We are getting near one of those important junctures in the market — QE2, the stimulus plan of the Federal government, will end in June. Cycles show that the market may turn in May in anticipation of this drop off of easy credit and low interest rates.

On top of this, the “Dogs of the Dow” strategy has an interesting cyclical profile, and Japanese stocks (EWJ) do too. Look for a contrarian low point in a few months.

Where can you find all these projections so you can make money or save money, specifically the value of your 401K? Just for this month only I’ve made my Dow forecast newsletter available for free. You can download it at

MarketTimingResearch.com/bonus/DJIA-March-April-2011.pdf

The multiple reactor problems in Japan after the tsunami – the risk of a meltdown
and contaminants spreading everywhere – have prompted me to write. I once wrote a
book, “Help Support Your Body’s Healing After Intense Radioactive or Radiation
Exposure” for exactly this and other radiation type emergencies. It’s totally free,
I’ve never made any money off it, and is designed to review the information about
what people have done after severe radiation exposure or exposure to radioactive
contaminants. Basically, they go on special diets heavy in sea vegetables to bind
any contaminants they ingest.

The book is at http://www.meditationexpert.com/RadiationDetoxDraft.pdf .

You canreadthe whole story behind it at:

MeditationResearch.com/RadiationDetox/

Why this book? What’s in it?

It occured to me that in case of a nuclear power plant problem (which seems to
happen every few years), or dirty bomb or nuclear war or anything else, people
should know what to do to protect themselves after something happens. The countries
of the world spend hundreds of millions of dollars on nuclear weapons and deterrence every year, and have giant organizations organizd around these issues, but spend virtually nothing on research as to what the population should do if they are
exposed to these things. Strange with all the money available and size of personnel
involved in the overall apparatus.

There’s nothing substantial out there except the normal “take potassium iodide”
information. Nothing, zippo, nada except stuff like “stay away from the windows” and “stay indoors and keep the house sealed as much as possible. Drink bottled water, stay away from milk and garden produce.” What about exposure?

It’s sort of an oversight to spend this gargantuan amount of money on everything except what you need to know just in case all this stuff happens, which they spend millions to prevent, so I took it upon myself to make an offering by taking a few years to collect any and all public information I could find on what to do for most types of radiation exposures and put it together in a book for humanity. I’m a nobody in the world but there it is. Send it to who needs it. It’s best if you download it and send it because every time this happens the server breaks down because of bandwidth usage from so many downloads. So download it and send it yourself in your own email, and preserve my bandwidth so someone else who needs it can get the information.

Everyone knows that the government will tell them to take potassium iodide in the
case of a nuclear plant emergency, so I didn’t need to cover that. But what did
people exactly do in a case of a Chernobyl or Nagasaki?

Here are some tidbits from the book, which I never bothered to clean up and make
pretty …

At the time of the atomic bombing of Japan, Tatsuichiro Akizuki, M.D. was Director
of the Department of Internal Medicine at St. Francis’s Hospital in Nagasaki and fed
his staff and patients a strict diet of brown rice, miso and tamari soy soup,
wakame, kombu and other seaweed, Hokkaido pumpkin, and sea salt and prohibited the
consumption of sugar and sweets. Sugars and sweets were forbidden because they
suppress the immune system! Because of this diet — which was rich in sea vegetables
– he saved everyone in his hospital while many other survivors perished from the
radiation sickness. (Tatsuichiro Akuziki, M.D. Nagasaki 1945, London Quarter books,
1981).

So after the Nagasaki bombing, people who ate a strict macrobiotic diet — including
brown rice and miso soup with sea vegetables — did not suffer from radiation
poisoning even though they were within a mile of the explosion. The high iodine
content of their diet may have been extremely helpful on this account because if
proper amounts of natural “healthy” iodine already exist in the thyroid gland, then
it cannot absorb any other forms of iodine, such as the radioactive iodine
contaminant.

Also,…

In 1968 a group of Canadian researchers at McGill University of Montreal, headed by
Dr. Stanley Skoryna, studied the question as to whether seaweed could help rid the
body of radioactive toxins (Skoryna S.C. et al, “Intestinal Absorption of
Radioactive Strontium,” Canadian Medical Association Journal 191: 285-88, 1964). Dr.
Skoryna and his team were trying to devise a method to counteract the effects of
nuclear fallout and reported that sodium alginate from brown algae “permitted
calcium to be normally absorbed through the intestinal wall while binding most of
the strontium. The sodium alginate and strontium was subsequently excreted from the
body. The experiments were designed to devise a method to counteract the effects of
nuclear fallout and radiation.”

The key finding of this study was identifying that sea vegetables contained a
polysaccharide substance — called sodium alginate which is present in large
quantities in brown algae such as Laminarae (kelp), Fucus (bladderwrack) and
Ascophyllum (fertilizer seaweed) — that selectively bound radioactive strontium and
eliminated it from the body.

It turns out that in case after case, researchers ended up using heavy metal
chelators and sea vegetables, like kelp or algae, to bind the heavy radioactive
contaminants people ingested, and kept people on diets that did not suppress their
immune systems to see protection and recovery. An important function of the sea
vegetables in helping our bodies fight radiation poisoning is the fact that they
contain Iodine-127 which will be absorbed by our thyroid and thus prevent the uptake
of radioactive, toxic Iodine-131.

What is the best chelator for the heavy radioactive contaminants? Some will say
kelp, some chlorella, some spirulina and some will say “Modifilan” because of its
multiple benefits (Modifilan is the one I like best). In any case, you can read the
book. It’s nothing special except information you need to know in cases like this. I
simply wrote it as an offering therefore I have to write to let you know it’s there
and you can send it to those who are worried or might need the info.

I once wrote a long piece on karma and relationships.

For the past several thousands of years, couples needed one another to survive in an agrarian society. That helped cement the marriage bond between partners who had a life expectancy of 40-years old …

Not anymore. Women can get decent jobs all on their own, which is great. That means they can leave a bad relationship any time they want, too, which is also a bonus.

Society no longer pushes people to stay together.

Television paints a picture of fun, fun, fun and beer-commercial-heaven which a relationship is not, so expectations are large and people have no patience anymore.

We could write gobs on this, but I found a nice article in the Huffington Post by someone who looked hard at what’s wrong from the woman’s side. The man’s side has issues as well, of course.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tracy-mcmillan/why-youre-not-married_b_822088.html

We love intorducing quality information to people, especially when it comes to finances. Over this next 4-5 years real estate is not going to recover. The 25 million jobs the US gave away to China and other emerging markets are not coming back to these shores either. An entire generation of jobs was given away.

Those jobs are gone thanks to our free trade agreements and globalization and the internet, and they are not coming back no matter how much money the US government spends. We could spend billions and you will not see a single new job come back or created. We have to manufacture things to create jobs. This means that high levels of unemployment are to be expected going forward and this will become clear over the next 4 years. Unemployment is now structural and permanent.

So what do you do to make money? What do you do after QE2 runs out?

John Thomas, one of the founders of the international hedge fund industry, one of today’s top performing hedge fund managers, and 40 year veteran of the financial markets, recently provided his forecast of Six major moves for 2011 that can make you rich or miserable. John recently showed smart investors how to make 17% in his December private coaching portfolio, and has been up over 25% for 2011 so far. Hundreds of hedge funds consult him, and now you know why.

John worked for the Economist, and is consulted by the CIA and heads of state for his macro global “big picture” investment advice which he reveals in this FREE video that we thought you should see. The information has President Obama and Ben Bernanke sweating bullets at night if the trends come true, which is happening right now …

Click here to Watch his forecast video of why inflation and commodities and your cost of living is going to jump …

http://bit.ly/hs1czx

In a just released FREE video, John reveals why at this moment we are sitting in the greatest macro, i.e. “big picture,” trading environment of our lifetimes. The rule is that “Crisis = Opportunity,” and the US is in a severe unemployment, real estate, budget deficit, trade balance, inflation and debt crisis as is the rest of the world. In this short video, he lays out a dizzying array of profit opportunities and the risks you need to sidestep if you want to make 2011 your best financial year ever.

This is one of the few times that one of the financial elite has taken the small guy investor under his wing and spoken frankly to reveal exactly how the big “macro players,” such as George Soros, Jimmy Rogers and Paul Tudor Jones, think and trade. This class of super investors are not government mouth pieces but put their own money at risk, and try to profit from mega world trends which John is revealing but which you will not hear analyzed on television. You can sometimes mirror their activities and capture the same trades in your IRA accounts through easy to trade ETFs, options and stock investments.

Click here to Watch his 2011 market forecast video now …

http://bit.ly/fPcIBE

This is a 100% FREE video briefing revealing the risks and opportunities barreling down on traders (AND your bank account) in the next 12 months. It’s very timely and explains what you should think about for the year ahead. This just-released 2011 market forecast video will either make you wealthy if you catch these trends … or miserable if you don’t. You can either be on the right side of these market moves that the hedge fund managers will be going after, or on the wrong side of the market and weeping once again.

We suggest you watch the videos in sequence or you can check out Macro Millionaire Coaching.

Many folks have asked me, because I used to work in Wall Street doing similar things, about the Macro Millionaire Coaching Program offered by Mad  Hedge Fund Trader John Thomas. I give it two thumbs up. In fact his track record in December through January, as I write this, is up over 25% on a portfolio already. This is outstanding. It’s one reason why I recommended him for folks to look at.

But that is not the main reason why I introduced him to blog readers…it was because of quality. Rememeber I try to tell you thinks others are not telling you — how the world really works — and so this is a voice of reason. I once told you about the recession we were in far before the governemnt had to admit it, and now I will tell you we are not out of it. What looks like “being out” is just a paper balloon that will suddenly pop and send us down worse than before sometime later this year.

You have to listen to what John Thomas says about the future trends of the US economy, interest rates, jobs and real estate. Bernanke is probably not sleeping at night because of these worries … basically jobs are not coming back without manufacturing returning, as I tell you over and over again. Obama just admitted as much on TV. But “rah, rah the US is great and we will overcome the challenge”, as he likes to say in speeches,  will not do anything.  In fact, I have a book coming out later on exactly what the US needs to do to prevent standards of living from falling and becoming more like a Third World country over the next 8-10 years, which WILL HAPPEN.

In any case, John Thomas, the Macro Millionaire expert of global macro hedge fund trading trends, has just released a new video you might want to watch: Six Major Trends for 2011 That Will Make You Rich or Miserable

If you are interested in the Macro Millionaire Coaching Program, click on this link to find out more information here including his track record, experience qualifications, world views, how to trade like a hedge fund, and so forth:

 ==> Macro Millionaire Coaching Program

Most of all, educate yourself, and have your friends watch this. Clip the link, send and have them learn. More jobs will be lost over the next five years, not gained. Real estate will continue to fall, just as I said. When interest rates finally rise, which MUST happen, the economy will tank. Inflation will rise in the meantime. And …

On and on it will go. This happens once every 60-some years, but this time what was supposed to happen in 1987 was inflated away, and because of that piling on of monetary expansion and inflation over twenty years, the final deflation of asset prices will be severe.

I expect a bottom in either 2012 or late 2014/early 2015 (not later) so watch the videos and start learning how to think like a hedge fund manager rather than an empty talking head on television. With John Thomas you have a chance to get rich in 2011 or be miserable. Funny title, but a little true. The right trend always makes money and the unexpected bear that hits the public always empties wallets and IRA funds and so forth. Hopefully this info will help.

Hercules is Coming

Very soon the new book on Hercules is coming for the final chapters are being completed. I am sure this new book will rock the market because the contents include some of the firsts of their kind in print, especially about certain stages of Taoist cultivation, Tibetan Vajrayana, Biblical Jewish cultivation, Egyptian cultivation schools, the Indian Nath yoga tradition and so on which have never been disclosed. Secrets, BIG secrets until now …

Basically, here’s what you need to know about the path of spiritual cultivation that comes through in the book, which is a good synopsis of the path in general. You should already know this, but I have collapsed it down to simplicity, just as in the Hercules book.

All genuine religions, spiritual schools and traditions employ a variety of cultivation practices, or meditation methods, which are designed to help you achieve a quiet mind. This is the basic beginner’s spiritual path so a lot of spiritual practices help you do this. Because thoughts die down from practicing these techniques, this resulting mental quiet or silence is called peacefulness, cessation, calming, stopping, purity, emptiness, empty mind or any number of other pertinent synonyms. Your mind empties of loud, busy thoughts and so you experience peace.

When the mind quiets, proper spiritual practice is that you must remain aware (rather than try to suppress thoughts from arising) and that awareness practice is called witnessing, observing, contemplating, knowing, prajna, introspection, awareness and so on. As the mind quiets, you continue to watch the mental scenarios of the mind but without attaching to them. This is cessation-witnessing practice, also known as mindfulness, rememberance or “vipassana.” The two principles of cessation and witnessing are inherent in all spiritual practices. ALL spiritual practices. The important thing is that you learn how to let go of thoughts, called detachment, in order that wandering thoughts (the monkey mind) dies down so that the stage of cessation finally arrives. That’s why you practice meditation.

Because the gradual calming of your mind means you are letting go of thoughts (which is why they are able to die down in the first place), and because chi and consciousness (thoughts) are linked, as you let go of thought attachments you are also letting go of clinging to the chi in your body. Normally you’re pushing your chi around all the time, especially in your head, but with meditation you learn to let go of this consciousness-chi-body connection. You learn how to let it function without interference, which is what happens in a perfectly healthy body.

Chi and thoughts are linked; by letting go of thoughts you are not interfering with your chi flow anymore. Attaching to the chi of your body and physical energy sensations is something you are always subconsciously doing but you don’t realize it because you are so used to the habit. From countless lives you are used to this habit, so it takes time to break it. Once you learn how to truly let go and be free, with nothing pulling your chi this way or that way anymore because you have learned how to let go of thoughts, the real chi of the body will start to arise and its natural circulation will start to resume. Thus it is said, “From the stillness of yin (quiet), yang will arise.”

That yang chi is called kundalini, which is the real chi of the body as opposed to the wind chi that people are always playing with as they practice most spiritual techniques. When the yang chi of the body finally arises, it 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. There is nothing you need to know other than how to be quiet and let go to experience the peace. Your outer physical body, due to the yang chi resultantly arising, will experience transformational phenomena as this happens called spiritual “gong-fu.”

Your inner subtle chi body will also transform and purify the more you let go of thoughts and let your mind quiet. Your chi will purify as well, and thus your emotions and habit energies. Your physical and energetic bodies will start purifying because you are finally letting go of clinging to your chi, and so it will revert to its natural circulation – the way it is supposed to flow in a perfectly healthy individual before thought attachments warp it this way or that. Thoughts are supposed to come up all the time – you aren’t supposed to suppress them – but you should not cling to them.

The transformation of your body that results from your ascending chi results in a purification of your physical nature, but because chi and consciousness are linked, your mind will reach a higher stage of purity (emptiness) as well. So a quiet empty 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 body and mind reach ever increasing levels of purity until eventually from that purified foundation one can achieve samadhi.

All from just learning how to let go…

The forthcoming Little Book of Hercules explains all the chi and body phenomena that happen along the beginnings of this process … what we must call “beginner’s spiritual gong-fu” for attaining the Reward body, or sambhogakaya. You’ll find out that the ancient mystery schools of the west knew as many of these phenomena as the eastern schools, but while the evidence is right before your eyes you’ve probably missed it. This new book will reveal it.

Now because of samadhi, a wise person who has the right teachings (and thus view) can eventually detach from consciousness to realize the clear base of awareness that is always present with being or existence. But since that clear awareness is just a function of the original nature, recognizing that pristine empty awareness that knows is not full enlightenment yet. What gives birth to that awareness is the original nature or fundamental essence, God, Allah, Brahman, or whatever your wish to call the true self. No one really knows how to describe It, so it is also called the Unknown One. When one realizes that original fundamental ground nature or essence, one becomes enlightened, or realizes their true self. Hence the term “self-realization.”

In the universe we go for countless lives, countless eons searching for everything but our true self. When beings find their true self, they finally become spiritually free, liberated, saved. It all starts with spiritual cultivation. While religion will not lead you to this, spiritual practice will and the proper sort of spiritual practice, and stage of gong-fu you will resultantly pass though as you make progress on this hero’s journey will all be revealed in the Little Book of Hercules when it soon comes out.

As to our latest paperback release on Amazon.com, Spiritual Paths and Their Meditation Techniques, the price has risen in December as I said it would but you can still order it in time for Christmas: http://amzn.to/cuF1vE . A great book to teach you what you should be doing and where you should NOT BE WASTING YOU TIME in spiritual practice. This will save you years of effort and I wish I had the information when I get started. Like all our books, we speak directly with no nonsense and try to put in as much information as possible so that just one of our volumes is the equivalent of reading dozens of other books out there.

http://amzn.to/cuF1vE

Many wrote to thank me about the information from John Thomas, the hedge fund trader and his synopsis of world trends. I already made money on his advise, and my friends as well, and it came from his email newsletter which is free. Enlightenment is not just about spiritual practice but worldy wisdom… understanding the world and how to skillfully deal with the world. Many enlightened masters were doctors, some were politicians, some businessmen, some martial artists, some cooks and many other occupations, too. They weren’t just all monks or nuns. If a king found a man of Tao in his kingdom he would try to employ him as a minister because they were easily competent in all things.

The universe is endless and you must start learning about all dharmas if they can help others and yourself. Start here: http://bit.ly/fxf4Ck Pass to friends. As I’ve been writing elsewhere, if America does not invent something new and big and does so fast, job declines will continue and there’s nothing all the rah-rah patriotism can do about it. As Wikileaks proves, and as I try to point out all the time,  what the government says to the public is different from the reality of the way things really are. Without jobs, which we’ve offshored, we’re cooked compared to emerging markets competitors and lower standards of living are here to stay. To protect your income and retirement, watch these videos, learn this information (he’ll have several in series, such as a recent one on currencies so you know where to put your monies in your IRA via ETFs):

http://bit.ly/fxf4Ck

Speaking of diverse things, along these lines of the fact you should study many disciplines, we hope to release a new book on combining spiritual parenting with practical education, a book on small business marketing, multi-generational income and several other non-fiction titles next year. More when that happens …

And lastly, please take the time to avail yourself of a personalized Karma Calculator reading of the upcoming events for 2011, 2012, and 2013 in your life before the special December discount ends. It’s just $50 for several years and I often throw in more years beyond the special deal listed. But come January 1 the special is finally over as previously stated. This is a great Christmas gift for yourself or someone else (you just need the birth time, birth date and birth location) and will help you prepare for the years ahead. It’s dirt cheap compared to the $250 normally charged for just one year from a Vedic or Chinese astrologer. Someone wisely told me that if you want to mantra to change your fortune this will tell you what to mantra about.

It’s at http://www.karmacalculator.com/order.html

If you have an IRA, 401k or any other type of savings or investing account I highly recommend you go watch this presentation:

http://bit.ly/fxf4Ck

This is the last gift I can give you for 2010. Watch it and share it with anyone who you know is saving or investing for retirement, who wants to buy a house, or who just wants to understand world trends and what the next ten years are going to bring. Sharing this is an easy way to do a good deed and gain some “financial merit” because this will dramatically increase your worldly wisdom about money.

If you think you’re too “spiritual” to worry about money you’re fooling yourself – having money and NOT being attached to it is what lets you be more charitable, be more influential and be a more effective positive force in the world. This information will help you get to that position yourself. To be a leader you have to know this stuff and learn to think this way … finally I found some guy who put this in a video (the sort of information I hammer into my Stages students all the time).

If you’re a cultivator I always say it’s your responsibility to understand how the world really works. Confucians, for example, are “ashamed when they find something they don’t know.” Because the only way to be effective in the world is to see it clearly.

And in this remarkable presentation one of the founding fathers of the international hedge fund industry explains the big global trends around the world and why we are where we are.

Including what big companies like Goldman Sachs are REALLY betting on right now. And how you can help yourself, your friends and your family recover what they may have lost in the financial crisis or grow their nest eggs using this same worldview and information.

Just ignore the title “How to play the commodities boom” (because it’s not really about that) and get past the first few minutes where the man (John Thomas) establishes his credentials, and then sit back for a presentation usually only privately given to the mega-wealthy telling them where to put their dollars because that’s where the macro trends are going.

These are the trends you’ll normally only hear about after most of the rich insiders have made their money. They are not secret, but you just won’t ever hear this information. These are the forces shaping the US right now, and the world, and what will prosper as the recession continues.

On “60 Minutes” Ben Bernake just revealed what I have been telling people – the employment will not be here for years because we offshored manufacturing and sent many jobs overseas that are not coming back. You need to know that lower living standards are a definite for the next generation of Americans because of countless mistakes made in all sorts of policy directions.

But that does not mean you cannot become financially independent anymore or that you cannot do anything to protect yourself and prosper, which is what cultivation is also about. If you have the information, as in this video, you can prosper safely following what the big boys do (you just never hear this information – I am so glad a Stages student sent this to me so I can pass it on to you).

This is the best short video to get you up to speed that I can give you. I write about these topics on the blog and in my books, but this guy has put it all together and he’s fascinating. The information on population pyramids, how countries are producing a giant inflationary risk in the future that will dictate your decisions, what gold will do, why people are switching from paper assets, the prospects for residential real in the foreseeable future, … all this is invaluable to saving you money or making you money.

So because of how badly the financial crisis hurt so many good people I urge you to watch this, retrain your mind to start thinking of things this way, and share it with anyone you know who has a savings or investing account or who is thinking of buying property next year. You will learn a lot from this, especially how to think as you protect yourself and your family in the years ahead. They do not teach you what he has to say on television or in the news.

So consider this a rare opportunity for you as a spiritual cultivator to develop your financial wisdom.

http://bit.ly/fxf4Ck

P.S. Learning how to think this way is a great skill to master. This is how George Soros got rich, how Jimmy Rogers got rich, how Paul Tudor Jones got rich, how the largest hedge funds made their money while everyone else slept and how you can help yourself not get caught in what the next years will bring as the US economy struggles and other countries decouple. I warned everyone about this recession long before the government finally recognized it and this info will prepare you for what’s coming these next five years because from my own financial forecasting work (I used to work in Wall Street) it’s pretty scary with ups and severe downs between now and 2015. Frankly I’m tired of writing about all this and people not believing me. This guy has a great series of videos that will finally educate you. And yes, ignore his sales talk if you don’t like it; that’s why he made the video in the first place, otherwise we wouldn’t be able to get this information, so I’m thankful. Soak up his way of thinking, that’s the important thing! He’s definitely one of the brightest guys I have found in a long, long time and has a lot of information to offer (especially in the other videos I saw). May you prosper in 2011 with this sort of info, and please pass it onwards to others who might benefit.

Our new book is released – Spiritual Paths and their Meditation Technqiues. It is a rewrite, in paperback form, of the Insider’s Guide to  the Best and Worst Spiritual Practices. The price goes up in December, so get your copy now:

With the economy in the doldrums, many people are wondering how next year will fare. Personal fortunes are fated to rise and fall. They can be great in bad times, and then bad in great times. A great fortune can turn sour overnight, and a bad one can turn beautific. This is why sages of all religions tell us to persevere, never to do wrong, and to always do good in order to avoid the creation of bad karmic returns and maximize our states of good fortune. Does next year hold good fortune or bad fortune in store, and how do you transform it? A Karma Calculator fortune can tell you. That’s why I bothered to bring this technique to America from Asia.

In fact, right now you can get several extra years of your life’s fortune prediction as a BONUS. Predictions for years 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013 – all for just $50. This is the best deal you’ll get at $10 a year of predictions.

I won’t be holding this special for long so do yourself a favor and see what life holds in store, and then you can act wisely to change things. Go right here while the SPECIAL lasts … and remember that for anyone ordering the $50 3-year fortune package, you’ll actually get the fortune for the years 2008-2013 sent back to you, not just three years. (after this special offer is over it reverts back to 3 years again). It should help you work through the year ahead to help avoid errors and make your fortune the best possible.

Where is the Special at?

http://www.karmacalculator.com/order.html

This video of a Japanese inventor shows how to convert plastic back into oil, and there is profit in it!

This makes me wonder whether the plastic floating in our oceans could be dredged and compacted and turned into oil. Then we might be able to clean up our oceans by eliminating some of that floating garbage patch, and actually make money at it.

http://www.flixxy.com/convert-plastic-to-oil.htm

A practitioner from overseas wrote:

Since 2003 I started cultivating and practice your teachings. I ordered and read all your books, listen to the topics you speak about and read all your emails. I practise every day for a minimum of an hour before going to bed.

The past two years I am intensifying my practice. During day time a practice the Zhunti mantra, I have done about 252,000. At night before I go to bed, I practice the Vairocana-Zhunti mantra and visualize the flame on all the 8 petals and like you said I also try to be creative. Then I say 3 times the Usnisa Vijaya mantra for myself, the hungry ghosts and for my family. I also practise the 9 bottle wind anapana. After that I practise the Skeleton meditation. That goes quite well and then after that I try to sit and meditate on emptiness by trying to let go of myself as a person or just observe like a third person observer.

Lately I have these feelings in my head. When I am just sitting at my desk at work or doing something else I regularly feel these energies in my head. I have not yet realise emptiness, because I will know when it happen. You will probably say it is just Wind and I know for myself this is the case, but lately I feel quite overwhelmed. I have these intense emotional feelings at my heart and cannot fall into sleep. Because I am 44 years old, I wonder if these feelings are just because my hormones are bugging me. I didn’t have much problems until now, or is this because something is starting to happen, because of the practise? I have seen a Chinese docter and she tried to help me, but I still feel the same. Talking to my doctor doesn’t help because he will not understand.

I also have 2 little books to keep me on track with my cultivation and had read your book the White Fat Cow lately. I write down my Merits and Demerits for the day to try to get grips with my thoughts and behaviour.

If you have been reading our materials, you should be able to analyze this easily. Do not take this as a medical diagnosis or treatment, and if you are ever feeling ill please see a doctor. But if it is due to cultivation work, the following would be the normal analysis. Once again, you must first rule out medical things before proceeding to a cultivation analysis of the typical responses to spiritual practice. However, as my teacher told me many times, and as I found for myself, doctors do not understand this material even though the same patterns happen over and over again as the result for the same types of spiritual practice. Doctors never understand cultivation gong-fu,and frankly, for cultivation gong-fu there is nothing for anyone to do. In any case, the following is easy to write.

All these phenomena are normal signs of progress for someone who cultivates hard. It is EXACTLY what is supposed to happen. It has been written about many times in many schools. Many people pray all their lives to get this far, but no one does because they don’t cultivate hard enough or cultivate in the right way. Most people read books on spiritual topics and do nothing. Therefore they never get any progress. They just read more books. But if you do what’s said, which might seem a lot of effort but becomes natural or second nature after it becomes a habit, you make progress.

This person is experiencing Vajrayana / chi channel opening / body purification phenomena most people hope for but still do not get after 15-30 years of practice. Why they don’t attain it? No commitment to consistent discipline practice, they use the wrong methods and/or they practice incorrectly. Usually it is a combination of these factors and others that explains someone’s lack of cultivation progress.

That’s why I always teach people to do several different things simultaneously to cover all bases and not waste time. It’s more efficient and you make progress quicker. In short, this person’s chi is finally opening their channels from their spiritual work…But this is just the simple stuff. The central channel and front/back channels have not even opened yet. This is equivalent to energy rumblings, but in the right direction.

The skeleton practice + emptiness meditation + celibacy + mantra + visualization + time + patience = gong-fu. It’s a simple as that.

Spiritual progress means cultivation progress, and attaining that progress is a science. As the channels start clearing you will have more and more mental and emotional experiences. You will always finally feel the chi trying to open up the energy channels in the body after doing lots of cultivation work. You will usually feel the energy in the head, abdomen or running up the spine. However, because this person concentrated on the heart chakra, they are feeling the sensations there. As the chi rises to the head, you will feel sensations there. When chi rises to the head, you will also have trouble sleeping at first and will feel energy streams in the head. If they had concentrated on the du-mai they would have felt it in the back of the head. A different emphasis on a different set of channels will cause the energies to be felt there first.

This is actually what happens in Vajrayana, too, as well as in Taoism, Western Alchemy, Kabbalah Judaism, Esoteric Christianity, Hindusim, Jainism, Islam, Buddhism, yoga, Hinduism, Kashmir Shaivism, etc. If you work hard at spiritual practice then the channels start opening and you’ll feel it.

Christian monks who used to recite the Prayer of Jesus at the heart would have the exact same sensations at the heart, but they would get worried and interpret things incorrectly. Many would have palpitations because of the chi working to open up that region. The symptoms are less when you do full body cuiltivation work and open up other channels at the same time, which this practitioner did and what I always recommend. Sometimes the monks or nuns would even see a little flame in that region or have visions of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

Why? Because the chi (kundalini) is opening up that region due to your concentration on it. If you concentrate on a region with visualization, the chi goes to that region because chi and consciousness are linked. Since this is a chakra location, it’s trying to open up the heart chakra region along the sushumna which send chi into the brain.

This is why the “Six Yogas of Naropa” tell people to concentrate on the chakras along the sushumna central channel. But if you don’t also do mantra and deity yoga (visualize yourself in the form of a deity, which is equivalent to full body skeleton meditation) and other practices, then nothing happens. You have to do a lot of necessary PREPARATORY work for anything to happen, which this person is obviously doing. That’s why they are lucky enough to experience progress. That work is also called the “intensified practices” to prepare you for seeing the Tao.

However, once again it is similar to what many people have experienced when the chi finally opens up the channels. Please read Chapter 4 in Measuring Meditation (which is sent on the first day you sign up for our newsletter) to see various typical reactions just like this.

To get the chi channels to start opening is difficult, not easy. Everyone thinks it’s easy but it only happens after lots of committed work, for those are the ones who deserve it. They really want it. Everyone else is after sex, money, power, status, fame and so on so how can they make progress like this? That is their first and foremost prioirty, so the extent of their practice is to visit the Church or mosque or temple on the weekend for an hour or so and participate in a ceremony and listen to some lecture. It’s impossible to make real spiritual progress unless they create a disciplined cultivation practice schedule.

When the chi starts surging upwards into the brain one sometimes cannot sleep. This person is NOT yet at the stage of chi trasnforming into shen causing sleeplessness, but simply chi clearing the channels in the cranium. When yang chi (kundalini) goes through an organ system then emotional stuff comes up which the Chinese have catalogued in their medical system. If it starts clearing the liver channels you tend to get angry or irritated, as an example. Every organ system produces different emotional responses as a predominant response when the channels inside them start to open.

As those channels clear lots of emotional stuff clears, too. It HAS to happen this way for ardent practitioners. When it opens all sorts of areas in the brain, then just as an electrical current in the brain will stimulate memories, memories and other material might come out as chi hits the region and the channels clear. The opening of chi channels causes all sorts of reactions.

So there is nothing in this report that is not typical. It’s just that, despite how many times we write about this, explain it, give case studies, historical examples, tell the science, when it finally happens no one believes it. No one believes they can achieve it. No one believes in the science in the first place. Everyone thinks their case is different.

If you cultivate sufficiently you will experience these things. If you don’t cultivate then they will not happen. The reason they have not happened to you is because your cultivation is insufficient, not because these things don’t exist or don’t happen.

This is all part of the science of human beings. When my book of Hercules and the tantric stages of cultivation like this is released, it will show that even the ancient Greeks and Egyptians knew of these things, not just the Indians and Chinese. Why? Because the gong-fu of spiritual progress is non-denominational.

This person is experiencing the typical reactions of REAL progress. If you practice in this way, you will awaken the kundalini (yang chi) and experience similar things too. Not necessarily the same pattern, but it will follow the typical symptomology or patterns that happen based on your practice.

Hats off to this practitioner. Good work so far and hopefully more to come! Don’t stop now for this is where it gets really interesting.

After a long wait one of our books, “The Insider’s Guide to The World’s Best and Worst Spiritual Paths and Practices,” is being released as a paperback on Amazon.com.

Totally rewritten, this book will be released in paperback as “Spiritual Paths and Their Meditation Techniques,” will be available next month. Because it’s so useful, here is a list of the 10 great cultivation methods of the world from the new book which summarizes many spiritual and meditation approaches. Your spiritual practice should fall within these Ten Great roads. I’ll send the rest of the methods out bit by bit over the next few days so that the material, just a small sample from the book, is easier to digest. I hope from reading this material you can understand the construction and purpose of many spiritual techniques. Here it starts:

As to the other spiritual schools of the world, Shakyamuni said that they commonly employed ten great roads of spiritual practice. By following one or more of these paths, you can progress towards self-realization. These paths include the following:

(1) Mindfulness of the Buddha (enlightened being) practice involves concentrating on an enlightened being such as Jesus, Buddha, Shiva, Krishna or any other virtuous enlightened saint, and then so identifying with the contemplation on a moment-by-moment basis that one enters into samadhi. “Mindfulness of the Buddha” is not a method to be identified with Buddhism, but simply the name of a mindfulness technique that uses one-pointed concentration on any enlightened being, whom we call “Buddhas” in recognition of their enlightenment. It is a method of developing long one-pointed concentration through mindfulness, akin to leading an ox home from the field by pulling it back on to a path through a tug on its nose every time it goes astray. It is a method of mentally imitating an enlightened being, and seeking what he or she achieved from mind-moment to mind-moment, until one finally achieves that ultimate attainment himself.

The bhakti yoga cultivation technique of India, as is Christian contemplation on Christ, is a form of Buddha mindfulness practice where through intense longing the mind melts in devotion and thoughts and attachment to the concept of an ego are surrendered. One pointed concentration on visualizing a deity, known as the exercise of imaginary cognition, is a popular accompaniment of Buddha mindfulness and a way in which many religious greats across traditions have traditionally achieved samadhi. If you reach a sufficient point of one-pointed concentration then your chi will begin to move, and dropping the visualization you can reach a state of contentment and no-thought. When the mind becomes free of all other thoughts except the meditated form, incessant thoughts become silent and the mind becomes pure with the object of meditation, thereby entering into samadhi after the object is discarded. Similarly, when one surrenders a sense of doership and turns everything over to the imagined enlightened being (including the idea of one’s individual will), this is also a form of Buddha mindfulness for entering into samadhi.

(2) Mindfulness of the Dharma (Teaching) practice involves cultivating samadhi through the road of logic and mental investigation. Studying the Consciousness-only school of Buddhism, Advaita Vedanta teachings of Hinduism or practicing jnana yoga are all ways to help you investigate the mind and consciousness. In Confucianism the idea of “tracing things back to their roots” can also be applied to studying consciousness so as to eventually detach from it to search for its source. When you constantly apply the principles of investigation to a constant introspection of your mind (vipassana) in order to help you let go, you are applying this cultivation method that will directly lead you to samadhi.

Success in dharma mindfulness practice involves applying an understanding of spiritual teachings dealing with consciousness to help you constantly detach from mental states that flow across consciousness, and thereby enter into samadhi that way. When you can fathom the true meaning of some spiritual teaching, and combine that understanding with periods of contemplation or mental watching so that you can let go, this is dharma practice, or dharma mindfulness. The Advaita Vedanta or Zen practice of constantly searching for the source of thoughts or the “I am” is also dharma mindfulness. If you were always watching your mind to purify your behavior and let go of unwholesome thoughts, as Confucians do, or making sure you broke no religious rules of discipline, as the strict Orthodox Jewish try to do, that would be the practice of virtue and discipline mindfulness. In this case, to be aware of dharma principles at every moment in time – such as to always recognize the impermanen ce of phenomena, painfulness of the world, non-existence of the ego, impurity of the physical body and the illusive nature of reality – will result in mentally letting go of attachments and constitutes dharma mindfulness.

Such constant practice on a continual moment-by-moment basis will lead to detachment, and the mental detachment of letting go of consciousness leads to samadhi and realization. Putting oneself in line with the Tao, once you know the principles of the true character of reality, is dharma mindfulness practice, and eventually leads to awakening. This is one reason why people are encouraged to study cultivation teachings, especially those from other schools that deal with matters that strike home. Applying them to daily life in order to become happy, let go of attachments, and experience mental freedom also constitutes mindfulness of dharma because you put dharma teachings into effect.

(3) Mindfulness of the Sangha practice means relying upon a living individual who has attained the Tao for cultivation guidance to reach some stage of spiritual attainment. Tibetan guru yoga is one such technique as is studying with an enlightened Hindu master. You don’t consider the guru as a body or person but as the original nature, or true Self, that can lead you to an experience of your own true self-nature. If you were to surrender yourself and imagine that you became one with the goddess Kali, for instance, that would instead be Buddha mindfulness. In sangha mindfulness you rely on the help and instructions of living human masters, or community of cultivators, to succeed in the spiritual quest for the Tao.

One component of sangha mindfulness is to model yourself on an enlightened teacher’s behavior by visualizing yourself becoming that person, or visualizing that you become united with that person during meditation in order to try to match their stage of attainment. The ancient Indian story of the man who learned archery by imagining that he was one with his teacher illustrates this technique. The intense imitation of a powerful enlightened role model, and trying to merge one’s mental state with the enlightened nature symbolized by that model, is the basis of the technique. Mindfulness of the sangha not only entails asking someone for help in achieving the Tao, but involves trying to match their stage of realization in hopes of achieving what they have achieved. It is often followed in tantric traditions that stress the necessity for a guru to help you see the Tao and not get caught up in the physical transformations of the human body.

Many, schools such as Zen and Vedanta, also stress the benefits of studying under an enlightened master because some teachers are able, at special opportunities, to instantaneously cut off your thoughts to help you recognize the inherent emptiness of your mind. The story of Hui-neng, The Sixth Patriarch of Zen, and his pursuer Hui Ming is one such example.

(4) The Mindfulness of Discipline and Virtue is a road of practice emphasized by the Confucian school, Vinaya school of Buddhism, the Taoist path of Humanity and Heaven, Orthodox Judaism, Jainism, and the early Greeks among others. This technique involves a constant introspection (watching, policing, or witnessing) of one’s mind and motivations so as to instantly cut off any mental faults when seen and thereby eventually attain a pure and clean empty mental state of samadhi. Outwardly the emphasis appears to be on following precepts of discipline, but inwardly the practice is on cultivating awareness of the mind. As soon as you see an error in thought or behavior from watching your mind, then like the sword of Manjushri that slices through mental obstructions, you cut it off instantly. You stop the behavior, drop the thought, empty the mind, or try to transform your negative thoughts into positive ones. The form of discipline is outward behavior but the nature of discipline i s that the mind is stopped, and thus there is no desire for evil doing.

This spiritual road can also be called the mindfulness of morality practice. The meditation practice of cessation and observation (normally known as “vipassana”) is also a form of morality mindfulness, and the Confucian practice of self-correction falls within this category as well. Christian monks who were always practicing introspection to watch their mind for breaches of discipline against religious codes of conduct can be said to also have been following this form of mindfulness practice. The stories of Liao Fan and Benjamin Franklin who changed their fortunes through this type of practice are perfect examples of this technique we should all study. As Benjamin Franklin exemplified, one must watch their mind and cultivate wisdom in their behavior to become effective in the world.

I was going through the news website and found this video clip of paparazzi “photographing a woman and her child” at LAX, and the write up said this was indicative of our crazy consumer culture. I had to watch and was spellbound to see how people lost their minds. Now I know what they are talking about when they say this is a major problem.

I always wondered what the typical fate of a whistleblower was. Most of us have watched 60 Minutes on TV and know they get screwed royally. But I finally found a study quoted as to what normally happens, and thought it interesting:

A study of 233 whistleblowers was conducted years ago, to explore the effect on one who blows the whistle on a corporation. Their findings:

The average whistle blower is a man in his 40s with a strong conscience and high moral values. I was near the age of 40 when I became a whistle blower.

After blowing the whistle, 90 percent of whistle blowers were fired or demoted. 27 percent faced lawsuits themselves. 26 percent had to seek psychiatric or physical care. 25 percent suffered substance abuse. 17 percent lost their homes. 15 percent experienced divorce. 10 percent attempted suicide. 8 percent were bankrupt. But in spite of all of this, only 16 percent said they would not blow the whistle again.

Source: http://www.henrymakow.com/i_was_a_corporate_whistle_blow.html