The Astral or Li

I have often heard people talk about chi when discussing oriental medicine or martial arts, but I have yet to hear them talk about li. I'm not sure how to characterize the tone for the word except that it wasn't rising, falling or falling then up. So what do I really know about older Chinese healing and language? Probably nothing, but then if you rely on people citing tradition in order to determine what's true I suspect my "tradition" is less made up than many views you will hear.

I much prefer to rely on actual present evidence of abilities rather than citing traditions.
- How can one actually validate the past?
- How come if things worked so well in the past they really aren't working as well in the present?
- Why are their so many different people espousing they know the correct tradition but yet there is so little agreement among them?

This level, which I will lump together using the word li, will be important when trying to use a sort of elemental description for metaphysics as was/is done in the orient.

One sometimes hears about chi power for martial arts, but I have yet to hear people talk about li power. At least theoretically, li power is stronger, though still nowhere as strong as tapping into the universal spirit or the Spirit of Truth and Caring within and beyond it.

I think it was the Sufis who had a saying that went something like, "Why do you reckon yourself to be such an inconsequential form when the universe is folded within you." Obviously I'm no scholar or master of literature or language.

In my use of the words, the astral/li is a level of interaction. It can be interaction between people, between people and the universe, between people and other living creatures and on and on. When observing the astral it is easy to see how different cultures have viewed the universe as much more alive than western cultures typically have.

My experience is that the astral is its own independent encompassing universe. What I'm trying to say is our physical universe is encompassed and interpenetrated by the astral with its extra dimensions. Though I'm not going to even try to describe the geometry or different levels.

I have no idea how I am going to organize this page. I'll try to be organized ... BUT ... there are so many things I could say! This discussion will definitely involve a lot of rewrites.

Centering. One of the most important issues on the astral/li level can be reasonably described with two words.

Staying Centered

This is distinctly different from being selfish. I will try to describe what I mean.

Think of your heating and cooling systems in your body or your home. Simplistically, within your body, when you start to overheat you use water to cool yourself. You sweat. If you have insufficient water in your body you can't cool your self appropriately.

If you were to view your self cooling through some sort of very sensitive monitoring device that displayed temperature gradients with colors you would see a lot of variegated colors that also extended outside of your physical body. While this is definitely not the same as li as far as I can tell, it is a good image.

The water evaporates off your skin, helping you to cool. So your water doesn't stay completely in your body. Yet you must have a good source of water and it largely is within you.

This is sort of what staying centered in your li is like. You don't want to be spraying your resources all over the place, though you definitely don't want to hold them in so much you do not use them. If you have a good supply it almost spontaneously generates an umbra.

In addition, if you visualize conduits at your core, running through your trunk and limbs as illustrated like it is in the conduits and chakras page, you could think of these conduits and chakras as having water flowing through them. While this isn't accurate, what flows through them is a sort of melange of spirit unique to each person with its own unique and dynamic mixture.

Some aspects of staying centered mean, to me at least, making sure one digs to deeper levels in these conduits. It also means not coming out of one's self when dealing with things of this world and other realms. While I'll say much more about this elsewhere, it seems that as one comes out of one's self, often by trying to get into others on the /astral/li, one is actually weakening one's self and connections to greater influences.

It seems one also wants to develop the depth of one's connections to the universe and Spirit in order to have a good supply, see the section on weapons.

When you can stand in a river and get refreshed, you really take very little from the river. If you then try to help preserve the river for yourself and others you are developing a more symbiotic relationship.

Attraction and the Astral. Whew, is this a topic! It seems to me that so much of what attracts us to other people is really determined by li interactions. If certain qualities we really find desirable exist in another person's li we are likely to be quite attracted depending on the strength of the desire. Unfortunately, the strength of these desires, or inabilities to sense can cause someone to not tune in to other qualities that are also present in another. How certain people find certain things attractive shows up in the astral/li is very difficult to describe, though lots can be obvious.

These attractions often focus around particular chakras and definitely depend on each person. For example, I had one math professor in college whose reasoning abilities I found very appealing. I found his use of Euclidean and non-Euclidean geometry to make points about major logical issues very impressive. I was definitely impressed by the polish and succinctness that he would give to a proof. This is not an attraction that most people would feel. He was actually a professor that even most math majors avoided, and I'm really more of a systems engineer and/or systems architect if you want to classify me. But on the other hand, when he was involved in developing the Putnam teams for collegiate math competitions, a good old Moo U in the north central states (Michigan State University) did very well. I was not around back then, but I wish I was.

These influences can be for both good and bad and this often depends on a point of view. I'm sure that some religious people find my efforts towards rationality, open investigation and reason very unappealing. Maybe the Lord him/herself does! But I do not think so and I think that claimed perfection or whatever superiority is claimed should be very happy to have me trying to develop my own skills by trying to understand Lordly handiwork.

I am working on describing two major aspects of attraction and how one can identify the health of the attraction. When someone is attracted to another in some way this can be expressed in different ways. For example,

someone might really try to take what they find attractive from another

someone might really try to get into another and try to control another

someone might feel they aren't getting what they want from another and try to hurt them to some extents

someone might try to develop certain qualities they find attractive in others in themselves

people might get into certain sorts of more mutual symbiotic sharings

These sorts of takings, intrusions, sharings and depredations show in the astral/li quite directly.

One of the things that I consider to be very difficult about raising children is that no parent can control what their children find attractive in other people. In many respects, I think that the most that a parent can do is try to find things that both they and their children find attractive and hope these attractions are strong enough to be influential as their children become older. Unfortunately, far too many parents don't put in even this much effort. But even those that do ultimately face the self-will and determination of their own children for better and worse.

On the other hand, I am definitely of the opinion that parents should raise their children to develop a discerning eye for the spirit in themselves and others. Then hopefully these young people will pick and choose particular aspects that they want to develop within their selves. Concomitant with this, I really dislike the "role model" conceptualization for a number of reasons. In particular,

It seems to teach young people that they should just look to just a very few people for almost everything to model. I think this is very unrealistic.
It seems too focused on imitation.
While we all need to be able to play particular roles in particular situations, particularly in a role playing oriented culture, I see a danger in approaching the self too much from a role oriented view. The person can very easily become illuded or illusional (milder form of deluded/delusional) if playing a role creates too possessing of a veneer. It seems that almost everyone can very easily separate themselves from other important aspects of their spirit when playing roles, particularly those that are deeper.
It seems that some people see themselves as being qualified to write the scripts for the roles that other people are supposed to play as role models.

Well, I can obviously go on and on.

Along these lines, particularly as a teacher/professor and continual learner, I ask myself why their seem to be so many people who profess to be good teachers when their own theories state that students learn through role models and modeling. Even though I dislike some fairly large aspects of the "role model" conceptualization, I still think that learners need to see other people work who are very good at learning, not so much teaching. Maybe if the teachers, parents and people-in-charge were much better at self evaluation, learning and improvement we'd find that more younger people would develop their own selves in ways that far more people claim they prefer.

For example, I think that people need to be wary of developing an association between "goodness" and powerlessness or "goodness" and a right to overpower. I think kids can easily become attracted towards lesser goods due to this. For example, when I look at many of the teens in this country who have a strong attraction to Hitler I think that some of it is due to the power they get from shock value, but I think that it is mostly due to the fact that they consider him to be very capable. They find themselves in a group that they feel somehow merits dominating other groups and his approach to life would make everything much better for them. Obviously, this is overly simplistic, but I'm trying to make a few more focused points. When I see some people's reactions to these attractions I am rather unimpressed. Their approach is sort of a reverse suppression. Rather, I think that people should examine whether evidence supports that Hitler was really all that capable and challenge the teens to produce evidence of their own superiority. They should be more than willing to make it clear they are superior! It could be their chance to strut their stuff and the more superior they are the easier it should be to demonstrate it. So I am a smart ass!

But seriously, I see Hitler as a master of exploiting weakness and fear. How does he deal with strength? When he finally came up against England he battered and bashed and then in many ways backed down and opened up an even bigger war on another front against a more populous foe. Was that smart? After all the "success" that Rommel gave the Reich, how did Hitler ultimately deal with Rommel? When Hitler had Moscow in his grasp, what did he do? These are off the top of my head, I'm confident I can come up with more if I need to.

One of the other things that is very difficult to describe, but seems to be very important is the nature of the flows in their li that certain people prefer. This is a general issue I want to get at, but this seems to be one of the more important distinguishing characteristics for people that have a strong attraction to a leader like Hitler. There is an attraction to certain sort of "rushes" in the flow. These flows can really be almost orgasmic or like the flows that people experience during their orgasms. For example, calling wars orgies of violence is terribly representative of what I would distinguish on the astral. Many people seem to also have attractions to trying to cut through other people in the li. Yikes this is going to take some effort to communicate, verbally and visually.

Sex and the Astral. While this really can't always be distinguished all that easily from Attraction and the Astral, on the astral, when people have sex, their lis engorge and they generally release a lot of their defenses. During sex the co-mingling of spirits can be very satisfying far beyond physical pleasure. It is an opportunity to have certain things in one's li directly touched by that which is so desirable in another. I suspect you get the picture of why this can be so exciting and so problematic.

One of the things that can become quite dangerous for a healer is that others often sense the healing power in the healer and interpret it in unusual ways. A desire for healing can easily get expressed as a desire for sex without someone knowing what they are really after. I have had the experience more often than I ever want of having to cut through this and get to what a person really needs to have touched. It's pretty amazing to see the distorted attraction immediately dissolve. One of the obvious things in the other person's li that shows there is something that is clearly wrong is how much they come out of themselves to try and get something from me. The nature of the attempt at takeover is something they would find someplace between unattractive and repulsive if others did it to them. I want to talk about these sorts of things more. Like I said, this will be a bit of a mess for a while.

Another common expression on the astral/li occurs when some people sexually desire another. Their spirit reaches out and touches that which they might not be willing to touch physically, probably for fear of retribution. In and of itself, this is really not that bad, but it is quite surprising how many people do not let up even after getting feedback that this contact is not desired. Obviously this sort of contact can be harder or softer and more or less penetrating.

Oftentimes when this sort of thing occurs the person with the desires coats the other's spirit to such an extent that they cannot see/sense what the other person desires. All they see is what they want. This can lead to a lot of difficulties. One all too typical example is the slutty guy who spends much of his life telling his buddies that some girl is really hot for him, but for some reason she keeps rejecting him. Though, in truth, there are far too many variations of this astral/li interaction to even begin to list them.

Some Unhealthy Interaction Styles. There is an incredible flow of spirit between people on the astral. As you might suspect these flows take on certain characteristics for certain styles of interaction. I am going to start with some of the most obviously unhealthy that I encounter way too often.

It really is quite impossible to characterize the nature of these flows into little boxes, but these sorts of efforts seem to be important for shared understanding. I will try to use locations on important dimensions as much as possible to avoid the little boxes, but I am still struggling with what are the most important dimensions and qualities of the flows.

Hurts and Gashes. Some of the things that can happen in one's spirit that are the most debilitating have to do with how one responds/reacts to receiving hurts/slashes/gashes in one's spirit from injustices and unfairnesses. Some of these, particularly those received from being enslaved, at war, or abused can stay with someone through several lifetimes. Healing these sorts of remnants might prove to be fairly well accepted evidence for reincarnation. These remnants can have far too much impact in the present.

Unfortunately, far too many people act out of their hurts/gashes/slashes and over-generalize in their responses/reactions to people and other others. For example, some people get put down by someone in their teenage years, when they are quite vulnerable to such efforts, and then become very easily jealous of almost all others who have abilities they find particularly desirable and attempt to hurt/gash/slash these others. This is far too often caused by over-reactive defensiveness to anyone who they might well be imagining is going to be putting them down in the present. It ends up not making any difference whether someone is actually going to demean/degrade them. They repeat this pattern without conscious awareness of what is driving them.

Another far too prevalent response/reaction to hurts/slashes/gashes is to try and control far too many things with little respect to others to try and ensure they, the controller, will not get hurt in ways they have in the past.

Even more debilitating are people who actively try to hurt/slash/gash others almost indiscriminately. Maybe even out of a desire to ensure that everyone they come in contact with hurts at least as much as they do.

Well, I could go on and on about these and many other gradations and shadings. But it is quite apparent to anyone who has adequately developed their senses that these sorts of responses/reactions have far more impact on one's health and abilities than is currently accepted in what really are unsubstantiated "scientific" and other viewpoints.

There is even more that can be said about what appears in the li of the person that perpetrates the hurts/slashes/gashes.

Much about the importance of drawing from the spirit of this universe and its encompassing/interpenetrating Spirit of Truth and Caring through these hurts/slashes/gashes to help one work to improve over these injustices/unfairnesses for everyone is spread throughout this website, so I will not say more for quite some time.

Soft Diffusion. Many people have quite diffuse spirits, yet they do not try to penetrate others. Sometimes this is almost out of a sense of alarm or fear. Maybe the person lives in a constant state of reaching out to hear what they imagine others are saying about them. Think about the old sort of cones people used to put up to their ears to improve their hearing. I have seen some people going through life with these sorts of cones emerging from their entire body in order to pick up any little thing. They are most likely to have no real side/bad effects from this other than they are more likely to fatigue. This is pretty much true for all of these sorts of diffusion.

Softer Penetration. This is typically much subtler and oftentimes more effective. These states really are very difficult to describe in words, but they are far too often being demonstrated and mirrored.

One of the ways that the soft penetrator obtains what they probably consider to be most effective is when the penetrator works on the hurts in an other. Some examples:

It is quite common for groups to try and hook into the hurts and inadequacies of others in order to gain more intense commitment from individuals. Obviously this is almost inevitable due to people's wants and needs, but the varying degrees to which this occurs can be rather discomfiting. For example, quite a few religious groups and/or nationalistic efforts work very hard to maintain an illusion of "perfection" or "betterness" so that individuals can assuage their spiritual hurts, gashes and inadequacies through association with a great nation or somehow perfect religious group. It is not surprising to me that these individuals almost never seem to be able to actually display enough real confidence in their commitments to try and openly investigate the validity of the claims for the group.
A similar, but much softer sell sort of approach occurs through a lot of more common money and/or power making efforts. For example, I personally do not care for the way that sports heroes are sold to young children. The kids really are taught to come apart and diffuse their spirits in order to look for much more than they are in these heroes. Unfortunately, this approach pretty much guarantees the youngsters will grow up to be much less than their "heroes". It also helps guarantee they will throw money at things all out of proportion to their value as far as I'm concerned.

Hard Penetration. Well you probably had to figure there are some very distinct things that can be observed in the spirit of someone whose ideals have a lot to do with some form of personal domination.

It seems to be far too often the case that people that do the overpowering are seen as strong rather than weak. For example, it seems that far too many people are too willing to blame the victim without evidence. I will far too easily come up with other examples of this.

But, my perception is, that on the astral, the person who appears to be strong when exhibiting their dominating behavior is always demonstrating efforts to compensate for something that is incredibly needy on the astral. I can easily feel for them based on the unjust hurts that underlie these needs. But it never seems to be this simple.

Need to write more about the needs to dominate ...