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August 30, 2009

David Verdesi to teach in NYC November 2009

Miao Tong Dao
with Daoist Teacher David Verdesi
November 14-20, 2009

Dear Friends of the Dao,

Save these dates! November 14 - 19, 2009. You are invited to attend a special event in New York City with Daoist teacher David Shen Verdesi. We, David's students, have been urging him to teach in the U.S. for years and it's finally going to happen this year!

This comprehensive training is an opportunity to directly awaken to your true nature, the Dao. While closely related to Buddhist philosophy, this transmission draws on an ancient tradition that existed millennia before the Buddha Dharma was codified into a religion. The very same tradition made famous by the Daoist sage Laozi, author of the Dao Te Ching.

While the Dao Te Ching is considered central to Daoist philosophy, the unique teaching it points to remains a secret, not to be found in any book. Passed down through the ages from an unbroken line of liberated beings, without the bias of culture, race, creed, names and forms, it is a direct door to enlightenment.

To receive the direct transmission from a teacher who has awakened to the Dao is an opportunity to swiftly and directly awaken in this lifetime, a very rare thing in our modern day. David is such a teacher.

Individuals and students who study with David immediately recognize they are in the presence of someone who has mastered spiritual discipline to the highest degree. After decades of rigorous, diligent practice and the energetic transmissions of his master, David has gained the unique ability to directly activate the awakening process in students.

This powerful transmission is not binding in any way and is given in the spirit of a friend.

The seminar is open to the public. There is no prerequisite and participants are encouraged invite friends and colleagues by forwarding this info to anyone they feel would be interested.

"Lao Zi spoke, 'The Dao I teach is the Miao Xuan Tong Dao,' the Dao of the wondrous, ineffable and mysterious breakthrough that leads to Xi Ming, to penetrate - enlightenment."

Here's what Rene Navarro, Senior Universal Healing Tao instructor and 40 plus year martial arts and TCM veteran has to say about David:

"Scene: at an obscure hotel in Huangshan, Anhui, China. October 2007. We had gathered together and watched as David Verdesi was tested for Yin Yang Gong, the ability to emit an electrical current from his body. He wasn't successful at first, but after a couple of attempts, he was able to do it on 11 people. Yin Yang Gong is considered the 4th level in the tradition of the Lei Shan Dao/Thunder Path. It consists of mating the yin and yang in the dan tian. No other westerner has been able to do it, as far as is known. It was a very touching, and dramatic, moment for David, perhaps the crowning achievement at this point in his more than 15 -year search that started when he was a young teenager. Seeing David succeed in passing Yin Yang Gong, the past flashed in front of me: I recalled times he and I spent together over the years, his search for the authentic masters, the focus he committed to his journey, the obstacles he had to encounter and overcome, the heartbreak of rejection, the cruelty of skeptics, the loyal support he received from his friends and students.

I have known David since he was 16 in early 90s when he used to join me at dawn for martial arts practice at Healing Tao retreats in upstate NY, and later, at the Tao Garden in Chiangmai. Through the years we have met and studied together ... in Thailand, Turkey, NY, Java, China. He is a genuine searcher who has sought the true transmissions from many masters. As a teacher himself, he has the ability to convey esoteric information in lay terms and succeeds in bringing difficult and rare knowledge to its basic components. I consider a student lucky if he can take a seminar with David Verdesi, a rare and exceptional teacher."

More about the Seminar:

David is one of those rare teachers with a remarkable gift for spiritual practice and a passion for research into the various spiritual traditions of the Far East. Over the years his research has primarily focused on his greatest passion, Daoism.

Early in the spring of 1998, during one of his many research excursions deep into the Asian continent, David was led by a series of profound visions to meet and study with the masters of the Miao Tong Dao or Enlightenment Path of the Dao, in Korea; the very same path that Lao Tzu spoke of in his famous Dao Te Ching. It was there, in Korea, that he was introduced to a being of immeasurable wisdom and enlightenment, a living Buddha. During his time there and in subsequent visits, he met many well known religious and spiritual figures that had privately come to study with and pay homage to this living Buddha, called simply Fo Tu; these included the Dali Lama and other high lamas from Tibet, who were there, much to David's surprise, as humble students, bowing in respect to these Miao Tong masters.

Although David was already an accomplished Daoist practitioner and had met many masters of remarkable achievement, this meeting was to mark the beginning of a profound transformation in his life; one that would eventually inform and stand apart from all other spiritual experiences. Throughout the many years of research and remarkable experiences, meetings with great masters and personal achievements, David found himself drawn back again and again to the path of the Miao Tong Dao until finally, with the aid of his primary master in the Miao Tong Dao, Sifu Ji, he was able to breakthrough the dream of this existence and awaken.

In David's own words:

"It is a teaching that deals with and teaches directly the highest faculty of loving, the elements of insight (consciousness, awareness and understanding) in pure form, using, according to need, energetic means or any other available tool. This is the teaching of my master, Sifu Ji.

He taught me using dress code and the language matching that dress code (in itself a teaching on Ming Xing names and forms). At times he dressed like business man, other times like a Daoist hermit. At times like a Tantric, often like a Buddhist, and, on occasion, even as a Muslim and a Christian, the true Shen Hua - transformation of the numinous- which is everything, yet is One.

He would teach in accordance to phase of transmutation, the construct of fluctuating energies and forms 'I' was undergoing.

He never called this with a fixed name, he called it what it was to be called for 'David' in that moment. Because we are now in a Daoist context we call it, Miao Tong Dao, Wu Dao, but one could call it Love, God, One, Mind, Being, Dharma or otherwise. What matters is whether you have tasted it? Do you know it? Do you know who you are?

Since we met, I taught you Nei Dan and Nei Gong with this spirit. Nothing has changed, except my realization of the words of Sifu Ji has blossomed into what it was supposed to be...

...I wish for all to have insight and direct experience; this happens both through your formal practice and your daily life. I'm committed to this to the best of my ability, with the help of God and the grace of those who have awakened, to talk to your hearts so that you can experience what countless saints of all times and places have realized."

Posted by james at August 30, 2009 10:20 AM

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