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Deciphering the Golden Flower One Secret at a Time by JJ Semple
Non-Fiction
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JJ Semple doesn’t just wake up one day and say to himself, “I’m going to crack the coded mysteries in The Secret of the Golden Flower.” He starts life in the protected upper echelons of the Eastern Brahmin establishment. When a childhood accident robs him of his most precious talents — music and mathematics — both of which he is particularly gifted in, he succumbs to a long period of misadventure.
Paris 1970, a stranger gives him a copy of The Secret of the Golden Flower. After reading the book, he realizes that through serendipitous happenstance he has stumbled across the only way of correcting the effects of his childhood accident. This book is an extraordinary statement about the inevitability of karma and the obstacles to self-realization.
While Deciphering the Golden Flower One Secret at a Time is an interpretive companion piece to The Secret of the Golden Flower, it’s also a masterfully composed personal narrative. The author, JJ Semple shares his many years of first-hand practice with the sacred book’s meditation system. One-by-one, he reveals the techniques behind the book’s secrets, providing clear instructions on how to use them. Not even Richard Wilhelm, the translator, or Carl Gustav Jung, the famous psychologist, who wrote the original commentary to The Secret of the Golden Flower, were able to plumb the depths of this method.
"Semple’s narrative command might invoke the envy of a best-selling novelist. And his facility with the language, his ability to effortlessly (or so it seems, without effort) to find just the right word or expression to make his story vivid and engaging for the reader is highly admirable. Furthermore the prose is polished and very nicely edited. The book is pleasure to read and it reads fast."
~ Dennis Littrell/Amazon
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Chapters
Title Description Date Created Chapter 01: Accident
(10.86 MB)A boy is sent to boarding school at the age of five. Needless to say, it's a difficult adjustment. In his third year, he suffers an "accident" that gets him out of school, but he doesn't reckon on the more serious consequences to follow. Mar 29, 2011 Chapter 02: Consequences
(8.34 MB)The boy starts to realize that the accident has affected his growth, causing a decline in his talent for music and math. He tells his parents, but no one listens. His father takes him to Florida, where the cause of the accident — a splinter in his ankle — is discovered. Mar 29, 2011 Chapter 03: Stumbling
(6.38 MB)In high school, the boy ranks at the bottom of his class. He begins to accept his changed persona, resigned to the fact that he will never amount to much or excel at anything. Mar 29, 2011 Chapter 04: Failure
(20.05 MB)Falling into a bohemian subculture with arty friends, he becomes an outsider, disdainful of the conventional rules of behavior and achievement. His senior year, his mother, the last link to the truth about his accident, dies in an accident. As he gets set for college, he is more alone than ever. Mar 29, 2011 Chapter 05: Disintegration
(28.94 MB)He lasts only one year at the University of Pennsylvania. His father pushes him to join the Marine Corps, encounters an unfamiliar side of life. Mustered out, he continues to spiral out of control, failing at school, life, and relationships. Dabbles in drugs, alcohol, sex — all the vices of the sixties. Aware of his condition, he can't seem to find the cause or the cure. Goes to High Watch Farm, a rehab center in Connecticut. Mar 29, 2011 Chapter 06: Intuition
(34.67 MB)Leaving High Watch Farm, he returns to DC, where starts a film editing business. He meets a new girlfriend, Margo, Together they explore vegetarianism, Yoga, and playing Free Jazz. With money from film editing, they decide to travel through Europe. Before leaving, they visit his father in Connecticut. They backpack through Europe and North Africa, finishing up with a visit to the site of the Cumaean Sibyl near Naples, Italy, at which point, he tells Margo he wants to go to Paris to play jazz. Margo returns to the states. In Paris, he takes lessons with saxophonist Steve Lacy. Unable to master the lessons, he meets a girl in a bookstore, who gives him a copy of The Secret of the Golden Flower. Apr 5, 2011 Chapter 07: Renunciation
(20.08 MB)Now seriously into Golden Flower Meditation, he practices breathing exercises on long walks and meditates constantly. Little by little, his body begins to change as the meditation both stimulates and calms him. Understanding that he will make little progress in an urban environment like Paris, he seeks a place in the country to retire to. A friend recommends a small village in the south of France where he can continue his practice undisturbed. Apr 14, 2011 Chapter 08: Discovery
(15.64 MB)He moves into the house in the south of France, diligently practicing Yoga and meditation everyday. He discovers and applies the Backward-Flowing Method, a secret technique from The Secret of the Golden Flower, then uses the I-Ching to decide if he should continue with the Backward-Flowing Method. He meets a neighbor, Marc Bonet who agrees to help him if things get difficult. Some neighbors say he's going to die. He tells Marc to pay no attention; he's actually stronger than ever. Apr 14, 2011 Chapter 09: Surrender
(21.49 MB)Although he has never heard the word Kundalini, it's started to take over his Being, the inevitable effect of practicing The Backward-Flowing Method. It's a rough few weeks: fasting, sleeplessness, fatigue as the Kundalini climbs slowly toward the brain. When it gets bad, he becomes desperate, moving into Marc's house in village up the road. Marc and Celine take of him during the final explosion of the Kundalini into the crown chakra, and soon the healing effects of Kundalini take over. Apr 28, 2011 Chapter 10: Awakening
(16.25 MB)After a year's retreat in a remote region of Languedoc, our character decides to rejoin the world. He piles his worldly goods into a Renault Quatrelle and heads for Paris. Unable to find a hotel there, he stays with a friend in Bernay. She wants sex; he's not yet able. The Kundalini needs his Life Force Energy to repair his body and restore his health. May 9, 2011 Chapter 11: Adjustment
(16.56 MB)Upon dreaming about his father's illness, he returns to the US. When he debarks from the plane in Palm Beach, his father explains that he's had a stroke while lying on the beach. After driving his father to the mountains of North Carolina, he continues on to Washington, DC where he stays with his old roommate, Roper and his wife, Juanita. The three of them discuss traveling to India. The iChing warns against it, so he'll go alone. May 24, 2011 Chapter 12: Consolidation
(23.33 MB)He drives to the Paris suburbs to attend a send off for Swami Muktananda, asks the Guru about his Kundalini condition, but ends up in a discussion about whether the head can crack and/or reshape. After, he goes to a Bistro across the street to eat, meets Martine, a French girl who's investigating the veracity of spiritual practices. They begin living together. Martine encourages him to write about his experience and plans a trip to India so he can meet Gopi Krishna. Jun 6, 2011 Chapter 13: India
(21.79 MB)Martine and our hero land in Srinagar, Kashmir, where he meets and discusses Kundalini with Gopi Krishna. A few days later they set out via bus over the Himalayas to Ladakh, a Tibetan province of India. It's a difficult three day trip. Jun 21, 2011 Chapter 14: Relapse
(28.55 MB)As soon as Roper and Juanita arrive in Paris for a vacation, Martine and our hero whisk them away to their country house in Normandy. Roper helps with various construction projects. After they get back from vacation, our hero attends a stage (training program) on group dynamics and leadership. He sells out hi interest in the school and takes a job with a French computer company that tasks him with setting up a US branch. Jul 24, 2011 Chapter 15: Integration
(16.74 MB)After 35 years, Kundalini is on the brink of finally reengineering our hero's body. But just as it's about to happen he begins to have a problem with digestion and bowel, which causes the Kundalini to stall. He finally figures out that he needs to eat more raw foods. When he does, the raw foods diet clears his blockages and the Kundalini kicks into high gear. His reengineering is complete. Aug 10, 2011 Chapter 16: Prologue
(23.5 MB)When I started recording this audiobook, I found myself in a quandary; I wanted listeners to be able to get right into the narrative, but there was the prologue, to my mind, at least, a useful bit of information that situates my Kundalini experience in a larger context. What to do with it? I decided to stick after the last chapter. In a printed version, it's easy for the reader to skip over, come back to, and generally peruse the contents of a book before deciding whether an introduction, a foreword, or a prologue is worth plowing through. Not so with an audiobook. The listener is stuck with the order in which the work is recorded. Lead off with a prologue or other literary aside and you may lose the listener in the first paragraph. Given the vagaries of attention spans and tastes, it's hard enough when you start with the narrative, much less a well-intentioned interpretation of what the listener is about to encounter. In any case, I learned my lesson — a by-product of the Audiobook experience — and I solemnly vow never to write another book with a prologue. Sep 5, 2011 Chapter 17: Epilogue
(38.5 MB)Kundalini is a biological actuality. Because anyone, irrespective of religious affiliation, can practice it, Kundalini should be considered a biological process, albeit one not currently recognize by material science. The endocrine system existed long before scientists discovered. So too with various atomic structures, only recently discovered. Therefore, let's accept that there are still biological processes we don't know about, and Kundalini is one of them. The Epilogue describes the Golden Flower Meditation method. It's a big picture summation of my experience and the Kundalini activation tedchniques I stumbled across and eventually practiced with great success. Oct 24, 2011