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Dear Michael,
I am not currently practicing any daoist techniques, but I have read and admire your writings. They are very clear and accessible. Perhaps you can clear something up for me. In Stephen Changs book, The Tao of Sexology, he advises against using thoughts or visualization to help guide energy flow. On page 74 he states that humans emit electrical energy, which fluctuates 49,000, 000 cycles per second. Thus, when a person starts to think or breathe (to guide the energy), the electrical energy will have already reached its destination. Our thoughts, breaths, etc. are too slow to guide the flow of electrical energy.
Mr. Chang then says, What occurs at the unconscious level was not meant to be subject to the control of the conscious mind. If the conscious mind interferes with something it was not evolved to control helping or guiding electrical energy through visualization, thoughts, etc. it can cause a great deal of damage.
I do not know if he is correct, but you seem to be a person who can respect a point of view, and, should you not agree with it, give a clear reason as to why. I would be pleased to read your thoughtful response to this. Thank you. And thank you for the work that you do and the point of view that you so clearly express.
Hi K, I think you are proposing a question that is at the basis of our inner work. It is interesting to read Stephen Chang’s objective observation of the electrical transmission rate in our mind/body. I can imagine that there could be damage if we are transposing our ego desires or just false understanding on what is already “perfect”.
My experience is that I am already getting in the way of my natural self through unconscious beliefs and visualizations (assumptions about the world) and it is doing damage. So I agree with him.
The question then is how to get out of this ignorance. It seems the use of images and structures based on a balancing geometry, colors and sensations point the way back to allowing this natural energy flow we are born with.
When you plant a seed you use a shovel to dig the hole in the ground but that isn’t what grows the plant. But without the shovel the seeds might slip away in the darkness.
There seems to be a dance that is very personal and subjective between directing our energies and allowing. With too much direction we just keep digging the same holes over and over without respect for the growing soul. With too much allowing old patterns of thinking and behaving take over. It is difficult to ‘not do’.
There is a great quote that goes…”the greater diameter of my knowledge (read ‘direction of my energies’) the greater circumference of my ignorance (read pure allowing)”.
I haven’t been able to have one without the other….cheers, baba
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>Mr. Chang then says, What occurs at the unconscious level was not meant to be subject to the control of the conscious mind. If the conscious mind interferes with something it was not evolved to control helping or guiding electrical energy through visualization, thoughts, etc. it can cause a great deal of damage.
——————
Question is important. But its not about images, its a deep issue about cultivating individual will as the core responsibility for giving given an individual body-mind-spirit.
Personally, I don’t teach visiualization. Visualization as understood in the west is a mental process of projecting one’s individual will through an imposed visual image. That is what magic and sorcery operates on. Indivudal will controlling chi field to achieve personal goals. Its a superficial process of imposing an image on top of the flow of reality, and then charging up the image until it begins to shape the outer reality.
Qigong and alchemy are the science of actualization, actualizing the underlying principles of the Tao and its collective will.These are principles of unity (yuan chi), polarity (balance of yin-yang chi, or tai chi), and harmony of five phases/elements. Very different. All five sensory functions are fused into one intention at the core level of intelligence/spirit. This is alignment with original spirit, the only way it can manifest here, and the secret of birthing original will through an alchemical act of individual will.
Guiding chi is not visualization when done properly. If you raise your arm, that guides the chi upward. Is that a visiualization? No. guiding chi is aligning of personal inner will with greater flow of chi, this case the current of rising chi.
If you are afraid to express your personal will, you are a human cripple. And yuou will never fulfill your personal destiny, or worse, you’ll never go beyond the cards that fate dealt you. In short, you’ll be totally boring to yourself, to others, and to the mind of humanity that took a risk in letting you incarnate in the hopes of getting some fresh resolution to old issues.
Alchemy is just the science of speeding up what occurs naturally in life – the integration of the one original will that emerged from Tao with the many wills manifesting each moment.This is a process of the individual will gradually making the collective will conscious.
So I totally and wholeheartedly DISagree with Stephen Chang. My whole life experience contradicts what he is saying. He is stopping, or at least slowing evolution, not advancing it. He wants to leave unconscious forces unconscious. That is exactly what the dark side wants, to remain hidden.
I have invited Chang to teach at Healing Tao University in the past.He taught herbology.
I appreciate the contributions made by his books. But he doesn’t meditate,is not trained in the progressive alchemical training tradition, so i feel he is not qualified to comment on it or make grand judgements against it. It is just not his path.I think his failure to understand meditatation is a major weakness in his understanding of the foundation of Tao. Human beings can raise their vibration to much higher frequencies than occur in the unconscious. that is sometimes called super consciousness. I just call it true yin, true yang, and original (yuan) chi flowing through the individual.
michael
If you are afraid to express your personal will, you are a human cripple. And yuou will never fulfill your personal destiny, or worse, you’ll never go beyond the cards that fate dealt you. In short, you’ll be totally boring to yourself, to others, and to the mind of humanity that took a risk in letting you incarnate in the hopes of getting some fresh resolution to old issues.
Alchemy is just the science of speeding up what occurs naturally in life – the integration of the one original will that emerged from Tao with the many wills manifesting each moment.This is a process of the individual will gradually making the collective will conscious.
Can you explain why this is not a contradiction? How can you make the collective will conscious while still exercising your personal will? Does it not get in the way?
And, please, how is it arranged that we have a personal destiny, which is both beyond what fate deals us, and dependent on our exercising will? Is destiny really the word for something so easily avoided? How is such a destiny allocated?
Can it not be a fresh solution to ignore all promptings of one’s personal will? Are not the difficulties of so doing multiple and varied enough to avoid being bored? And the enormous willpower required to get into the swing of doing so, does that not produce enough contradictions to keep the mind of humanity entertained?
Over and out.
S>How can you make the collective will conscious while still exercising your personal will? Does it not get in the way?
Don’t confuse the scattered desires of the monkey mind with the inner will of your true person (zheng ren). The inner will arises from the fusion of the five body spirits into a unified will. This is the spiritual evoltion of the “heart-mind” (xin).
Where is the contradiction? Individuals are incarnated by the will of the collective, so the collective’s issues and latent powers are necessarily implanted within the individual. Individual will is the extension, the manifestation of collective will. It is front line of spiritual transformation.
If the individual finds creative and unique expressions of spiritual will, then the benefit of that flows to the collective by resonance.it opens up new pathways for the collective. Remember,the collective/divine cannot see what is happening in the physical plane except inthe most broad energetic overview. It NEEDS individual will to respond the unique conditions that we are incarnated into. That is why clear sensory perception is also needed. Divine will has NO sensory perception.
Forget all the brainwashed religious interpretations of “surrendering to divine will” as meaning giving up individual will. that keeps you as a helpless child. That is the priest hood manipulating you into submission.
it means surrender to embodying the collective/divine will WITHIN our individual expression. If the individual doesn’t learn to shape the life force, i.e. express individual will in a balanced and harmonious way, but that may also be uniquely creative, then nature has failed.
Earth is a unique planet of choice. Its the wild west of spiritual free will.
That is why our choice matters – we can also choose to move against harmony and balance, against the life force’s innate flow. And the life force must allow that choice, to give meaning and redemptive value to our free will.>And, please, how is it arranged that we have a personal destiny, which is both beyond what fate deals us, and dependent on our exercising will?
I didn’t say our destiny was to go beyond what was dealt to us – but that is the high end of our creative freedom: to complete your destiny and then go beyond it.
Even to just fulfill our destiny requires a high degree of excercising our free will, to choose to accept our inner spirtual impulses rather than the social-cultural programming choices fed to us. if there was no choice involved, our lives would be meaningless, it would be a mechanical exercise of higher will acting through robots. Are you a robot?
Of course, to exercise will requires that there be a “self” to exercise it, so all the Buddhists taught that there is no self have a quandary. But that is their problem; they have chosen to exercise their individual free will in accepting such a belief. its takes individual will to believe in “nothingness” as the highest value.
The notion of personal “selfhood” arises as a mirror reflection of this cosmos as a macro self, i.e. having substance/will, chi/breath, and intelligence/spirit. Jing, chi, shen. If nature has it, we have it. As above, so below.
🙂Stephen Chang writes in The Great TAO p. 310 (describing the Deer exercise for circling sexual energy up to the pineal gland):
“Tighten the muscles around your anus… as you do this second stage of the exercise, picture in your mind the sexual energy as a light or flame rising up the spine to the head.”
Regarding “not using visualization” he must have changed his mind then…
Harry
“There is a detailed scientific explanation of the nature of electrical energy in
The Complete System of Self-Healing, page 91-92. Electrical energy in human
beings fluctuate at 49,000,000 cycles per second.
This figure is about half that of light, which travels at 186,000 miles per
second. So when a person starts to think, breathe, or visualize to help the
energy reach its destination, the electrical energy will have already reached
its destination. A background in science will bring into sharp focus how human
thoughts, breaths, etc. are too slow to guide the flow of electrical energy.Anyone who insists on guiding the energy flow is just like a person who desires
to direct the traffic while riding a bicycle in front of full-speed cars on an
interstate highway. No doubt he will create a big mess.How can Winn speak with authority on what Dr. Chang has studied? How does he
know whether or not Dr. Chang has studied these deviant (as they are called by
the ancient Chinese) techniques a long time ago and rejected them because of
the life-threatening diseases he witnessed them causing?Best wishes to you.”
As some of you know, I was in China and Mongolia for a month very recently. When I was in Shanghai I lived with Master Nan and had quite a few opportunities to converse with him about various subjects.
All me to share a conversation I had with him that I feel relates to the subject at hand. I will paraphrase it from my memory as best as I can:
“Teacher, When I read the Diamond Sutra I get the idea that the core of the book is that the mind should not dwell. In understand this in a certain way and I practice it like I walk a dog. You see, when you walk a dog the dog wants to stop and sniff everything along the way so you are in danger of never getting to your destination. So I yank its chain every so often to get it to stay focused, but too much of the dog will be harmed. This is the best way I know how, but I am afraid it is not good enough.”
“Plato, when you are talking to me right now is your mind dwelling?”
“Yes.”
“Do you want it to stop dwelling?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because it has to dwell long enough to hold this conversation and get an answer.”
“So what is your question? Spit it out!”
“I am getting to it.”
“No you aren’t–just ask it.”
“Ummmm…”
“When you are talking to me right now, you are holding a very small dog in your lap and it is very well behaved. What you really want to know is what to do with the big, uncontrollable dogs, yes!”
“Yes.”
“Ah, of all the questions you could have asked me you really asked me the most important question of all. This is a big problem in the universe, you know? Your thoughts can be on the level of habit energy and on the karmic level. Really the same thing just different levels of manifestation… To transform the habits is one thing but to transform the karmic force is something else. The energy comes and how do you resist it? You can’t. Can you?”
*********************
Just an excerpt.
Let’s talk about jealousy. It is a big dog. If it was easily dealt with, then the world would be a very different place.
In reality, the feeling of jealousy usually comes like a flash.
Where does it come from?
Where does it go?
Hard to say, but let’s say that jealousy just is floating about there like an undercurrent in a river.
It flows right on by, but humans hold onto it. Perhaps they think they can figure it out by holding onto it long enough and therefore they will be free of it–an inefficent way of resolving karmic forces greater then they are? Either way, their mind dwells on it longer then it should.
The Professor (of HT fame) has a lot to say on it with respect to the 3 brains of the mind, heart, and abdomen. Mind is the witness, heart makes decisions, and abdomen is the radar. You aren’t moving chi through the channels, but rather tracing them in order to to still the mind.
See, it is relatively easy to overcome jealousy. You have to really want to do it though. Murder it from your mind, by not dwelling on it. Ever. It will go away on its own. If not, then your physicality is holding onto it. Practice Body Flow, get NCR done to yourself. Whatever. Only you can walk through the door and not feed it.
Another trick is to do what Aslan did in “The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe” when he accessed the “deeper magic from before the dawn of time.”
This method works on karma at the level of habit energy. I have been very successful with it. I am working more on the “Aslan method” these days which is to murder demons by allowing them to murder you.
But, these personal parlour tricks don’t fix shit on the alaya level of consciousness. Have to be a high-stage Bodhissatva for that. Or so I have been told. 😉
See, sometimes when I dream the seed consciousness of jealousy comes back, and I murder women in my sleep in arguments.
This is because the alaya is so strong. It is an ocean coming at you and will take you over. Your “self” goes to sleep and the alaya comes back because the seeds are still there. This is the hard thing to deal with.
Harder then habit energy.
You are really a collection of thoughts. There is a self of course. For practical purposes. 🙂 I am writing this now. Or am I? Who is really writing this? I am a bunch of thoughts that have coalesced. Just because I think I am doesn’t make me so.
Even my body is a reflection of my thoughts. Karma is like a thought stream that condenses here and there and the illusion of myself comes out like a flying fish.
Ah, I am so tired of late… very tired of the weight of my own karmic forces. Not much to do but lie on that table and take it until the table cracks.
=^_^=
“Personally, I don’t teach visualization.”
OK, I don’t know if you misspoke, have revised your teaching methods or I’m not getting some subtle distinction.
I’ve actually been listening to one of your fusion tapes from a few years ago. You talk about forming a pearl, and forming pearls in the collection points. You talk about original force breathing (I think that’s what you call it) where we should “imagine the two sides of your energy body from your navel and your ming men come in and kiss, and then move out again”.
You also talk about fusing energy from the collection points into the pearl in ways like “imagine a stream of blue and red energy flowing into the collection point . . . ” You also say, “if it’s easier, imagine a little figure in the pearl who looks like you whose organs are lighting up when the energy from the collection points hits them”.
This is all only in the first hour of fusion I. Im sure theres lots of similar stuff to follow. And all these things are, to me, visualizations.
By the way, I have no issue with visualizations like this (or even with pakuas, which I’m curious of your view on). And I also think Chang is mistaken in the central argument in this thread.
But I don’t understand how what I described above can be viewed as anything other than visualizations. Please explain.
Thanks.
It’s interesting when you don’t think someone’s teaching has had much of an effect on you and then you find yourself in a situation basically reciting what someone else has said or written word for word.
A friend, who is an aries and in the MMA/fighting business to begin with, called me a couple weeks ago and told me he spent the night in jail for punching some guy in the face.
“Why did you do it?” I asked
“He insulted me.”
” Yes, but instead of reacting to this you could have just watched the negativity or insult and not involved yourself.”
Then he starts recounting the story about the Scorpion and the turtle or something where the scorpion gets a ride on the turtle across the river before stinging him because it is his nature as a scorpion to supposedly kill.
I cut him off after the first sentence.
” No..it is not your nature to do this. That is just Karma. It is your moment to moment choice what you are going to do and you don’t have to go down wrong paths. you can watch the feelings and desires come and not get bothered by it”.
“Life is Chaos, you back down” he said
“Wrong, Chaos is a result of karma and you can watch it without getting involved in it. You have a choice. I look at things logically .I don’t look at it like there is some dude I don’t know or barealy know insulting me and I need to defend my so called honor. I look at it like this is some loser taking up my time and I don’t have any desire to waste time hitting him in the face, then spending a night in jail, then spending thousands of dollars for a lwayer. I will take one look at the situation, see it for what it is, then smile and nod to the guy. Unless he is directly threatening me or someone around me I won’t even think about doing that”.
I didn’t get too heavy into the “cessation contemplation” aspects of the situations but tried to explain it to him in his language.
If I remember correctly Dogen said when demons arise just watch them, they will go away themselves.
Chang was offering courses at least once in the last five years.
The promotion was on taohealing.com.
The cost was 1000USD per week plus boarding.
The courses were not just on herbology.
Many ancient secrets were promised.So this raises the question on the nature of such secrets.
I understand what you have said about the karma in this and the previous post. Such beautiful insight. I agree so much with Nan though. You cannot resist. When one is engulfed by karma it can be as if in a dark sea and you can make out only one landpost, so you grab it. Sometimes it is not the “supposedly correct choice” (by other’s observations anyways). Engulfed in karma is not like having choices. It is like this whole energetic mass comes forward and heck it just sweeps you away. Sometimes you really do not have a choice. Not sure if everyone will understand this, unless of course you are aware of your karma and yet, darn you did it again. And you can see it in hindsite, but darn, at the moment you could not stop it even if you were reading it in front of you. The trick is to have the correct tools. The correct tools to dissipitate the karma. Knowing about the karma is only 5% of the solution. Tools anyone?
I have found dissipitating karma a lot of hard work. It mostly takes coming out of your box and re-entering. While you are out of your box, well I guess it could be described by this picture I have on my desk of a black and white picture of a nun on the shore of a misty lake. Nothing else around her but the mist and a few rocks and water, her hair cut short and the wind blowing her robes. You are really on your own and this is where you take it. It is a beautiful article connected to that picture. Describes it magnificently. It frightens the “be geezus” out of most of us to be by ourselves and really know that what and who we are are up to us. At that point, so far – I have reached it big time once, this total realization and feeling of total emptiness, then I got scared poopless and ran like hell. I have just quite running “again” and am restructuring to re-enter again. This time I have a couple of “tools” to help. But they are my tools that I need for my karma. They are not always the same with everyone else’s karma. And you know maybe your friend really did need to punch that sucker straight in the face. Maybe it was owing to him from life before. And who knows maybe your friend will yet benefit from this event. Universe is not straightforward. Never that way. If it was we would all be laughing.Rainbows!
Oh, one last thing, my sensei told me “Karen, you are going to kill yourself doing this, one cannot keep up such perseverance – it can eventually take your jing”. Yes it can …. but my karma is attached to my kid’s and when I dissipitate my karma so does theirs go and so will my grandmother’s. So maybe it may help some to know that your trials and tribulations, even though made by you and you alone, can also heal many when you find the tools to face your karma.
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