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In general, is it easier or harder for us to trigger soul-growth through life-lessons as we become physically and energetically healthier, calmer and more centered, and more energetically integrated (by “soul-growth” I mean the literal growth and accumulation of our positive spiritual energies and the resulting expansion of our Third through Seventh energy bodies)?
Hi Stephen,
From your other post about the yin and yang trigrams of the I Ching and this one, it seems that you’ve had some previous experience with Taoist practices. Having a clearer, smoother, more open energetic system through arts such as Ba Gua and Qigong can’t help but aid a meditation practice…..or any aspect of one’s lifestyle for that matter. Now that being said, while gaining a deeper access to the things inside of you with the intent to clear and open them is generally considered a positive endeavor, that doesn’t necessarily make it “easier”. Productive or furthering perhaps, but “easy”? That kind of depends on the stuff you encounter.
I”m speaking about clearing, opening, and finding space, because nowhere in Bruce’s teachings have I ever experienced a focus on consciously “growing” or “expanding” the influence of what you’re referring to as the soul. The act of clearing the blockages inside of oneself so that you’re a more balanced and compassionate person, I have experienced inside of Bruce’s system. There is always an emphasis on stabilizing and integrating the basics (even at advanced levels) of the practices to provide a stable platform on which to build. Until one is completely present in the feet, relaxing the eyes, softening the breath, and capable of adeptly performing the dozens of other elements of simply walking a circle….the questions of a more esoteric nature are considered mere conjecture and not addressed.
I mention this because with all of the fantastic information inside of these practices, I have certainly been guilty of “geeking out” over some intellectual detail or concept that really had no bearing on what was actually beneficial for my practice at the time. It is almost always better to walk 1 one circle than chase one’s mental tail. Feel the feet, relax the eyes, soften the breath…these things never fail to benefit me personally.
Of course, it’s probably a good thing that there’s no way to actually measure how the basic practices affect soul growth. Then we’d all be whippin’ out our souls and seeing whose is bigger! I suppose in the Water Tradition, it’s not about the size of the wave…but the motion of the ocean (sorry…couldn’t resist ; ).
Take Care,
Paul
Is it soul growth or soul gathering?
I’ve read (and this coincides with my limited experience) that what taoist practice does is more like gathering scattered pieces of ‘proto-soul’, making those into one piece more or less concentrated. I understand Paul means roughly the same talking about ‘opening spaces’.
One doesn’t need to grow or accumulate the sun… only clear away the clouds which obscure it.
YES however the process of energetically clearing the 3rd -7th body is usually not so easy. Bruce
I am quite surprised and confused by the responses to my initial posting here regarding the issue of “soul-growth” (i.e. the increase and expansion of our spiritual energies). I am especially confused by the response from Mr. Frantzis showing him to be in agreement with other people’s postings which state that human spiritual development only entails removing the “clouds”, or blockages and impurities, from our conscious view of the “sun,” or various spiritual energies. He, and numerous other Taoist practitioners (such as Mantak Chia and Jou Tsung Hwa), have written that the internal alchemy stage of Taoist meditation involves accumulating and transmuting different levels of energy and, as one example, changing a quantity of negative emotional energy into its positive counterpart (i.e. anger into compassion). Obviously, this process reduces the amount of impurities inside of you, while simultaneously increasing, or growing, the virtues. Also, in Relaxing Into Your Being, Mr. Frantzis discusses the jing/chi/shen/wu/Tao formula by saying, “Spirit, or soul, begins to be formed at the energy levels of the psychic and causal bodies (the fifth and sixth energetic bodies). It grows until it touches emptiness in the causal body and then enters emptiness for additional transformation, until emptiness stabilizes in the body of individuality .” (pg. 58) Then he describes the wu to Tao stage of alchemy in The Great Stillness: “The goal of internal alchemy is to transmute in stages the underlying structural quality of the gemstone into the water of Universal Consciousness itself.” (pg. 202) By gemstone here, he metaphorically means our seventh energy body (the body of individuality) and his words clearly state that a change in our individual “sun” occurs over our journey. Relating to this, many Buddhist adepts have taught me of their belief that, over our journeys, we accumulate more “good-Karma” spiritual power, and that people, even Buddhas, differ in their personal level of such power. On several out-of-body trips (such as those done in the Taoist “fire” tradition), I have met a number of deceased spiritual masters, and one particular Taoist master at the “one with the Tao” stage has related to me that there is “always, always, always, expansion.” This master also specifically stated that he has continued to grow and expand his spiritual energeis even after reaching “one with the Tao.” He says there is always more that can be done, even long after one has become fully awake to the “sun”-level of energy which we call the Tao. I realize tfull well that in Mr. Frantzis’ tradition, we students are currently only engaged in the pre-alchemy levels of energy work, but we are all offered numerous opportunities to do the equivalent of Taoist internal alchemy via our everyday life-challenges, even though, as the deceased master just described has made clear to me, it is generally “a very long, slow, drawn-out process” when done through these life-lessons. These different masters have also communicated to me during sessions with a very competent, genuine, and professional spiritual medium (Shelley Duffy of Las Vegas, Nevada). Their insight into the process of spiritual evolution has been considerable and extremely helpful to me.
Dan Hussey
Well if you are at the internal alchemy stage of meditation you are beyond my being able to offer any practical advice.
If you are not at that stage I might suggest you are getting ahead of yourself. Trying to ‘push the river’ as they say.
Trying to understand these things on the intellectual level alone can potentially, I am told, hamper ones practical work on clearing out the blockages that keep one from experiencing and working with them directly.
Paul has already touched on that and Bruce explains it very well in all his material, it seems to me.
Just two cents from me; someone at a very beginner level… just moving from crawling to learning how walk, and not ready to take on running… let alone marathons…
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