Category: Energy Work

A Pleasant Stage — Containing the Seeds of Its Own Ending

After discovering the overwhelming mental states induced by this practice—which I’ll still call Yidam, though it may not align perfectly with canonical definitions—I repeated the procedure daily. Soon, I realized the being I was fusing with was not a goddess, but the idealized memory of my first Tantric lover — the woman who had introduced me to those states long before I had any conceptual framework for them.

Day after day, I saw her running toward me—her eyes filled with joy, her heart with love, her belly with lust—exactly the feelings I had experienced with her, and in my first Yidam experiment. We fused in the deepest embrace, but this time, skin was no barrier. Our bodies overlapped, and every cell within me danced with the cell within hers, from head to toe, in a dance that tasted of lust beyond lust, love beyond love, and joy beyond joy—all blended into a cocktail far greater than the sum of its parts.

This was an extremely pleasant stage in my journey, yet it contained the seeds of its own ending. As the practice evolved and reshaped my perception, the truth became evident: I was not fusing with anything—goddess or lover. I was simply discovering the real nature of this subtle body, hidden all my life and now unveiled. There was no “other” interacting with me. It was just me—to be precise, this pure consciousness free from thoughts, which had always been there and had nothing to do with the “mundane me” made of thoughts, fears, and desires. This seemed to be the real “me” finally taking possession of its energy body.

Changes in Perception

As the fusion extended across what internal alchemy traditions call the three dantians, distinct perceptual shifts became apparent.

• At the level of the lower dantian, sexuality lost its binary character. The energetic body revealed itself as neither male nor female — or perhaps as containing both polarities simultaneously. Biological sex remained a fact, but it no longer defined the structure of experience..
• At the level of the middle dantian, what had initially appeared as intensified love transformed into something more spatial than emotional. A strange feeling of spaciousness—like watching the starry sky from a mountaintop, yet feeling I could touch the stars, as if a subtle veil separating near from far had been removed. Love, typically structured as a relation between self and other, shifted toward a perception of inevitable interconnection once experiential space ceased to function as a barrier.
• At the level of the upper dantian, fusion expressed itself as joy — not private satisfaction, but shared exhilaration. The closest ordinary analogue would be the collective surge when a team scores a decisive goal, or when a crowd sings in unison. In those moments, individual identity briefly relaxes and a larger coherence takes precedence. The joy was of that nature: distributed rather than owned.

These shifts did not prove anything metaphysical. They demonstrated how radically perception can reorganize when identity becomes fluid.

Taking Possession of the Energy Body

Eventually, however, the figure faded.

The lover, the goddess, the dakini — all dissolved. What remained was a persistent sense of energetic coherence without a relational counterpart. One duality had collapsed: there was no longer an “other” to fuse with. The qualities previously attributed to her were now recognized as intrinsic potentials within my own experiential field.

Yet this resolution generated a new tension. From this expanded, less localized mode of embodiment, there emerged an impulse to extend the same fusion outward — not toward a human partner, but toward reality as a whole. Energy no longer seemed directional. It appeared to arise from everywhere at once.

It would have been easy to interpret this as movement toward something “divine.”

More cautiously, I would say this: the configuration began to resemble what many traditions describe as divine — boundaryless, sexless, interconnected. Whether that resemblance reflects ontological truth or the nervous system’s capacity for large-scale integration remains an open question.

The experience was convincing. Convincing experiences, however, are not the same as verified conclusions.

Balancing Yin and Yang

A final corrective emerged in a later internal image of my dakini. This time, she was not the soft, feminine lover of the first stage, but a warrior princess wielding her sword, full of power, boldness, and assertiveness. The symbolism was transparent: in leaning deeply into receptive (yin) qualities, I had overcorrected. If androgyny was the goal, it required dynamic balance, not identification with one pole.

That marked the end of this pleasant but incomplete stage.

The Yidam, once discovered as a scaffold, evolved into a powerful reinforcement loop before dissolving. Recognizing the limits of my yidam practice led to a clearer understanding of how imagery and identity co-construct one another, and why even the most luminous forms must be relinquished.

When I first encountered the concept of a yidam, I understood it as a visualization practice—imagining something until it eventually became experiential. This clashed with my perspective on several levels.

First, I was already experiencing extraordinarily intense sensations through my Tantric sex practice. Why imagine something when I had direct access to the experience itself? Second, my own observation was that mental activity tended to suppress sensation; so deliberately engaging the mind—after having learned to quiet it—felt like a step backward. Third, my stubborn atheism made “deity worship” unthinkable. The practice seemed entirely out of reach.

Then came a pivot point. A respected friend on a forum offered a technical clarification:

“True deity practices are not about visualizing an imaginary being, but actually connecting to one. The energy of the being manifests in your local mind-space. Any images or visions arise naturally as the mind gives form to overwhelming energetic flows.”

This description of “connection” resonated immediately. In 2017, with my partner-based practice on hold, I decided to experiment by using imagery to bridge the gap. I focused on one stand-out principle: “Your own essence and the deity’s essence are indivisible.”

The Fusion Protocol

So I decided to experiment with fusion using the figure of a goddess. I did not place her on a pedestal to worship her. Instead, I approached the exercise as an operational test: could I reproduce, internally, the same kind of fusion I had previously experienced in Tantric sex — the only phenomenological framework I truly understood?

The effects were immediate and intense. The familiar yin–yang dynamics I had experienced with my human partner re-emerged with remarkable clarity. However, the usual sense of bodily separation began to dissolve. Rather than two distinct bodies interacting, there was a shared experiential field: I felt her within my perceptual space, and myself within hers.

Visualization soon became unstable. When attention shifted toward the expansive, outward (yang) component, she appeared distinctly external — clearly “out there.” Yet the simultaneous presence of the contractive, inward (yin) component inverted the frame of reference, as if the experience were unfolding from within her perspective. The conventional distinction between inside and outside gradually lost structural coherence.

This led to a significant realization. The “feminine” sensations I had previously attributed to my partner were not imported from outside. They were accessible within my own system. No external proxy was required to enter that androgynous configuration.

Upgrading the System: Heart and Head

As in Tantric practice, the fusion was initially strongest from the diaphragm downward — what internal alchemy traditions call the Lower Dantian. The next step was deliberate: extend the fusion upward, toward the heart.

If the lower register operates at the frequency of sex, the heart operates at the frequency of love. Not domesticated affection, not attachment, but something less conditioned. I attempted to isolate the pure “signal” of love, abstracted from any specific person, narrative, or memory. Stripped of biography, what remained was a quality — an open, non-defensive warmth without an object.

When attention stabilized on that signal, a powerful wave propagated through the chest. The experience was intense, almost overwhelming — a systemic surge rather than a localized sensation. The two presences no longer felt like interacting bodies, but like differentiated aspects within a single energetic configuration. If I saw her as a goddess, one might call it prayer. Operationally, it was resonance.

Weeks later, however, a structural asymmetry remained. From the heart downward the fusion felt coherent, but above that level it resembled a single organism with two cognitive centers. The question became almost technical: what human analogue corresponds to fusion at the level of the head?

The answer emerged through the eyes. In the inner representation, her eyes were the only sharply defined feature. In a brief, almost magical shift, I perceived a spark of joy there. The reaction was immediate: a powerful surge entered through my own visual field and flooded the head — not as sexuality, not as love, but as unfiltered joy.

The key realization was simple and destabilizing at once: her joy and my joy were not two events in exchange. They were the same event, perceived from different reference points. That was the missing parameter.

The Scaffold

I still wonder what truly happened. Against my own convictions, I undeniably perceived those eyes — as if something external were addressing me. The experience carried a persuasive realism that remains difficult to dismiss.

My working hypothesis remains conservative: this was likely a biological interface through which the nervous system metabolized intensity. Regardless of its ontological status, the temporary assumption of duality — myself and the goddess — proved operationally effective. Using imagery as an energetic interface functioned as a scaffold, a provisional structure that allowed the system to stabilize and reorganize under conditions of high charge. Once integration was achieved, the scaffold was no longer necessary.

Years later, that dual framing dissolved on its own. There was no goddess and no separate self, only a unified process without internal division — at least at the level of experience. But that development belongs to another discussion.

Where Attention Goes, Qi Flows

For years, the core of my practice was a simple, powerful rule: where attention goes, Qi flows. My conscious mind (Shen) was the driver, and my intent was the fuel. This active guidance—what the classics call Martial Fire (武火, Wǔ Huǒ)—is essential for building the foundation. It’s how I ‘lit the boiler’ and ‘laid the tracks.’

But then, something shifts. The pressure builds. The flow becomes self-sustaining. At that point, the most profound skill is knowing when to stop driving and become a passenger. This is the transition to Civil Fire (文火, Wén Huǒ), where Qi begins to guide Shen.

This principle is summarized by the Neidan maxim:

‘始则汞投铅，终则铅投汞’
This can be translated as: “First, Mercury is cast into Lead; later, Lead is cast into Mercury.”

Here, Mercury represents the swift, mobile attention of Shen, which can move like quicksilver to any area of the body. Lead represents the denser, more substantial Qi. In the early stages, attention (Mercury) is directed to a specific area to attract and guide the energy (Lead). But later, the roles reverse: the Qi moves on its own, and awareness simply follows it to the areas where it is stirring.

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The Phase of Martial Fire: Shen Guides Qi

The Tool: Forceful, directed intention. I am the architect and the laborer, building the circuit piece by piece.

The Goal: To break through blockages, ignite circulation, and accumulate a critical mass of refined Qi—or, in neurobiological terms, to train the neural pathways that generate the sensation of Qi.

The Feeling: Effort, focus, specific sensations at specific points. It’s like pumping water uphill.

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The Tipping Point: The System Ignites

This is the moment my practice “came alive.” The refined Qi reaches a critical density—or, expressed neurologically, the neural pathways achieve a self-sustaining level of activation—where it no longer needs to be pushed. It begins to move on its own, like a pressurized fluid seeking the path of least resistance through the body. I first perceived this after three years of unwittingly practicing a form of Tantric sex, when a sensation spontaneously crawled up my spine—an experience some traditions refer to as “spontaneous kundalini.” The sensation then evolves from a localized stream into a pervasive, full-body hum or flow after years of patient practice.

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The Phase of Civil Fire: Qi Guides Shen

The Tool: Effortless awareness; “listening” instead of “commanding.” My role is to get out of the way, to provide a calm, stable “container” for the process.

The Goal: To allow the Qi to purify, integrate, and illuminate the entire system without the interference of the ego-mind.

The Feeling: Spontaneous movements, waves of energy, a sense of being moved rather than moving. The mind becomes quiet, carried by the flow of Qi.

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The signals of the body

Trying to pull when it was not necessary felt like trying to suck a viscous liquid through a flexible straw, the walls just collapsed and blocked the flow. But even when using civil fire there was a warning. Qi rushed in or out on its own, but when there was a big surge in the flow the body reacted with a kind of hiccup, a contraction that stopped it, as if saying that it was too much or too early. I took this signal as a confirmation that I was on the right track, but I had to be a bit less impatient.

In later stages I found a strange signal, this time it seemed not a warning but an acknowledgement. At that time, the task consisted in letting the energy flow from all directions, permeating wider and wider areas. The feeling of progress was the extension of perception covering a wider area, feeling it as a single entity, and/or the increase of smoothness of the flow, from air to ether. Then, with a remarkable correlation, a drop of fluid fell from the palate to my mouth. The Buddhist concept of amrita came to my mind, but as I understood it, it was supposed to be a kind of magic elixir that enhanced the flow or something like that, but this was not the case, as the enhancement came before and the drop fell after. Anyway, I took this again as a confirmation that I was on the right track.

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The Overlap: Wielding Both Fires

The journey isn’t a linear ladder but a dynamic dance. Even after entering the phase of Civil Fire, I still encounter new, under-trained areas. The rules don’t change forever; I just gain more tools: I use Martial Fire to target a newly discovered, resistant node (like the ones I found in my neck), and Civil Fire to allow the now-smoothed flow to permeate the entire system and reconnect.

I become a skilled artisan, knowing when to use the hammer and when to use the brush. The ultimate goal is to fluidly transition between them, allowing the system’s own needs to dictate the method.

The greatest shift in my practice was not learning a new technique, but learning a new relationship with the energy itself—from being a master who commands to a steward who cooperates. I found this necessity when Qi gained momentum and I saw that my initial, directive approach had become counterproductive. If I felt Qi wanted to move inward and I willed an absorption, or outward and I willed an expulsion, that very intention seemed to block the flow, creating pressure. I discovered that the best thing to do was often… nothing. Just watch.

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Wuwei: Not Just Doing Nothing

This seems to be the essential message of the Daoist concept Wuwei (无为 – “Effortless Action”), as opposed to Youwei (有为 – “Deliberate Action”). I discovered this concept before I encountered the terms for Civil and Martial Fire, and it points to the same truth.

At first, I thought, “Fantastic! Now I just sit back and do nothing.” But this was far from reality. My previous practice of guiding Qi with intention—absorbing or radiating, but without conscious thought—had trained my body to react instinctively. While this was a necessary stage, the result was that my body now automatically tried to do something, creating blockages. So, for me, this “doing nothing” became a struggle to tame my body’s own instinctive, trained reactions.

My new, “active” intention was not to command the Qi, but to maintain an unwavering attention on the areas where it surged and to simply yield, yield, yield.

This transition to effortless awareness is not an irreversible state. The real art is knowing when to strive and when to simply allow.

With practice, I could feel the sensation at one point and then “move” it to the next simply by shifting my attention. However, as soon as my focus left the first point, the sensation there would vanish. I could only ever feel one active node at a time.

It felt like learning to flex a single, isolated muscle while the rest of the body remained inert. If this were the limit of the practice, I began to wonder whether the entire endeavor was worthwhile. The sensation itself was profound, but this fragmented perception felt incomplete.

From Points to Polarity: The First Breakthrough

My first systematic exploration focused on the Microcosmic Orbit. Initially, I simply passed my attention from node to node along the Du Mai, watching the sensation bloom and then fade behind me like a light being switched on and off.

The breakthrough came with the idea of making one node exhale (radiate, yang) while the next inhaled (absorbed, yin). This not only revealed the second polarity of the sensation but also showed me that I could focus on two points simultaneously and make them interact.

Still, managing two points felt like a rudimentary skill. I suspected that the real challenge was to feel the entire length of the Du Mai at once, from tailbone to crown—to perceive the line, not just the dots.

Neural Inertia and the Spinning Plates Analogy

To explore this, I devised a simple technique: rapid, rhythmic shifting of attention. Starting at the tailbone, I would move to the sacrum. The sensation at the tailbone faded, but not completely. Moving next to the Ming Men, the sacrum dimmed, yet a faint echo remained.

Crucially, when I cycled my attention back to the tailbone, I found it was not starting from zero. A residual hum of activity persisted—a kind of neural afterglow that required only a moment of focused attention to reignite fully. The same was true for each point in the sequence.

At least phenomenologically, I had discovered that neural activation seemed to have inertia. It didn’t vanish the instant attention moved elsewhere; it decayed gradually, like a spinning top losing speed.

The process became analogous to a circus act involving spinning plates. One plate is set spinning, then the next, and the performer must keep returning to each before it falls. By cycling my attention rapidly among multiple points—returning to each before its “spin” fully decayed—I learned to sustain the sensation in three, then four, then many nodes at once.

Gradually, the individual points began to blend. The discrete flashes of sensation merged into a continuous, humming line of awareness. I was no longer jumping from point to point; I was holding the entire channel in a sustained, coherent state of activation.

Lateral Integration in the Macrocosmic Orbit

This process unfolded over extended practice and overlapped with my exploration of the Macrocosmic Orbit. Here, the configuration was different: multiple vertical lines instead of one. There was not a single line to explore in the front and back, as happened in the MCO, now the lines came in pairs, with bilateral symmetry, so I adopted a different strategy.

Rather than focusing on a single vertical channel, I worked laterally. I would activate a point on the left side until it gained intensity, then shift my attention to the corresponding point on the right until the sensation matched. By oscillating attention rhythmically between the two, I learned to sustain both simultaneously.

This revealed a synergy that my earlier practice had not. Activating opposing lateral nodes generated a powerful, distinct sensation in the midline of the body—a feeling I could never access by working with vertical channels in isolation.

The Emergence of a Central Axis

In the torso, this effect was particularly striking. The structure that emerged—two lateral lines with a stronger central sensation arising between them—vividly reminded me of the yogic triad of Ida, Pingala, and Sushumna.

My simple technique of shifting attention from left to right seemed to capture the functional essence behind the symbolic crisscrossing of Ida and Pingala in traditional diagrams, a feature that had puzzled me for a long time.

The next experiment followed naturally. I applied the same principle to the original vertical pair: the Du Mai (back) and the Ren Mai (front). Focusing simultaneously on opposing nodes along these channels produced the same kind of synergistic effect. The central sensation that emerged closely resembled what Daoist texts describe as the Chong Mai, or Thrusting Channel.

In that moment, the two systems—Ida–Pingala–Sushumna and Du Mai–Ren Mai–Chong Mai—appeared less like separate maps and more like complementary descriptions of the same underlying mechanism: the generation of a central axis through the balanced activation of opposites.

From Lines to Segments

This realization opened a new line of inquiry. My torso map did not consist of four vertical lines, but eight. Having observed the effects of activating just two opposing points, the next question became unavoidable: what would happen if all eight points at a single horizontal level could be activated simultaneously?

If all components were present, there had to be a way for them to function as a unified whole. The linear structure of channels was compelling, but this emerging segment-based organization—achieved through the integration of isolated nodes—seemed far more powerful. That realization marked the transition to the next phase of exploration.

Once the Macrocosmic Orbit opened, I used the same approach that worked with the Microcosmic Orbit: moving my attention along the lines and mapping the energy nodes where the sensation naturally strengthened.

The choice of focus points was straightforward in the head and torso. I used nodes at the same heights as those in the Microcosmic Orbit. Now, instead of two nodes at each level, there were eight.

I had no references for where to focus my attention in the arms, so I chose levels that roughly corresponded to those in the torso: Shoulders aligned with Vishuddha, mid–upper arms with Anahata, elbows with Manipura 2 (diaphragm), mid–forearms with Manipura 1 (navel), wrists with Swadhisthana and fingers with Muladhara. For the legs, I chose similar locations: where they join the torso, mid-thighs, knees, mid-calves, ankles, and toes.

A System of Rings Instead of Single Chakras

Overall, this created a system of 15 distinct levels from toes to crown. I would consider each level a genuine “chakra,” with the crucial difference that it wasn’t a single node at the spine, as described in many Buddhist texts, but a ring of eight nodes (or even sixteen from perineum to shoulders, if including the arm nodes).

The figures show the approximate location of each line and node: Du Mai and Ren Mai in yellow, the lateral lines in blue, the front-left and front-right lines in green, and the back-left and back-right lines in red.

The connecting lines are meant only to illustrate the grid-like structure; they do not imply that the sensation must move sequentially from one node to the next. Attention can jump between non-adjacent nodes—something I did routinely long before I discovered the two uncharted chakras at the base of the tongue and the nose.

Naturally, this map reflects my own estimation of where to place attention along the pathways that revealed themselves when the Macrocosmic Orbit opened. It worked for me, but other approaches might have led to similar results. With hindsight, and considering how the sensation evolved, I would say that moving attention—and therefore the sensation—from one point to another is not a ritual in which order or exact location are crucial. The principle behind the orbit is simply to train the neural circuitry so the sensation can spread throughout the whole body, until the different nodes eventually merge into a single field.

Orbits are highly efficient because they train each region in turn, reducing the risk of leaving blind spots that later appear as obstructions when the energy attempts to permeate the entire body.

The Role of the Tongue

Furthermore, the Ren Mai had two branches: one at the tongue and one at the penis. I had read in several Daoist texts that the Du Mai runs up from the tailbone to the head and down to the base of the nose, while the Ren Mai ends at the base of the tongue. These texts instruct the practitioner to place the tip of the tongue against the upper gums or soft palate to “close the circuit,” supposedly interrupted by the mouth.

In practice, however, once I discovered the two uncharted nodes in this area, the sensation moved freely through the chin. Therefore, I did not use the tongue bridge and instead understood the Du Mai as running from the tailbone to the upper back of the head, and the Ren Mai from the upper front of the head to the perineum, including the two branches.

This is not to say the tongue is irrelevant—it required careful attention at a later stage. As happens with the penis, it is a very good conductor of the sensation. In Tantric sex, the feeling clearly flowed from the branching point at the perineum through the two nodes at the base and the tip, and moreover, when the tip touched the cervix it was like closing a circuit—the feeling flowed with remarkable intensity from my body to my partner’s and vice versa, suggesting some form of communication between our nervous systems that did not rely on direct synaptic contact.

The same happens with the tongue: the sensation passes from the tip to the gums when they make contact. And, to add another similarity, the tongue feels swollen when the sensation flows through it.

The Map and the Territory

This map is not a prescription. It reflects one practitioner’s attempt to navigate a territory that resists standardization. What mattered was not the exact location of each node, but the gradual emergence of a system — one that trained the neural circuitry until the sensation could spread freely, without gaps or obstructions. The geometry of rings was a scaffold, not a destination.

Recognizing the Familiar Sensation

When I first experienced the sensation in my spine, my initial surprise and perplexity gave way to a realization: it was the same sensation I felt in Tantric sex, but manifesting in new locations—a male orgasm, an outward flow. To maintain and enhance it, I had to do the same thing I did with my partner: let it flow, as if something—what one might call Qi—was radiating outward from each node I was exploring.

However, while practicing the Microcosmic Orbit (MCO), I discovered another strategy that seemed more productive. If the goal was to move the sensation with my attention and intention from one node to the next, it seemed logical that the origin node should radiate while the destination node simultaneously absorbed. I knew how to “exhale” or radiate, but how does one make a point on the spine “inhale”?

Negative Pressure and the Logic of “Inhaling” Qi

It seemed to involve creating a kind of vacuum in the receiving node. The most obvious way to achieve this, it seemed to me, was to apply the same intention of creating negative pressure that I used when contracting the perineum—just the intention, since there was no actual muscle to contract there. And it worked.

Interestingly, perineal contraction is a yoga technique I had seen mentioned on forums, the so-called Mula Bandha. Given the results I obtained, it appears precisely designed for this purpose. The irony is that those who championed it as an essential practice were often the same people who rejected physical sensations as a distraction from the noble goal of purely mental meditation. Funny how that works.

A Milestone: Holding Two Points at Once

The truth is, with this strategy I achieved what I later recognized as a major milestone. On one hand, I learned to focus my attention not on a single point, but on two points simultaneously—a key step toward integrating isolated nodes into a unified system. And crucially, I discovered the other polarity, having until then only experienced the radiant, masculine one. The sensation of absorption was as pleasurable as radiating, but directed inward.

This was exactly how my female partners described their orgasms. Moreover, the sensation I felt when absorbing closely resembled the experience of breathing air after a long apnea, or drinking water after a torrid walk. This subtle body was sending me the same signals my physical body uses when receiving something vitally necessary, like air or water. Since it seemed unlikely that my body would betray me by making me perceive something harmful as necessary, I became convinced that this absorption could not be damaging but was, on the contrary, beneficial. With this confidence, I advanced in my practice without hesitation.

Understanding Embryonic Breathing (胎息 Tāixī)

The outcome was the discovery of what Daoist texts call “Embryonic Breathing” (胎息 Tāixī)—breathing Qi in a manner analogous to how we breathe air. This is supposedly what an embryo does in the womb. It implies the concept of something entering (Yin) and leaving (Yang) the organism: we absorb Qi like oxygen and expel something analogous to CO₂, or something we don’t need or is even harmful.

This parallel can lead to misunderstandings. When the texts speak of “breathing,” what is usually understood as pulmonary respiration often refers to this other type of breathing—one less accessible because the initial requirement is the ability to feel (not imagine) the flow of Qi.

Beyond Alternation: When Yin and Yang Merge

And what I discovered much later is that understanding these flows as a breath similar to pulmonary respiration overlooks a crucial detail: there is nothing physical flowing. Therefore, it is possible to “inhale” and “exhale” simultaneously—something impossible in terms of lung breathing but entirely feasible with Qi.

Ultimately, even the apparent alternation between Yin and Yang begins to lose its rigidity. By understanding the mechanics of embryonic breathing, absorption and radiation no longer feel like sequential phases, but like aspects of a single, simultaneous process.”

That possibility — counterintuitive yet technically reproducible — deserves a closer examination.