Soul Retrieval
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I know this is going to be abit unacceptable to some on the forum. But i am interested also in the practice of soul-retrieval. I was wondering if anyone here has any experience in this and also any comments is welcome.
Soul retrieval is also practised in Tibetan Buddhism and also under Bon tradition. It is probably practised in all the indigenious traditions and is also, i believe, related to the lungta teachings in the Shambhala teachings under Chogyam Trungpa.
I am interested in this for several reasons. The uprise of depression, lack of courage to face one's life, fear, weakness due to traumas and emotional breakdowns, and disconnection from nature (especially in cities) in the course of our lives is getting very prevalent nowadays. It has resulted in many disspirited kind of behavior like escaping from life, feeling suicidal, feeling depressed and pessimistic about life, anti-social, lack of well-being, warmth and inner strength and so forth. Many young people are well into this kind of disspirited behavior which leads to many disturbing patterns in society, like certain mental problems, addictions, violence, lack of empathy, social-passivity etc. i personally attribute these disturbing patterns to a possible loss of life-force and soul, This has long-term repercussions on our health which may lead to more serious and chronic illnesses later.
Please note that i am not going against the ultimate teachings of Buddhism in terms of selflessness and emptiness. I am just inquiring into this method of benefitting people on the temporal basis so that they can get themselves together. It has been utilised in many other spiritual traditions including Tibetan Buddhism.
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Not familiar with it. Do you have experiences to share?
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I never hear such a thg in tibetant buddhisim before. and in buddhist even in tibetant there is not soul how to have soul retrieval?
Maybe can you descript it more in detail?
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i'm not sceptical, when it comes to Tibetan Buddhism. tantra is one example.
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Originally posted by sinweiy:
i'm not sceptical, when it comes to Tibetan Buddhism. tantra is one example.
i blur, what do you mean? -
Soul Retrieval: An Interview with Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche
In this edited excerpt from an interview published in Voice of Clear Light, February 2008, Geshe Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche discusses the ancient Bon practice of soul retrieval.
Voice of Clear Light: Are soul retrieval and life-force retrieval two separate practices? How are these two connected?
Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche: The text I will be teaching from has two parts: soul retrieval (la gu) and life-force retrieval(tse gu). These two factors are distinct, but they are integrally related. Somehow, the soul appears to serve as a deeper foundation of the life force. If the soul is healed, the life force is strong. If the soul is damaged, the life force declines.
VOCL: In the Bon tradition, what is the meaning of soul?
TWR: One way to look at your soul is as your spiritual essence: that which is fed by the activity of virtue. Another way we can look at the soul is as a balance of the five natural elements of earth, water, fire, wind and space at a very subtle level. In the Tibetan spiritual traditions, this balance of the characteristics of all five elements equates to one's spiritual essence.
In one individual, all five elements may be in balance. Another individual may naturally have a lot of fire in their personality, more so than other people. Yet, within each element there is always some level of the four other elements; for example, the fire element is comprised of space fire, air fire, earth fire, and so on. So, even someone with a fiery personality can have a healthy balance of the elements.
However, sometimes we can lose this balance because of negative karmic ripening; because of long-term pain, conflict, stress or tension; or because of lack of skill in dealing with situations that arise in our lives. When one faces more than one is able to digest or deal with, when it becomes too much, it begins to damage the individual. It does not necessarily affect your physical health right away, but it may affect your personality, your mood, or in a deeper sense, the emotions and thoughts that arise from that imbalance of the elements.
Someone with a lot of fire may normally have a sense of joy, of creativity, of enthusiasm, while still maintaining some sense of stability from the earth element and flexibility from the air element, for example. But when there is an imbalance of the elements, the person will not feel the same. They may feel unhappy, with no desire to do things, and no energy. If they live too long with that imbalance, over time they may become physically ill.
In the soul retrieval practice the practitioner can retrieve the elemental essences they need by connecting with nature, with the forces of time, with the forces of the enlightened refuge tree, of the healing spirits, of the support of the community of practitioners, of one's individual wishes, of ritual, of mantra — through all those things, formally or informally the practitioner is able to retrieve the qualities.
Sometimes we may be hit with a challenge, and before we can deal with it we are hit by another challenge. When there is a constant onslaught, we may feel like we can't cope anymore. As we are engaged with one problem, other deeper issues come to hurt us internally, and there is a pervasive imbalance of energy. When this cycle persists, soul retrieval is very necessary.
If you are deeply affected by a big shock or trauma that happens in your life, it will be because of the accumulation of past imbalances.
It is important when coming to these retreats not to think you are coming only to learn something in order to help yourself, or to come only because you work in a healing profession. Of course, you can come for those reasons, but most important, every now and then, you should attend a retreat like this to retrieve the qualities you need and help put yourself back on track. Internally, spiritually, energetically, you are coming back to that place where you are a healthy, balanced person.
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Originally posted by An Eternal Now:
Not familiar with it. Do you have experiences to share?
i have been working with this aspect all along. But i did not realise it.
One of the effects of soul-retrieval (SR) is that one feels more grounded, at home in the body, more present in the now and everything more vibrant and alive.
IMO, there are many methods of soul-retrieval, some of them are not called soul-retrieval but serves the same function. IMO, meditation has some soul-retrieving function too. Psychotherapy, other psychological therapies would have such functions too. Maybe even bodywork.
But these methods are not direct and therefore slower. For modern people, the damage has accumulated deeply so a direct method will be more effective. For other native spiritualities, SR is a integral part of life. It is often done and especially to prepare one for facing challenging times and post-challenging times. eg, i read somewhere that it is done in Thailand though under other names and now bordering on superstition due to modern thinking intracks. So for the older people, they have this done and any loss is quickly healed. But for modern people the accumulative damage is quite severe in different cases and they do not even know.
Chronic sicknesses, psychosis, neurosis, addiction to sex/ violent sex, promiscuity, violence, withdrawal, lack of confidence, low self-esteem, taking drugs, attention deficit, alcoholism, bad terms with family, no self-love, lack of appreciation for the basic joys of life etc etc all these can be pointing to presence of such a damage. Zongsar Rinpoche has also pointed to such phenomenon as linked to the damage to one's tigle, inner essence.
For those who want to come into Dharma, IMO such issues have to be worked out alongside. I think it was like that for my own case-history. Or else, you may potentially waste alot of time and go very hard for liberation but leave a wide gap of the whole array of issues unaddressed and therefore your dharma is very split and unable to integrate. Eg. on one end, you may be a very externally dharmic person, in the shadows are some things else. A kind of lopsided approach which may delay true progress and realisation.
It is like a first step of clearing the initial blockages first, before facing the more fundamental issues. Other experienced practitioners have also commented, there are people for whom the methods of dharma will not work and be effective because they have so many psychological issues / traumas that distract and obstruct them. Eg. Lama Palden Drolma who did a 3 year retreat under Kalu Rinpoche also speaks of other amelioriative therapies that can help people to solve their neurosis on a more temporary level, alongside with the practice of dharma for the sake of liberation.
I don't know. These are just my ideas. Anyone please comment.
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I can share some information of what I know about the causes of soul fragmentations.
There are three types of soul fragmentation that I know of.
1. A complete individualized soul emerged from God/Source as a pure light being (7D). In order to explore the lower realms, each soul can fragment and divides itself similar to a process of a normal celluar division, except that souls normally divides into twelves instead of twos. Each of these "fallen" souls descends into the lower realms such as Earth to incarnate as a physical being. (Note: Most of your individualized energy still stays in the 7th dimension, or Crown Chakra)
To over-simplify the process, just imagine a mothership sending out scouts ships to explore the outer worlds. When all the scouts ship has learned all it desires (completed karma), all will return back to the mothership (complete soul integration).
The whole Dynamics of Soul Evolution is too complex for my human mind to understand so I suggest we skip this section 1 and move zoom in to the more practical sections.
2. Upon phyiscal death, some parts of the soul returns to the spiritual realms and some do not. If the particular lifetime was rather traumatic, where the soul experienced dramatic suffering, the soul fragments may wander in the astral realm and seek to attach itself to other souls that are in embodiment. In this case, you have what we call ghosts or astral entities that may attach or totally possess another incarnated soul. If the incarnated soul which the soul fragment is attached to is not the rightful owner, this is known as entity attachment. If the particular lifetime was quite complete and there was not much trauma, the soul fragment will be able to move on quickly, go back up and join its higher parts, do some re-evaluation and planning, then come back down for another reincarnation.
This information is accurate as far as I am concerned. Personally, one of the task I must do in this lifetime is to collect back my past lives soul fragments and continue to resolve my past lives karmic issues (or unfinished business). My advice: When integrating your past life soul fragments, be mentally prepared that you may experience some really negative emotions such as (fear/anger/sadness) for some "unknown" reasons. Actually, all negative emotions has a root cause, until you can recall/trace back to your past, it is almost impossible to understand why you experience such negative emotions for "no reason".
3. Another type of soul fragmentation occurs with people or places that you are attached/attracted to. For example, when you visit a beautiful place where you attracted/attached to, you will leave a part of youself there energetically. After a while, the energy dissipates and returns to the soul but in certain cases where emotional attachment is present, this will not be the case.
As a human being emotionally attached to another human being, you may embed a part of your soul in the that person's auric field and end up causing/creating more soul fragments from yourself. And if that person who received your soul fragments is very possessive and dominating, it may end up taking your soul fragments and not giving you back voluntarily. This is what we call "energy vampires", which are souls that take energy of other souls and hide it within themselves in the hope that it will somehow give them more energy and power, when in reality, they are stealing/draining others energy and putting them into their own auric field.
There is a website recommended to me by simpo_, you may want to read up for more info http://www.soul-healer.com/map/ .
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I thought Buddha said no self hence no soul. the belief in a soul is as old as belief in god. believing in a soul is a fallacy, same with the concept of god. there is no such thing as you, me or Buddha, hence where is the soul to begin with?
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If you do not like the word "soul", just rename it as your "buddha-nature". For people who has multi-dimensional vision, they will see it as "aura" as "spiritual essence" or "energetic signature" so it not accurate to say that people has no "buddha-nature". We are just using different words which has similar meanings.
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conventional truth is body, me, you self. for ultimate truth, no such thing as you or me or Buddha nature.
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For those who are open-minded, the following two videos shall be an eye-opener.
Scientist photographed soul leaving the body in death 1st part http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDmivrnktkQ
Scientist photographed soul leaving the body in death 2nd part http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQ4a_Gu49SA
GDV/EPC scientific http://www.gdvplanet.com/science
After watching the two above videos, allow me to be the first one to welcome you to your "new reality".
With love and joy,
SoulDivine
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Originally posted by Jacky Woo:
I thought Buddha said no self hence no soul. the belief in a soul is as old as belief in god. believing in a soul is a fallacy, same with the concept of god. there is no such thing as you, me or Buddha, hence where is the soul to begin with?
There is no self. Soul in this sense, is more like life energies, comprised of the five subtler elements energies.
Geshe Tenzin Wangyal above states:
Another way we can look at the soul is as a balance of the five natural elements of earth, water, fire, wind and space at a very subtle level. In the Tibetan spiritual traditions, this balance of the characteristics of all five elements equates to one's spiritual essence.
When we look into the 'soul', there is also no substantiality and no independent existence. This is not against the Buddha's doctrine but just a kind of terminology.
In Tibetan Buddhism, there is a subtle mind and breath that goes on to the next life, but that is also not inherently existent. It will continue samsara and delusion and has to be purified.
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Originally posted by SoulDivine:
I can share some information of what I know about the causes of soul fragmentations.
There are three types of soul fragmentation that I know of.
1. A complete individualized soul emerged from God/Source as a pure light being (7D). In order to explore the lower realms, each soul can fragment and divides itself similar to a process of a normal celluar division, except that souls normally divides into twelves instead of twos. Each of these "fallen" souls descends into the lower realms such as Earth to incarnate as a physical being. (Note: Most of your individualized energy still stays in the 7th dimension, or Crown Chakra)
To over-simplify the process, just imagine a mothership sending out scouts ships to explore the outer worlds. When all the scouts ship has learned all it desires (completed karma), all will return back to the mothership (complete soul integration).
The whole Dynamics of Soul Evolution is to complex for my human mind to understand so I suggest we skip this section 1 and move zoom in to the more practical sections.
2. Upon phyiscal death, some parts of the soul returns to the spiritual realms and some do not. If the particular lifetime was rather traumatic, where the soul experienced dramatic suffering, the soul fragments may wander in the astral realm and seek to attach itself to other souls that are in embodiment. In this case, you have what we call ghosts or astral entities that may attach or totally possess another incarnated soul. If the incarnated soul which the soul fragment is attached to is not the rightful owner, this is known as entity attachment. If the particular lifetime was quite complete and there was not much trauma, the soul fragment will be able to move on quickly, go back up and join its higher parts, do some re-evaluation and planning, then come back down for another reincarnation.
This information is accurate as far as I am concerned. Personally, one of the task I must do in this lifetime is to collect back my past lives soul fragments and continue to resolve my past lives karmic issues (or unfinished business). My advice: When integrating your past life soul fragments, be mentally prepared that you may experience some really negative emotions such as (fear/anger/sadness) for some "unknown" reasons. Actually, all negative emotions has a root cause, until you can recall/trace back to your past, it is almost impossible to understand why you experience such negative emotions for "no reason".
3. Another type of soul fragmentation occurs with people or places that you are attached/attracted to. For example, when you visit a beautiful place where you attracted/attached to, you will leave a part of youself there energetically. After a while, the energy dissipates and returns to the soul but in certain cases where emotional attachment is present, this will not be the case.
As a human being emotionally attached to another human being, you may embed a part of your soul in the that person's auric field and end up causing/creating more soul fragments from yourself. And if that person who received your soul fragments is very possessive and dominating, it may end up taking your soul fragments and not giving you back voluntarily. This is what we call "energy vampires", which are souls that take energy of other souls and hide it within themselves in the hope that it will somehow give them more energy and power, when in reality, they are stealing/draining others energy and putting them into their own auric field.
There is a website recommend to me by simpo_, you may want to read up for more info http://www.soul-healer.com/map/ .
Thank you Souldivine. I will look into that site.
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Originally posted by Dharmadhatu:
Thank you Souldivine. I will look into that site.
I have looked into the site, but it does not quite resonate with me.
Thank you for your suggestions anyway.
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Hi,
I think, Soul retreival as a term is quite misleading. IMO, this process is about reconnecting with disconnected energies from the subtle energy forms. These energies can be in elemental forms that consists of personalities or rather mental tendencies.
Still, i think can be a tricky and dangerous practice. Before i came back to Buddhism, i was experimenting with more new age stuff. I have an experience of dark-force entity interference pretending to be soul retreival. One got to be very careful. That episode of attack last for an entire month 24/7. Hellish and no fun ..
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Originally posted by SoulDivine:
If you do not like the word “soul”, just rename it as your “buddha-nature”. For people who has multi-dimensional vision, they will see it as “aura” as “spiritual essence” or “energetic signature” so it not accurate to say that people has no “buddha-nature”. We are just using different words which has similar meanings.
Hi Souldivine,
Sorry to say that but it is incorrect to use the word 'Buddha-nature' to refer to energies term for soul retreival here. Buddha-nature is pure awareness.
In the case here, the word soul part/pieces refers to subtle energies of vibrations beyond physical frequency range.
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Originally posted by "newbie":
i blur, what do you mean?
mean i'm not surprise./\
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Originally posted by SoulDivine:
If you do not like the word “soul”, just rename it as your “buddha-nature”. For people who has multi-dimensional vision, they will see it as “aura” as “spiritual essence” or “energetic signature” so it not accurate to say that people has no “buddha-nature”. We are just using different words which has similar meanings.
if your notion is equal to Eternalism, than it's not similar to Buddhism./\
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Hi,
Just a sharing and certainly open to possible discrepencies :)
I also read up a little bit about the 5 elements and also Chinese astrology and Bazi. TheTibetan 5 element and the Chinese 5 Element is slightly different. In the Tibetan system, there is an element of Space, of which there is no Chinese equvalent... and the Chinese element make a distinction of one of the Tibetan element into 2 different aspects.
Nevertheless, if a persons chart is very balanced with regards to the elements, the life experience will be generally smooth without much up and down (apart from larger forces at work that can overide the individual elemental composition). These elements and their interplay are reflective of one's karmic tendences and potential karma manifestation (ripening).
IMO, what is useful about understanding the element composition is that it is reflective of our personality or karmic tendencies. For example, if a persons composition has too much Earth, then the personality may become more stubborn and less receptive to changes. If a person's natal chart has a lot of water, then he/she may be more emotional but also highly intelligent. By looking at the elemental composition, we can see what are our karmic habits and those are the areas that need to be worked on to clear the defilements.
These terms for the elements such as Earth, Fire, Water, Air (Wood in Chinese Astrology) are not literal. These are symbolic of dynamics that is roughly corresponding to the physical aspect that is being used to describe them. For example, the subtle expression of Earth is not physical Earth, etc.
The elements have higher and lower expressions. For example, the lower expression of Earth is stubbornness, difficulty in seeing from a different perspective, etc. The higher expression of Earth is stability of experience. The lower expression of Fire is anger, enthusiam. The higher expression of Fire is bliss.
In the most ideal situation, all the elements are fully balanced. Fully Enlightened Beings are said to have fully balanced elements operating in their highest expressions.
Most of us un-enlightened Beings are operating from the lower expressions of the elements.
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Originally posted by Jacky Woo:
I thought Buddha said no self hence no soul. the belief in a soul is as old as belief in god. believing in a soul is a fallacy, same with the concept of god. there is no such thing as you, me or Buddha, hence where is the soul to begin with?
if your notion is moving toward the corresponding of Nothingness, than it's not the right view of Buddhism too./\
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Originally posted by sinweiy:
if your notion is moving toward the corresponding of Nothingness, than it's not the right view of Buddhism too./\
did I imply its nothingness? emptiness is not nothingness
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Originally posted by simpo_:
Hi,
I think, Soul retreival as a term is quite misleading. IMO, this process is about reconnecting with disconnected energies from the subtle energy forms. These energies can be in elemental forms that consists of personalities or rather mental tendencies.
Still, i think can be a tricky and dangerous practice. Before i came back to Buddhism, i was experimenting with more new age stuff. I have an experience of dark-force entity interference pretending to be soul retreival. One got to be very careful. That episode of attack last for an entire month 24/7. Hellish and no fun ..
In the Bon tradition i think they utilise traditional goddesses of the elements.
For your experience, how did you manage to fend off that provocation in the end?
After realisation, would there still be entity attacks/attachments?
Do you seriously believe in the 'barriers are harmful' theory in that soul-healer site?
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Originally posted by simpo_:
Hi,
Just a sharing and certainly open to possible discrepencies :)
I also read up a little bit about the 5 elements and also Chinese astrology and Bazi. TheTibetan 5 element and the Chinese 5 Element is slightly different. In the Tibetan system, there is an element of Space, of which there is no Chinese equvalent... and the Chinese element make a distinction of one of the Tibetan element into 2 different aspects.
Nevertheless, if a persons chart is very balanced with regards to the elements, the life experience will be generally smooth without much up and down (apart from larger forces at work that can overide the individual elemental composition). These elements and their interplay are reflective of one's karmic tendences and potential karma manifestation (ripening).
IMO, what is useful about understanding the element composition is that it is reflective of our personality or karmic tendencies. For example, if a persons composition has too much Earth, then the personality may become more stubborn and less receptive to changes. If a person's natal chart has a lot of water, then he/she may be more emotional but also highly intelligent. By looking at the elemental composition, we can see what are our karmic habits and those are the areas that need to be worked on to clear the defilements.
These terms for the elements such as Earth, Fire, Water, Air (Wood in Chinese Astrology) are not literal. These are symbolic of dynamics that is roughly corresponding to the physical aspect that is being used to describe them. For example, the subtle expression of Earth is not physical Earth, etc.
The elements have higher and lower expressions. For example, the lower expression of Earth is stubbornness, difficulty in seeing from a different perspective, etc. The higher expression of Earth is stability of experience. The lower expression of Fire is anger, enthusiam. The higher expression of Fire is bliss.
In the most ideal situation, all the elements are fully balanced. Fully Enlightened Beings are said to have fully balanced elements operating in their highest expressions.
Most of us un-enlightened Beings are operating from the lower expressions of the elements.
In my thinking, there may also be a link between the five elements and the five dhyani buddha families and five wisdoms.
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Originally posted by Dharmadhatu:
In the Bon tradition i think they utilise traditional goddesses of the elements.
For your experience, how did you manage to fend off that provocation in the end?
After realisation, would there still be entity attacks/attachments?
Do you seriously believe in the 'barriers are harmful' theory in that soul-healer site?
In the Bon tradition i think they utilise traditional goddesses of the elements.
1. In the past, i followed new age soul retreival, dangerous and unreliable...
For your experience, how did you manage to fend off that provocation in the end?
2. The provocation die down on its own.
After realisation, would there still be entity attacks/attachments?
3. Initial Realisation is a different matter from entity attack. But it gives one the added confidence not to be that easily distracted. Don't think of it as anything different from a physical person abusing you.
Do you seriously believe in the 'barriers are harmful' theory in that soul-healer site?
4. Sorry can't find the barrier are harmful theory. I haven't read the site's content for a very long time. I suggested Souldivine to the site because i don't think he is ready or interested in real enlightenment path, but this info gives him something beneficial to work on that is more inline with his intended purpose. Once a person have understood no-self and emptiness, there are paradigm shifts that make these kind of work feels likes working with illusions... like bluffing oneself.