Can you help me out with your opinion?

Just send a short one line email to me at

bill@meditationexpert.com

and in the subject line
write “RED” or “BLUE”
to select the cover you’d prefer
for the new Hercules book.

It’s the cover that would tempt you to buy.

Thanks for your opinion,

Bill

The Little Book of Hercules: The Physical Aspects of the Spiritual Path

Using the Greek story of the Twelve Labors of Hercules, which outlines the progressive stages of spiritual development all advanced spiritual practitioners go through, this book presents full details on the step-by-step progression of the physical transformations that occur to practitioners in all spiritual traditions.

Whenever someone starts to consistently meditate or cultivate spiritual practice in a devoted way, there are physical changes that will occur to the human body. These physical transformations, called “gong-fu” in the eastern spiritual schools, are non-denominational signposts of spiritual progress. If you cultivate spiritual practice sufficiently then these phenomena will arise. If you don’t practice sufficiently or practice incorrectly, they simply won’t appear. Their appearance is a matter of proper devoted effort.

These phenomena include such things as the awakening of kundalini (yang chi) within the body, the opening of the chakras and purification of the body’s energy channels, hormonal transformations, the calming of consciousness and experience of refined mental states described as “emptiness,” and various other mental and physical phenomena.

Normally people think these phenomena, which occur because the mind starts to purify due to spiritual practice, only occur to individuals following eastern cultivations traditions such as yoga, Buddhism, Hinduism, Shintoism, Taoism, Vajrayana and Confucianism. However, these purification phenomena that arise are totally non-sectarian and non-denominational. They equally occur to devoted spiritual followers within Judaism, Islam, Christianity and pagan cultivation traditions as well. If you cultivate spiritual practices sufficiently, these purification transformations will occur and if you don’t cultivate meditation or other spiritual exercises, you will not experience them but can only read about them. Your religion has nothing to do with it.

All genuine spiritual schools and religious traditions employ a variety of cultivation practices, or meditation methods, which are designed to help you achieve a quiet mind. Because thoughts die down from practicing these spiritual techniques, this resulting mental quiet is described as peacefulness, silence, cessation, calming, stopping, purity, emptiness, empty mind and so forth. Your mind empties of loud, busy thoughts and so you begin to experience mental peace.

When your mind quiets, proper spiritual practice requires that you remain aware during this experience rather than try to suppress thoughts from further arising. That practice of maintaining awareness during a quiet state is called witnessing, observing, contemplating, knowing, or introspection. As the mind quiets, you continue to watch the mental scenarios of the mind but without attaching to them.

Because the gradual calming of your mind means you are successfully letting go of thoughts, and because your body’s life force (chi) and consciousness (thoughts) are linked, as you let go of thought attachments you are also dropping the habit of attaching to the chi energies you normally feel within your body. Normally you are pushing your body’s life force energies around all the time, but with proper spiritual practice you learn to let go of these energies. You learn how to let them function without interference, which is what happens in a perfectly healthy body. Once you learn how to truly let go of thoughts that arise in your mind, with nothing pulling your chi this way or that way anymore then your kundalini energies will awaken and their natural circulation will start to purify your body.

When those energies finally arise, they will open up your chi channels and chakras naturally. There is nothing you need to do to prompt this other than cultivate an empty, non-clinging mind. Your outer physical body, due to the energies resultantly arising, will experience the transformational phenomena called spiritual “gong-fu.” Your chi will also purify, and thus so will your emotions and habit energies because of the body-mind connection. As you progressively let go of clinging to your chi, it will revert to its natural circulation which the way it is supposed to flow in a perfectly healthy individual before errant thought patterns warp its pathways.

These arising energies produce all sorts of physical phenomena described in religions and your mind will begin to experience all sorts of purified states as well. Cultivating a quiet mind leads to your chi arising, your chi arising leads to the purification of your chi, channels and chakras, that purification leads to a greater degree of mental purity or emptiness, and the two components of body and mind reach ever increasing levels of refinement. Eventually, from spiritual cultivation a practitioner can lay a strong foundation for achieving samadhi and then self-realization, or enlightenment, from their efforts at letting go.

Using the events within the Greek story of the Twelve Labors of Hercules, which outlines the stages of spiritual gong-fu all spiritual practitioners go through, this book presents full details on the step-by-step progression of these physical transformations as they occur to practitioners from all spiritual traditions. It covers the meditation practices that successful spiritual adepts have traditionally followed throughout history, and non-denominationally links the gong-fu experiences of these practitioners with the stages of the spiritual path.

The final edits are being done on the Little Book of Hercules. Though primarily a book on spiritual gong-fu (information on chakras and the channels and other physical changes that happen to the outer and subtle bodies when you meditate) that links Taoism with Tibetan Buddhism, tantric yoga, Old Testament descriptions of spiritual gong-fu and so on, I’ve tried to put in Conscisouness-Only teachings as well from Buddhism, Vedanta, and so forth. I just finished up this section and thought it might be helpful to your practice, so I’m sending it as an email and posting it on the blog:

Aside from the prerequisites of practicing virtuous ways, desiring spiritual progress and practicing spiritual cultivation to a sufficient degree, you really need the “right view” if you want to succeed in great awakening. It is safe to really throw yourself into cultivating the body only after attaining the right view of realizing that your true mind is ultimately empty, that you are not the physical body, and there is no such thing as an inherently existing person.

Your natural mind is empty and yet things appear in it. Despite these appearances, the fundamental, absolute, foundational essence of this ordinary mind is empty or pure in a way that transcends just an ordinary absence of thought. We say that the essence of consciousness is in some way empty, but that emptiness isn’t the same as the emptiness of space which has limits or borders. One might assume that it is a sort of non-existence of ordinary phenomena, but can we call it a non-existence when it somehow gives birth to appearances? Appearances arise within it.

The fact that something seems to arise (within the mind) and be there is what we call existence. On one hand you have this emptiness (non-existence), and on the other hand you have appearance (or existence). You also have the logical fact that what appears in the mind must be of the same nature as the mind.

As to the awareness or knowing that arises from the mind, this must be the function of the mind’s underlying essence, whatever that essence is. If you think about it, what appears in the mind (thoughts, sensations, images, etc.) must also be one with its nature or essence. The manifestations of the mind are part of the mind, so they cannot be anything other than one with its nature. So the appearances of interdependent origination in the mind’s empty true nature must be a unity. There must be an interdependence of inherent emptiness and dependent origination. In other words, the contents of the mind must be of the same nature as the underlying essence of the mind. This is why we say that emptiness and interdependent origination (all of existence, which is what we call “appearance” or the universe or “mind and matter” or the realm of cause and effect) must therefore be the same.

Unfortunately, you have to cultivate, cultivate, cultivate to get to the absolute base of the mind and verify this for yourself with direct experiential insight. It is not something you make up, not some dogma you adopt because of the creed of religion or teachings from various sages, but Truth you must awaken to through direct realization. You actually find the substrate of your True Self that is the essence of all mind and matter, all sentient beings and the universe.

Through spiritual cultivation you can discover that mind is ultimately experienced as a great original wakefulness without borders, without center, timeless and spaceless, that is intrinsically pure … like a mass of pure awareness that is free of names and forms. It is primordially empty and free, self-existing and complete in itself, and has always been present within yourself from the beginning. This is the basis of your mind and the five senses. It is self-luminous unbroken awareness that transcends the phenomena of birth and death that appear within it. It is an entirely one and unbroken state that encompasses all consciousness.

What supports it is the Supreme state of silence, stillness and purity, or True Self, that is unreachable by mind. It is not perceptible because it makes perception possible. Mind is one of its functions. What you are is beyond the mind and its contents, beyond being and non-being.

You are always that pure, eternal, equanimous, non-dual empty universal awareness (in terms of functioning) experiencing various transforming appearances, but you have to finally attain one of the degrees of self-realization, or bhumis, to realize this and the Source of the mind. To do so you must transcend the knot between the pure consciousness of undifferentiated being and the physical body, which is the ego or “I-thought,” by diving into the source from whence the I-thought arises to find the True Self. For complete enlightenment, that realization must be perfect and complete without stain.

Shakyamuni Buddha explained that ignorance stands in the way of this realization – we are ignorantly clinging to the contents of the mind, to consciousness, and hence cannot find its origins. Because of deep seated habits from infinite past lives (of the transformations of consciousness) you’re clinging to the body and mind all the time. If you cultivate you can start to achieve an independence of mental functioning which does not attach to the body because that attachment is just a habit. Eventually you can detach from consciousness itself to recognize its ultimate source.

Through proper meditation practice you will eventually achieve a degree of mental clarity and purity that enables this because your chi and consciousness will become pure, and you will reach a degree of mental stability because your channels clear and the chi flow through them becomes smooth. With this as a foundational basis, you might finally be able to “see the Tao” and understand the dharma like finally being able to see to the bottom of a lake because the ripples on its surface have all calmed. Or, you might cultivate peaceful samadhi states instead (that are manifestations of the mind) and still miss realizing the Tao, which means discovering its source. To see the Tao and realize these things is called prajna wisdom.

So even without any dharma teachings whatsoever, if your mind becomes clear, pure and calm you might see the Tao and self-awaken. This has happened to countless self-enlightened ones in the past, which is why great spiritual teachers have arisen from time to time and founded new traditions for people to help them attain the path. Self-realization is possible because the Tao is always there and salvation, or liberation, does not come from a creed or dogma. It comes from discovering your true self, what you really, foundationally are. It is not an artificial dogma or man-made creation you adopt because of belief but something you realize through direct experience. The Tao is not a creation, dogma, religious construction or artificial teaching. It is the underlying Absolute Nature. This is what you awaken to because this is what you are, this is your true nature or fundamental face.

Many people have independently awakened throughout history, although the Stage of Study and Virtue Accumulation certainly helps people awaken who desire to cultivate, and having a teacher who knows the path is extremely helpful. But such men and women who have awakened are exceedingly rare. Awakening is not an artificial dogma but a self-realization as to what you ultimately are, what is truly your Real Self or original nature. Religion is not necessary for this awakening, although religion is supposed to preserve and disseminate the methods for people to cultivate and awaken to their True Self, or “God,” and to help them along this road. Is your religion doing this for you?

After you awaken all sorts of miraculous abilities can arise because you have realized the source of all existence and are one with the base of all minds, all existence, all matter, all functioning. Sages assure us that you free yourself from pain and suffering, and all sorts of troubles come to rest because the true nature of the Self is peace. Buddhism speaks of this in detail though countless other sages from other religions mention this as well. They just substitute the word “God” or “Brahman” or “Allah” etc. for dharmakaya, Buddhanature, dharmadhatu, absolute nature, fundamental nature, True Self, Reality and so on. As to how the body came about and how ignorance first arose in this endless universe, or as to information on all sorts of miraculous abilities of the body and mind, you’ll have to go to these sources for those discussions.

If you don’t first “see the Tao” so that you can understand these matters and what the spiritual path is all about, you will almost always go astray in the form schools of Vajrayana, Taoism, tantric yoga, western alchemy and so forth, as they stress the physical body in cultivation. You’ll continue to take the body as something real or you. Even to say you are “bodyless mind” is partially incorrect because in using the term “mind” this refers to function rather than substance or essence. Awareness is just its function. We say we have a mind because we have awareness, which is the function, for without it there would just be inert matter or emptiness. Yet there is awareness or knowing and miraculous existence, so one must come to understand the base of that functioning by discovering the Source. You cannot perceive that base because it is what makes perception possible. You can only be it. It is beyond being and non-being, existence and the absence of existence.

My words here are only to help get you started in the right direction. People don’t make progress in cultivation because they never attain the right view, and are always holding on to other notions that actually inhibit their cultivation progress. They pursue superpowers and all sorts of other things other than to look for the base, the absolute nature, the foundational state, the Truth, the Self, the Buddhanature from which we have mind, consciousness and awareness. How to find it? The practice words for the path are, “Let go, let go” while continuing to let consciousness shine without restriction. You are always experiencing It.

To attain perfect enlightenment you must achieve three things: complete realization of the dharmakaya, sambhogakaya and nirmanakaya, rather than just the dharmakaya alone. This trio corresponds to the mind, body and behavior. The nirmanakaya, for instance, entails the ability to skillfully project images or thoughts to any realm of consciousness, meaning even to what we call individual consciousnesses because they are all part of the one body of consciousness. It is proper to start cultivating the other two “bodies” of the sambhogakaya and nirmanakaya, after you realize what the Tao is, by mentally experiencing the truth of emptiness for yourself. That’s the approach of Zen which stresses that you must work hard and first realize the Tao.