Notes of refining the void
Hi friends,
well, my life is officially totally zany, but I love it.
Friday I am setting off on a nine hour train ride to Renqiu and Shenzhou Hebei to conduct activities for DAOI which will surprise you when they become available :)
That plus my ongoing studies in Fengshui and of course teaching these wonderful Neidan and Taijiquan courses is keeping me busy, although I do set aside time to rest, meditate and practice martial arts, and of course raise my awesome son and hang out with my wonderful wife!!
Anyway, I’ll be back around Tuesday, but I’ll throw up some pictures here and on facebook during the trip so you can see some of the madness firsthand.
Let’s just say that what I’m going to get up to is something you might not have thought of in the past, but for those of you who love internal martial arts you aren’t going to want to miss it!!
Those things aside, I want to make a quick post about Refining the Void stuff today just in case this can ever help any of you.
Refining the Void is a period of practice, not a specific technique, so if you aren’t there don’t worry, just keep practicing and eventually this advice will become useful.
The basic thing:
many phenomena occur during this time and this process is much longer temporally than the small or large orbits, since the Yang Shen has to develop, emerge, attain maturity, etc... I’m not all the way down this particular road, but I do have a couple observations after my sky gate opened in 2023, particularly about the role of Xing and the upper Dantian in this part of practice.
Basically, during the small orbit you refine jing and transform Qi, the Qi is collected in the upper Dantian and merged with saliva to form a pill that is returned to the umbilical area for storage.
The large orbit is based on the mature elixir in the umbilical and general abdominal area causing the upper and lower abdomen to become one Dantian and serving as the basis for the development of the middle channel.
Once the middle channel is sufficiently strong it is possible for the spiritual energy to break open the fontanelle area in front of the bai hui.
After this certain other changes happen that make the practice become more Xing oriented (if you want to understand Xing and Ming I suggest registering for Xing Ming Gui Zhi, we are just leaving month one and there is still time to catch up!!).
The refining void period is usually associated with Yang Shen leaving the orifice, but in my experience Yang Shen is something that has to be cultivated in the body for a certain period of time before it is strong enough to leave.
Basically the trajectory is from the abdominal Dantian to the upper Dantian with the energy spending more time in the upper Dantian than during the small and large orbits. Nevertheless the abdominal Dantian is very important because it is a key storage site for the energy, thus embryonic breathing is still a core aspect of practice, although personally for me it is more like forgetting there was ever any breath and not needing to focus on the Dantian for the spiritual energy to be there.
The important point is that when the energy goes to the upper Dantian if it is strong enough to leave a little bit it might still not be a good idea to try to coax it out.
This is what the rest of the article will be about...
Neidan has two versions of shen leaving the body, one is yin and one is yang.
Yin Shen basically means the spirit in a polluted, post-heaven form leaves the Baihui.
Some people like Chen Yingning thought this might be required as a way to train the Yang Shen and I’m not completely against this, but even so there must be a protocol for such a practice.
The reason I’m a little hesitant about the Yin Shen leaving the orifice is because when you have sufficient experience of the energy in the upper Dantian it becomes clear when Xing/innate nature has become activated and when it has not.
That is to say that you can refine your Xing so that it becomes empty. If it isn’t empty it can still be considered to be polluted with energy from the senses to some extent and this will mean the Yang Shen will not become luminescent.
Since Neidan accords with the principle of the single opening of the mystery gate, you should consider advanced practice to require it even more than beginner and intermediate practice.
This is an advanced topic so don’t worry if you didn’t completely understand it, but if you did, please pay attention to being natural and don’t force the energy to be in the upper Dantian. Ideally your action is very minimal and the natural activity of the spiritual energy dominates while you only gently provide feedback when required to make it stable.
Behind the paywall today is section 28 from Fang Dao Yu Lu, an interview with Daoist Yun Youzi
who taught practice according to the principle of refining nature behind the eyes and then using the return of the energy to the lower Dantian to practice the small orbit. His perspective is close to the Wu Liu and Qianfeng schools of Neidan and might be interesting to you if you want to understand the modern iteration of the Xing first approach to practice.