The teacher is there, but it is helpful to understand a few things.
"A practice without concept evolves blindly, but concepts without practice are sterile"
(A. Einstein)
You should see several things:
- The phenomena
- The levels of consciousness
- The stages of evolution
- The qualities that are developed
During training, it is possible to experience phenomenas, more or less intense, who have no importance, but that are real.
You feeling this or that, in the context of practice is always true, well if you feel it more than you imagine it ... but it does not matter.
In the context of the evolution on the Way, the student will pass stages, change of level of consciousness, evolve towards a greater sensitivity to the reality but also feel for some time, another reality.
What you can perceive is analyzed in terms of your understanding, of your progress within the principles of evolution; indeed, it is only possible to understand with our mental tools of the moment.
The qualities that are developed will integrate within these perceptions with the present level of awareness.
These are different levels, different abilities, and a different work to evolve within each concept.
Phenomena:
In acquiring more energy, we can be subject to "flashes" of reality that shock or awaken. The body being involved in this part of the training can send us new or old sensations at the level of perception.
All of this is real, since you can feel it, but do not get too attached to it.
Commenting them, dissecting them or speculating from these phenomena, is a waste of time, but also the mental's way of appropriating your experience.
It is very useful to share it with your teacher to keep him informed without expecting any return from it.
At all levels of practice, it is possible to delude oneself.
Levels of consciousness:
From the first day of practice to the last, you can have a taste of the Dao.
It is possible, without practice, to perceive the infinite as it is possible to practice constantly while remaining in the fog of his mind.
In everyday life, we identify three basic levels of consciousness: waking, dream and deep sleep.
In the context of practice, we discuss nine states in all, three by baseline levels.
Indeed, in the waking state, it is an understatement to say that we are not always present, we often wander in states of more or less sticky unconsciousness.
We are talking, in the waking state, of the presence, of the normal unconsciousness and deep unconsciousness.
In the dream state, we have lucid dreaming, directed dreams and unconscious dreams.
But these incursions into the land of conscience are not stable, they are moments that come and go without knowing why.
These small moments of clarity can help us see what we are striving for, what we are seeking.
This is useful for research, but it is not the research itself.
The practice enables us to install this state of consciousness and turn it into a normality.
In addition, this perception of reality will only be able to be understand and interpreted according to one's personal development.
Stages of evolution:
This is not a way to judge but to a way to understand: it's like the child who progresses to the language, it is not that it is "good", it's just an evolution.
Unlike levels of consciousness that may come and go, be unstable and changing, stages of evolution are permanent: the child who has access to language can not go back.
It is only possible to go forward and when a stage is reached, it becomes unforgettable, acquired.
We always practice in a quest for self-understanding. In this work, we will go toward the knowledge of the other. With looking at oneself and the other, we will perceive differently the changes of the world.
The three stages of development go from oneself, one to another, the idea to better understand the changes in the world.
We go from the one (us) to the two (the other) and then to the world (everything else).
道 生 一, 一生 二, 二 生 三, 三生 万物
"The Dao produces one, one gives two, two gives the three and from the three the 10,000 things."
Laozi, chap. 42
In practice we speak of nine stages, three by baseline levels.
The stages of developments allow a different interpretation of the same elements.
The "Taoist principles" have both: levels of consciousness and stages of development.
The developed qualities:
Whatever the addressed discipline, and because people do not have the same education, the same facilities and the same experience, each one of us will practice with its strengths and weaknesses.
The idea here is simple: for the Way to be right, it must be balanced.
We must go into the aspects of the Way that we like and into those that emphasize our weaknesses.
The three basic qualities are the body, energy and spirit. We must go to qigong, neidan (internal alchemy) and Shen Gong (meditation) to cover all aspects of our being.
For the body, we work on the physical structure (force), the relation to oneself in space (rooting) and the exchange between the body and the world (relaxation).
For interior alchemy we practice the three stages described in the instruction.
The Shengong has also three levels.
The question is not to work harder, but to divide our time between the three levels of practice: body, energy and spirit.
There you are for a more detailed understanding of our development in the Way, a dissection of little use to practice, but so satisfying to our minds.
