Top secret elite mystical ninja masters

Personally, I am more drawn to paths that lay most of the details out up front for me. Fuck this inner secrets shit, it’s for geeks. Even if I need a teacher for minor or even major guidance in applying the techniques, give me a thumbnail sketch of what I am getting into. I am too hip on cults to sign up for something without a sense of what it’s about. I can fully accept a layer of secretiveness. Particularly as an effort to maintain the sacredness of particular teachings, rituals, etc. or to protect the group from opression, say, if there are techniques involving fun illicit drugs, yogic sex with porn stars, clowns, midgets … :)

I am also not a fan of the “it’s secret so you don’t hurt yourself” card. I assume a certain almost magical quality to naive sincerity. Even a worthless technique done in the right spirit is better than the perfect method done for the wrong reasons. Hurting oneself is an act of ignorance, of unconsciousness. And we are already doing this in every moment! Ask the Buddhists, they will tell you. But it’s this thread of nearly foolish sincerity that guides us IMO. It’s a very personal thing. My Taoist teacher Liu Ming tells me human beings can not even consciously kill themselves. Taoists believe suicide is a case of unresolved ancestral qi. In effect, an enraged demonic ancestor killing you with your own hands. Whoah. But to find a place of sincerity, where you consciously want to become a more evolved being, or even just want to have more fun, genuinely, to get in touch with the tiniest sliver of intuition, and follow this thread of bliss, even if there is a big pile of karmic crud on top of it, well I believe this is the whole path. It’s when picking a flower for your lover is as powerful a qigong as flying to China and meeting a new super advanced teacher.

It’s so simple. We can have a blast concocting elaborate rituals, learning to shoot qi balls, flying … it could all even be part of our evolution. And Still there Is Silence the whole Way. Debating over a hierarchy of spiritual advancement is bizarre. There is no hierarchy. Evolution and progress are a function of time. What is Timeless? Nothing. Silence. And there is literally Nothing but Now. That’s it. Now you are reading this. So this is That. Maybe you will be cooking later. That will be It. Completely and totally It. Maybe you will be in China with an extraordinary human being. That will be It. Up and down, moods change, your memories shift, round and round. What remains still? Can you see?

Honestly I only catch a glimpse myself. :p But how it feels! It’s surely Truth.

I am aware that traditionally the Chinese sages were highly secretive. So it’s possible that taking Taoism “all the way” requires a deeper embrace of this feature of the path. I’ll stay a bum as long as I can though. Really many paths from all culture’s including the West have been traditionally structured in a way many today would consider shockingly secretive, exclusive and elitist. For all number of reasons, good and bad. I think it’s intriguing to meet people who are completely sold that their gurus and sifus are the cream of the crop. It’s always the same too. No one is left like them. They are the only authentic teacher in the tradition left. There are only two enlightened beings left on the planet, and their teacher is one of them. Honestly, I would be curious to meet these fellows and their teachers. But I can never shake feeling they are projecting a decent amount of their own love outward as more objective features of the world than they really are. When you have powerful experiences with someone it can be like that though. For example, I can say with certainty that having sex with my girlfriend Lezlie is way way more high level than with ordinary women. She has many secret powers I have never seen demonstrated before. Only read about in books of legends. I consider it very unfortunate that none of you, my poor readership, will ever be enlightened in this secret and powerful qigong, but it’s an elite path reserved for only one man. hhhaah… LOL! :)

So anyway, my Taoist teacher Liu Ming is the best. Cream of the crop I tell ya. He teaches zuowang, “sitting in forgetfullness”, an emptiness meditation basically indistinguishable from zazen. Later I believe he introduces alchemical meditations, but in a similar spirit that he teaches cooking clases and Taoist astrology; useful details to enrich the core process of embracing the ordinary that is engaged through zuowang. Honestly, does it need to be fundamentally more complex than this? Is there really so much more room for “irony and missteps” intrinsic to so-called “spiritual practice” than that which is inherent in any moment in life?