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[asclepius]

I’ve not seen a reference to using bee/insect venom. However, I have a little experience to share along those lines.

I very rarely get stung. I walk quietly, and stay pretty relaxed, and they don’t come after me much. However, at Dao Mountain several years ago, I was walking around the dorms without my glasses on. There were wasp nests in many places, but I hadn’t had any issues with them. Anyway, at some point I was wandering & contemplating, and a lone wasp flew by, stung me on the acupuncture point above the inner ankle (although I didn’t realize that until later), and took off just as quickly. In the several seconds that it took me to register the event, I also noticed that my vision sharpened. Considerably. It lasted 10-15 seconds, but it was remarkable.

I also had some time in the woods, doing a vision quest, when I was having lots of pain in one knee. At some point, mosquitoes eventually began biting around the knee. I had nothing else to do at the time, so in my fascination, I let them complete the task they set out to do. I don’t know remember they nailed any acupuncture points, but I do know that my knee started feeling better.

Those, and other events involving insects, lead me to believe that when they bite or sting, it might not be random. It might be feedback.

Good luck in your search.

[asclepius]

The way I’ve experienced it, we can use qigong and dao yin to remove the restrictions we’ve accumulated in our joints and connective tissue. If we do that, and as we build our awareness of structure and how to use it more effectively, we move more fluidly, gracefully, efficiently, less effortfully, etc. Sort of like a well lubricated auto – less energy is lost due to heat and friction.

However, we still have to condition our body for the feats we want to perform. Qigong again makes that process go a lot more smoothly. If you train with all those old injuries and tight areas hampering you, with sub-par structure, you’re not going to get quite as far. Assuming you avoid injury, you’re going to need a lot more muscle, food, you name it to overcome the inefficiencies. Training as a qigong practitioner, you can use your body so that you use only *just enough* energy to take the next step up Huashan, or in the marathon, or whatever.

[asclepius]

Thank you for posting this. It was interesting to read through your post, then Novak’s site, then go back and review the materials for Lesser Kan and Li.

Suddenly things made a lot more sense. A simpler picture of the practices formed in my head, that ultimately, the bulk of what we’re doing is a repeating pattern

1) Increase the energy of the system a little bit
2) Call back in the split-off fragments of our ‘selves’, a piece at a time.
3) Now with the slightly more stable and stronger structure… Rinse and repeat

The only thing that seems to change is the level of the self you’re reintegrating. Fusion I works on fragments of the ego, where the kan and li practices work on reintegrating fragments that occurred increasingly ‘further’ out from this lifetime.
But it doesn’t seem like it would necessarily have to be a linear path though. You might not be able to integrate some intense fracture (like trauma) that happened in this lifetime until you developed some strength/skill at a ‘higher’ level.

I’ve been hearing “shaman” types talk about soul loss and soul retrieval lately. I haven’t experienced it, but it sounds to me like this practice is very similar to inner alchemy. Except that they don’t seem to be distinguishing what level the split happened at. They only seem to be reporting tracking down a fragment and helping reintegrate it. It may not really matter where the split happened, if the shaman is coming from the perspective that the person has a fragment that, by being missing, is affecting their life right now, and its time to do something about it. (maybe we really do only need to be concerned about healing the suffering that’s right in front of us?)

Brian

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Wendy,

I’ve used the liver cleanses many times, and definitely recommend them with just a few caveats. They definitely saved my gall bladder from surgery.

However, they can be somewhat harsh, esp. if you’re chock full of stones and weakened physically. The first few times I did it were bliss (in being free of the pain for a while) followed by the usual pain (as stones shifted around inside), or a severely ‘drained’ sensation for at least a day. However, after a half dozen times I noticed this wasn’t happening so much. Now I do the cleanse maybe twice a year, and I don’t get drained at all except if I let myself get dehydrated beforehand or something silly.

They may also affect your inner alchemy practice. During a retreta with Michael this summer, I had just done a cleanse (had been feeling pressure under the ribs) and as we were kan & li steaming the liver, I almost fell out of my chair with fatigue, but was fine when we shifted organs. I didn’t get the connection until a day later, that the cleanse

The cleanse never replaces a clean diet, though. Just use it to get out of a jam.

Brian

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It depends on your body and habits, and the chiropractor you have. There are skilled chiropractors and not-so-skilled ones. There are chiros who will take an xray and adjust the segments that they find are out on that xray, and adjust the same ones forever and never assume your body will change. There are some who do much much more. So, you gotta do some homework and ask questions there, to try to pick a good one.

I’ll just give you my take on frequency. I’m a massage therapist by trade, and worked closely with chiropractors for a couple years so I could get adjusted anytime I wanted.

What I noticed was that due to my work, my body needed adjustments sometimes twice a week. When I learned stretch therapy and applied it to myself, I would only need adjustments _maybe_ once every month, or every other month. And it was rarely for misalignments, usually it was some obscure problem I didn’t know how to fix with stretching or qigong. So my take on frequency is, the better you take care of yourself, and the more responsibility you’re willing to take for your body and energy, the less you will need it. But as always, listen to your body. If you can’t fix it yourself and don’t have time to figure it out, see someone.

It’s not dangerous to become reliant on adjustments, or massage, or anything else, per se. It’s just a choice. It’s certainly less expensive and better in the long run the more responsibility and control you take for your personal health, but some people aren’t ready for that. I’ll use any health professional (western med or otherwise) if I know I need it, esp. because its good to get an outside perspective on what’s going on.

As far as feeling disconnected from the body, that can happen because you’re basically getting an extremely rapid change in structure which can have physical and energetic effects. That’s why I prefer stretching and qigong, because the changes are slower. But again, if you need the chiro, use him. But go on your schedule. I think it’s right and good for you to be questioning your need, but don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater, either. 🙂

Brian

[asclepius]

Possibly more important than how to fight, is there something about the individual that attracts these spirits in the first place?

Something I had put out of my mind for a long time… I had a couple experiences with getting buggered by a spirit, maybe 6 years ago. It didn’t sound quite as intense as that story, but it still scared the bejeezus out of me.

Looking back on the events today, that also coincided with a *very* contracted time in my emotional life. It seems silly now, but I wasn’t dealing too well with life at that time. Weeks went by I could barely get out of bed, and if I remember right (I didnt journal that period of my life), that’s when the, uh, visitations happened. 🙂

But they’ve never happened to me since. I used to think of it as an attack/violation/whatever, but now, I see the possibility that it might also have been designed to spur me into some kind of action, that the urge to fight it (when I had pretty much lost the will to fight in the physical) also might have broken the downward spiral I felt myself in.

Seems a little strange to be having a feeling of gratitude for the experience.

Brian

[asclepius]

A couple of points that come to mind…

>doesn’t even seem to come close to fully describing anything nor
>does it really fully explain things of higher levels

Here’s the thing… does your life change when you are given these kinds of high level road maps? Is your practice improved? Do you love more? Do you laugh more? If so, that’s awesome!

I actually prefer that the HT doesnt do this. Yeah, some of the road map is laid out even in the beginning, but if I can’t experientially differentiate something as fundamental as early heaven and later heaven energy, it doesn’t help me a whole lot to have information I can’t apply for things even further down the road. I cant even begin to figure out how knowledge of multiple destroyed universes helps me deal with the pile of crap I have to work on right here.

I try to ask myself when i read a book, how does this help me take my next step? Can I use this right now?

>based on what i know, when someone really wants to cultivate,
>their lives will be in danger immediately since they have to pay
>for all the bad things they’ve done( laws of cause and effect )

Is it that your life in put immediate danger, or is the ego merely not prepared to revisit memories and emotions that might not feel so pleasant? If you have the audio tapes, it might not be a bad idea to review the Fusion 1 material.

My experience was that indeed, it was highly uncomfortable for a few months after I sincerely began working with fundamental practices, but at no time was my life in danger. I was in danger of feeling what I had expended vast amounts of energy running from, in danger of changing. So far, change is mostly just uncomfortable. 🙂

Brian

[asclepius]

I get that in Michael’s weekend workshops in NC, haven’t tried more than two days in a row with him yet. Extra energy may help the blockage, but in my case when I get too focused on having energy pulse thru me, that just usually aggravates blockages, makes them even more conscious and perhaps even more agitating. 🙂 If that’s your concern, I’d spend extra time focusing on the five animals and the healing sounds and moving that energy out.

Brian

[asclepius]

Very good point about seminal retention, that doesn’t seem to fit into that model, unless there’s a different way of looking at that practice, or again, a highlight that my understanding of the HT position is incomplete.

I started out with the perspective that I got from the martial arts, with chi considered as a substance to collect and hoard. My experience of applying that model to acupressure yielded some great results, but man… did it feel draining to me personally if I did that too much. That’s kinda what got me looking into looking at it from the ‘calling on it when needed’ perspective. But the reiki practitioners I run into have that model, but something seems to hold them back too.

Maybe there’s a balance point between the two perspectives. If part of our goal in following the Tao is to mimic natural processes, maybe the question to ask is, how does nature do it? Does a tree store chi, access what it needs when it needs it, or both? (or… none of the above? 🙂 ) My gut feeling is that nature probably wouldn’t take a hoarding stance, though.

Brian

[asclepius]

Michael has a course on taoist dream practices. Also, check out Juan Li’s article on the same practice

http://www.taoisthealing.com/TaoistDreamPractice/taoistdream.htm

[asclepius]

Hi Kurt,

I imagine breathing would be my choice for least time consuming.

As I (likely, incompletely) understand the Healing Tao position on it from Fundamentals 1 & 2, we do practices not to collect chi, but to increase our awareness of, and improve the flow of, the chi field that already exists within us. We’re already made of chi.

Brian

[asclepius]

It probably doesn’t show up because that’s not how Ron Jeremy spells it. 🙂

Actually a virus wiped out the old site not all that long ago. The folks here who’ve done the healing love course will be able to offer a better perspective on it. It’s my understanding that raising and transforming sexual energy is an integral part of the practice in the Healing Tao. I’m not just quite there yet.

Brian

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Brother, I’m a little confused by your response. Are you writing in response to me, or kinda venting about what’s been going on lately? I admit it’s kinda confusing after posts were made in spyrelx’s name.

For the record, Max did not write that, I did. Nobody hijacked my account. He’s not my pal, nor did I personally support him or Plato through any the recent arguments or childish antics, and who was clearly not pleased by the pictures posted in that process. (there were a few I could’ve gone my whole life, not seen, and been pretty much okay with.)

This was just me, posting about an understanding I came to, of one *tiny* piece of what had automatically turned me off whenever I read what Max was writing about. I found a way to integrate something I previously resisted because of my own prejudices, and got there through an exploration of Michael’s teachings of Fusion. I may have done a poor job of communicating exactly what I intended, but I’m absolutely sure I didn’t bust on Michael in the process or promote scatalogical study. 🙂

If I read correctly, you were in his fusion class in march, as was I. If you really do have a beef with me, and you’re coming back for the next class, let’s talk it out in a couple weeks, eh? As baba knows, I prefer the Noodle Shop, but I’m open to the venue. 🙂

Be well,
Brian

[asclepius]

I also found her book, Sweat your Prayers, very useful.

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