to be expressing their desire to obliterate the process of both the post-natal Self and the pre-natal self (soul). That this anti-self desire, if expressed deeply enough in the life, might limit the options available to them at death.<>My other concern was that certain types of meditation practice might not address the binary nature of the soul, but simply choose to split it further through beliefs and practices that the “formless” or empty aspect of self was more real thanits form aspect. That by bypassing this tension in the binary soul, you don’t resolve it, and may exacerate the tension.<>This is why I find Bagua’s position on the One as being pre-existent and thus “already achieved” to be confusing the issue of post-natal practice/potential achievement.<<