Aqui wrote:Thank you very much, Appledog!
Sounds very interesting, could you tell me more about the spiritual aspects of your teachers teachings and about the effects they have? You can PM me if you don't want to discuss openly!
Thank you Bao for your post, I am looking neither for philosophical nor religious practice, neither of them produces (in my experience) real results.
As I said my philipino teacher could produce real graspable results, not just insights or realisations (though both are very important, just not what I am specifically looking for). So I am looking for methods to actually get results.
But that's what it is -- philosophy, philosophical and religious practice.
These things are like Yang Cheng Fu's 10 important points, or getting hundreds of "corrections" to your form over the years (decades). To a certain extent you need to go through this, there are aids and 'shortcuts' (good shortcuts) here, but in the end the result is exactly the same so it is incorrect to say that 'neither of them produces..' results. In your experience or not! In this case they didn't produce results for "you". This is one of the hardest lessons I had to learn which is where to put your trust, in the beginning it is very difficult, but the religious and philosophic practices I was taught definitely helped me figure out where to put my trust and why. As a result I was able to make several quantum leaps which I would not have been able to make otherwise.
Everyone's position and level is different and there is a general path up the mountain but there are also many side paths, shortcuts, ladders, and bridges. A good teacher will be able to find the correct methods for you to advance, a bad teacher will make you go up the long way. But all in all there are no mysterious or 'spiritual' skills of that nature, it all reduces to hard work and personal realizations, of which taking personal responsibility for yourself and your art is the biggest one.