Now releasing Deciphering the Golden Flower One Secret at a Time by JJ Semple
Please welcome JJ Semple to the site, as we begin releasing his self-help book, Deciphering the Golden Flower One Secret at a Time:
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.
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March 31st, 2011 at 8:29 am
In your final sentence you said “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.”
Do you think anyone is going to be able to go deeper than him?
March 31st, 2011 at 10:37 am
Good question, Matt.
The difference is they studied the method; I practiced it. I think the difference will become apparent as you read/listen to the book. Inside-out as opposed to outside-in.
April 1st, 2011 at 12:51 pm
“…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.”
I love that! My “childhood accident” was living with an emotionally abusive parent for my formative years. I could have let the abuse ruin me but I chose rather to find a way to correct the damage caused by the “accident”. I believe my recovery is due to all the things mentioned in the book’s synopsis: serendipity, karma, and the removal of obstacles to my own self realization (most of which, by the way, resided within me).
April 2nd, 2011 at 10:48 am
Michael,
Some people have criticized this book, saying I didn’t include any real Golden Flower secrets. Au contraire, not only do I reveal how to use Golden Flower Meditation to activate Kundalini, I show the inexorability of how I was drawn toward the path of self-realization in spite of the effects of my accident and the self-destructive tendencies I acquired.
One thing I do regret is leaving the book and chapter citations out of the audiobook version so as not to interfere with the narrative. They are included in the print and eBook versions, of course.
I think the first citation in the book might resonate for you. “Self-realization begins at birth; it is the journey as much as it is the destination.” It is an apt description of the book.
June 13th, 2011 at 9:57 am
As a personal narrative — an autobiography — this was rather gripping and well written. As an introduction, or invitation, to meditative practices… it scared me. I have been fighting mental instability for a couple of decades now, and the description of how deep mortification of the flesh JJ had to suffer to gain enlightenment makes me almost convinced that I will suffer a rather final break if I attempt it. Also, I no longer have the patience (or mental endurance, if you feel kind) for years of practice before reward. However, the simplicity of the breathing meditation is enticing.
Mostly, I liked.