Reincarnation Energy

Reincarnation energy 轉世能量 is found in our chest cavities. It is energy associated with our past, accumulated through the choices we made. It is the stuff from our past that we don’t want to let go of. The funny thing is, it’s also mostly bad stuff… well, stuff we don’t like, anyway. The good stuff we let go of, the bad stuff we lock inside and pretend doesn’t exist.

One of the lessons I have learnt from Wang Liping is that whatever is in my life is my responsibility; I put it there through my previous choices. Every moment is just the way it is 就是這樣. This is Karma. The more we resist the things we don’t like, the more this energy builds up inside. Luckily we have internal alchemy. Internal alchemy is like one of those high-tech Dyson vacuum cleaners: it just sucks it all up. It might hurt at the time, but you sure feel clean afterwards.

A student once asked Wang Liping why neidan training can hurt so much. He said it’s because we are burning through our reincarnation energy. This is one of the primary goals of practice: to clean up all this stuff and get our life sorted. Generally, wherever we are blocked in life, it is because of our reincarnation energy. Clean it out and we move forward. Wang Liping says this is like creating a new self. It also benefits our children and the physical lineage we leave behind.

I read somewhere in an old Taoist text that forming the elixir will benefit 9 future generations. Forming the elixir takes some serious internal housekeeping, but once it is done, any children we have will benefit.

Cleaning up reincarnation energy is closely bound up with our parents. Our relationships with our parents condition our lives, and they are a result of reincarnation energy. Cleaning up these relationships allows us to process our reincarnation energy and offers us a powerful opportunity to create a new self. Not everything we receive from our parents is worth passing on; take what’s good, leave what’s bad. There is an indoor Dragon Gate practice called ting fu yi mu 聽父憶母 (lit. hearing your father and remembering your mother) that is one of the primary methods for working on our relationships with our parents. But that’s a discussion for another day.

Engaging with reincarnation energy really gets going when we begin working with the middle dantian and refining qi into shen. Women generally begin this part of the training before us chaps, which might explain why they begin working with the middle dantian first. That being said, we all have our own process. My sense is, don’t get hung up on the way the training should happen. For me it happened early on.

During my first intensive with Wang Liping I began having memories of trauma from my early childhood, and then of past lives. These memories manifested as visions that came up during neidan sessions. The first memory I had of a past life started as an indistinct image. At first I thought it was a trick of the eyes. Then the image opened up and I was fully engulfed by a vision, experienced through first-person perspective. After this an intense emotion associated with the drama of the scene washed over me. It was a bit overwhelming. I wept as the energy released from my body. I’m a bit of a sissy that way, but Wang Liping recommends that we let it out.

Wang Liping also recommends that when we see a vision, we see the whole thing. It might take a few sessions (or years) to see it all, but once we do, it loses its power over us. It is also helpful to write down the past lives and keep track of them. It’s amazing how the various lives are connected together. The more we can revisit and let go of the drama from the past, the freer we become now. This part of the training can take some time. It took Wang Liping 7 to 8 years. I am still working on it. But it is a lot of fun; it’s like watching a film (albeit a highly dramatic and often painful one). It is also a big step towards becoming a zhenren 真人. A zhenren is a person who has completed their past. They have gone through all their past lives and released all their reincarnation energy.

In my experience past-life regression can’t be forced, but there are methods for facilitating the process (Taoists have methods for everything). For me the visions started happening spontaneously when I began sitting with Wang Liping. Over time, though, I realized that sometimes I can jump-start them. Here is one method. Go into silent meditation (go deep), and then bring your awareness into the middle space. Once there, just wait and watch. The trick is, if you see an image, no matter how vague or indistinct, be open to it. Let it open up, let it unfold. But don’t force it either; you can’t make it happen. For me the experience begins with everything going very still, and then a rush of tingles races upwards through my body. Right after this the vision starts. Then just grab the metaphorical popcorn, sit back, and enjoy!