Steven > Recent Status Updates

I skipped a couple of the beginning sections because they were already thoroughly explained by my teacher when I received the Guhyasamaja teachings. So far, what Tsongkhapa has to say about the generation stage is generally reflected by the commentarial traditions that came after him. He was an extremely eloquent and precise scholar, truly an emanation of Mañjushri in the Kaliyuga

Humans are terrible actually #justiceforthegreatauk

Seems incredibly depressing, I can't wait!

It's fascinating that I can find next to nothing about this grimoire online. I can only conclude that this is one of the more obscure occult texts to ever exist, especially since a physical copy costs a small fortune. But the prose is wonderful and the grimoire itself presents a very complicated and refined system of magick.

It's taking me a little while to plow through this book because there is SO much information. It's almost like every page is a new exercise, which is wonderful, but I now find myself wanting to try everything before moving forward lol.

We're making our way through the finer points of Daoist posture training. Your anus is a vacuum (for energy)!

Breath work, sounding, sexual vampirism, oh my!

Having done Buddhist breath practices in the path, I can already tell that these qigong breath exercises are extremely, extremely powerful. My guru says that qigong practice will be immensely beneficial to my anuttarayoga practices, so I can't wait to give some of these a try! Another thing that I'm realizing is that I have to develop my lower dantian, which admittedly I have neglected for a while.

Daoist external alchemy is crazy! There's a reason that you should not eat mercury and that reason is that you will die

My first impression of this book is that it's incredibly detailed. Each page is double-columned with 10-point font, kind of like the Bible. I'm 77 pages in and I just got through the mostly introductory stuff. Can't wait to get to actual technique

I will say that the lack of sources and citations in this book is mildly concerning, but everything in this book basically corresponds to what I know about Daoism already, so I have no reason to believe that the information is bad

"The ancient Chinese described the birth transition as 'a ripe melon falling off the stem,' noting that the fetus breaks out of its amniotic sac and emerges head first towards the earth and with its feet towards the heavens."

Now that I'm past the introduction, we're getting into some intensely interesting material that is really validating what I've observed from my Buddhist practice. The parallels are undeniable--Daoism and Buddhism obviously share an ontological foundation (albeit with different terminology). If they didn't, then the historical syncretism between the two religions simply wouldn't exist.

I'm sort of trying to speed read through this book because it's very long. It's interesting stuff but I'm looking forward to getting into some of the actual magical material of Daoism. An understanding of TCM is foundational to those practices though, so here we are reading through this textbook