three main tools

Hello Folks. Everyone’s got great advice about something or another. And, plenty of opinions about a whole lot else. Which is good, this is simply how it is—just take your pick on what to listen to and believe. However, you should really understand that all the variety in this world falls pretty much neatly into place within an integrated model that matches BOTH the wisdom of modern science and society AND the wisdom of ancient cultures and mystical traditions.

If you watched the above video, then you should now understand that everybody, everywhere—across time and land—has a valid piece of the pie. Everyone understands SOME things well and other things not so well. The next step is to pick up on those items you need for your own agenda—what will help you to progress and achieve your goals. As the video explained, there are three levels of experience to contend with:

• Matter (the body; physical things)

• Energy (your heart and mind; other energies like electricity, wind and sound)

• Information (consciousness; spirit; more subtle energies)

The video also explained the optimal tool to fashion your way forward at each of these levels:

• Make practical choices based upon adequate and useful information (material level; ordinary life)

• Cultivate health with energy practices such as qigong (energy level)

• Go deeper and practice meditation, yoga and prayer (information level; fate)

The below three columns summarize the key points and provide links to further details.

Qigong
Exercises

Etheric and Astral Level

Qigong consists of two words: qi (energy) and gong (skill). These exercises promote health by regulating the electrical flows in (etheric) and around (astral) the body.

Because the planets operate at higher levels, it's possible to shield yourself from their negative effects which have to trickle down through the astral and etheric levels to get to your body, heart and mind.

While not a foolproof charm to protect you from any and all cosmic debris, qigong is, nevertheless, the BEST practical remedy on the planet. It’s been used in China for this purpose for thousands of years—and with good success!

Practical
Action

Physical Level

Planets act like guides. At specific times they step to the foreground and work to help you learn valuable lessons about yourself and your path in the world.

The energy that showers upon you must take form and manifest. However, it's up to you what form the energy takes.

If you learn about and emulate the better qualities of your planetary teacher, the power it wields will take shape along the lines of these better qualities. Otherwise, much like Murphy's law, the lessons  will tend to be less helpful.

This IS the place to start your journey to fulfillment, health and any other worthwhile goal you might have. While you don’t need to be a versed Jyotish astrologer to succeed, you do need to be canny and listen to the good advice.

Prayer and Meditation

Mental and Causal Level

The ultimate fix for karma lies deep inside yourself—in the stillness of meditation and prayer. Through consistent practice, you can begin to develop a more focused mind and with it, learn to speak more directly with your spiritual teachers.

In Vedic astrology, the planets operate at the mental and causal levels (much deeper than the other levels mentioned here). Deep meditation can reach these levels.

From here, the great spiritual adepts help us to achieve our fullest potentials. This path requires knowledge (Jyotish) and ability with energy (qigong) and mind (yoga).

the problem

Lord Ganesha, the elephant-headed remover of obstacles, holds a special place in the Hindu pantheon of gods and goddesses. With a pot-belly, multiple arms and adoring mouse for an attendant, he presides over all beginnings and so oversees endless waves of invocations each day from people across India and throughout the world. This day, Ajay, a dignified elderly devotee clambered his way across the temple steps to take his seat in front of Ganesha’s statue. As usual, he began by calling on the lord for protection and then proceeded to meditate. The rich subtropical colors and wafts of sandalwood incense provided a comforting backdrop for practice.

“Focus on his image, focus on his image,” he reminded himself. And as usual, Ajay soon was adrift in his reveries: “His tusks look like curved pencils. Did I make a list for the laundry? Ah, our visit to the zoo. What a time! The lions roared so and I spilled tea on my shirt. But the monkeys—oh my—how they played with us.” From Ganesha to monkey to endless mindscapes across the firmaments: Ajay sat in fine form but his mind did not.

Everyone wants to succeed. In yoga, the outer boroughs of ultimate success—enlightenment—first sway into sight once meditators garner highly focused and stable mental concentration into their everyday experience. However, such a harbinger of real success comes only to a few even though many wish to tread this spiritual path to its heights. Sophisticated meditative approaches such as the yogic traditions of India, China and Tibet clearly map the terrain at the heights of spiritual ascent. But they are recipes that miss the heart of effective complementary medicine, namely feedback. The situation resembles having a doctor across the river shouting instructions to travelers about what to do once they ford the swirling currents. Not much help getting them started and even less help in keeping them on course if they brave the waters with such rickety advice in the first place. 

the fix

In contrast, the tools of modern integrative energy medicine provide much better leverage for the battle with monkey mind. These web pages explain how to harness qigong using acupuncture meridians and microsystems for instantaneous feedback and control of the meditative process. Instead of endlessly wrestling with your mind while trying to control it by willpower, you can learn to adjust the flow of biological energy along meridians and microsystem meridians to achieve a better result in novel time and with ease. The micromeridian meditation detailed here knits together three great streams of yogic practice—Indian, Daoist and Tibetan—and unveils an easier way to link their chakra-, meridian- and space-oriented approaches to higher consciousness.

why the fix works

Advanced yogic practices simply cover more ground than any other technology or human endeavor to date. The chart below contrasts the span of these three yogic paths with Vedic astrology (a traditional Hindu map of higher-level energy systems), traditional eastern medicines (Ayurveda, Traditional Chinese Medicine) and modern western medicines. The left axis increases from matter to energy to information. A higher level (more towards the top of the graph) implies a more complex pattern that can transform or control lower level processes. You are likely familiar with the terms "matter" and "energy" from physics and the popular press. The term "information" is used by mathematicians as an abstraction of these physical ideas. Information represents a more fundamental property of nature. Loosely, it corresponds to the consciousness achieved by very advanced yogis and mystics—a state commonly called enlightenment. 

In broad brush, each yogic tradition focuses more on one spatial—and hence neural—aspect (midline – Indian, meridian – Chinese, space – Tibetan). This means that different areas of the brain will light up for different spiritual practices. Modern neuroscience suggests that whole-brain processes (those that integrate activity in multiple areas of the brain) generally relate to higher-level function. Advanced yogic practices aim to cultivate just this state by linking left-brain processes (sequential; referential) with right-brain processes (spatial; physiological; emotional) to garner whole-brain functioning. The result? Emergent—and quite extraordinary—capabilities such as clairvoyance, psychic healing and a raft of other exceptional abilities as documented in the spiritual literature and now being validated with rigorous scientific research.

This just means that successful yogic practice leads one to foundational levels of energy (information; consciousness) where true healing and happiness can occur. Thus, the best medicine for healing the whole person should make use of all the world's wisdom—modern approaches such as western medicine (for acute conditions), traditional eastern medicines (for most chronic conditions) and body-mind-heart-spirit approaches such as traditional yoga.

neidan yoga — Levels 3 and 4A

Daoist practice consists of three stages: weigong ("outer" qigong), neigong ("inner" qigong) and neidan (meditation which amplifies the results of weigong and neigong and takes them one step further by integrating the individual with the cosmic field). The third and fourth levels of neidan yoga focus primarily on developing neigong skills and then integrating them with Jyotish archetypes of higher energy patterns. So, these two levels of the work lay a foundation for integrating neigong and weigong skills with higher energy patterns. Neidan then picks up the ball and threads these outer and inner qi flows into the cosmic matrix that surrounds and supports us all. In terms of the Daoist model, these levels of neidan yoga include advanced weigong, neigong and the preliminary stages of neidan.

The next stage along the spiritual path broaches the waters between self and Self. An example from Tibetan Buddhist practice is vajra breathing, which entails sending prana up the midline and out of the body to greater and greater spheres; in turn, such energy is culled back to the individual so that a rhythmic flow ensues. Progressively, a resonance between little self and Big Self develops which eventually pulls individual consciousness to a higher plane of existence. In terms of the Jyotish star map, the focus now tracks through the astral and mental lokas (levels) (D-9 chart) to the causal loka (heavens of the devas such as Indra; this loka correlates to the galactic center in Sagittarius) (D-27 chart).

More advanced work (levels 5 and 6 of Neidan yoga) raises the stakes and aims for larger and larger pieces of the cosmic turf (super-galaxies, galaxy filaments, superclusters and quasar groups) all the way up to the Hercules-Corona Borealis Great Wall (currently the largest known cosmic structure within the universe). This work covers insurmountably amazing levels of experience and in the Hindu model relates to the higher lokas of the rishis (advanced sages) and purest devatas. The related Jyotish varga charts include D-40, D-45 and D-60.

The next step, if you want even more, takes a spiritual seeker to the doorstep of Devi, Herself. That is, the universe itself stands as the final ordinary (physical) metaphor for spiritual progress. And, although many spiritual masters posit that "all One" is the end of the road, most likely it is not. That is, we all are simply part of a much greater universal dynamic system. So, becoming part of the One makes sense and has richness beyond compare. However, to think that our little vantage on Devi captures Her whole being and grace is slightly near-sighted, to say the least.

For instance, the cutting edge of modern physics posits our universe as a holographic system of energetic structures, each with the shape of a torus (like a sphere with narrow tube or whirlpool running completely through it). Such a mind-bending vision deftly dispenses with the mystical mumbo-jumbo of “all One” and neatly explains (correctly and mathematically rigorously) “Ultimate Consciousness” as simply being a ground energetic state that is essentially infinitely rich with energy and information but which appears non-existent to ordinary consciousness. To your everyday eye, it just looks, and acts, like empty space.

Lo and behold, this is what the Tibetan Buddhists would call the Dharmakaya—a ground state beyond ordinary description but which can be richly experienced first-hand as a type of fundamental consciousness. Now, Tibetan adepts—and countless other mystics—would say this is the end of the show. However, the science and math (you know, the stuff you should bet on) says there’s more—way more.

Ripley was right: at least in this instance, truth is way stranger than any fiction an imaginative human might craft. Notwithstanding centuries and centuries of religious mandate, philosophic speculation and mystical pronouncement of how it all really is, the implications of this modern integration of quantum-level physics with cosmological-scale physics outstrip even the furthest-flung fantasies of past and current cultures.

Simply put, what you now get to face in the morning as you scramble up out of bed is a multiverse. This beastie used to be speculation but sadly the hard science now says it’s real. Say goodbye to your everyday, familiar universe. It’s just a tiny bubble in an encompassing and much larger universe, which in turn is a part of something even larger. And on and on—rather like: planets together become the solar system; then stars together become the galaxy; then galaxies together become a super-galaxy; and just like this, further on up the ladder until one reaches the universe itself. And yet, this is just the beginning—and not the end—of the adventure.

A multiverse streams across dimensions both at the impossibly small levels of Planck and sub-Planck spheres (way, way smaller than the tiniest particles that make up an atom) to the dreamlike and incredibly gargantuan extremes of cosmology with universes and universes of universes and on and on knitting together ever more embedded systems. In short, “multi” means many, so a multiverse means many universes—as if one isn’t enough!

However, a word to the wise: Throughout all history, humans have modeled nature and judged their model sufficient and complete. It doesn't matter whether the model comes from space ships, savants or simply inspired folks, the best bet would be to take a model—ANY MODEL—with a grain of salt and then just go with the flow. The Daoists say it well, "The Dao that can be named is not the Dao ... Knowing enough to stop when one does not know is perfection."