Consolidation and Sealing · 固本 · gu ben
Level 6: Withdrawal
隱 · yin
The practitioner must begin leaving ordinary life behind.
Description
The literature is consistent that at some point in the single digits, continued progress becomes incompatible with a normal householder existence. Two reasons are given. The first is practical: the hours required stop fitting around a job and a family. The second is stranger — that the accumulated charge becomes disruptive to be near, affecting the health, sleep, and temper of people in proximity, and that the friction of ordinary social life drains it faster than it can be replaced.
Chang's own teacher is variously reported to have reached around this region of the ladder. Chang himself remained a householder — he ran a business, had a family — and the literature treats this as the reason he did not progress faster, and as a deliberate choice on his part.
Practice
- No method published.
Signs and effects
- Attested only as a change in how the practitioner can live.
How it is tested
Unknown.
Obstacles
- The obvious one. Almost everyone stops here, and the sources treat stopping as reasonable rather than as failure.
Notes
- This is the point at which Mo Pai stops being a skill and starts being a life sentence, and it is worth noticing how conveniently it removes any further practitioner from observation.
Sources for this entry
- The Magus of Java — Kosta Danaos, Inner Traditions, 2000. The founding Western text.
- Community testimony — Forum archives, student accounts, and interviews from the 2000s–2010s.