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Advanced Cultivation (Friendly Version)

How many steps does cultivation actually have?

Lifechanyuan divides cultivation into three stages:

  • Elementary Cultivation β€” Spinning the cocoon: Like a silkworm spinning silk, you wrap yourself in 51 guidelines and build a solid foundation
  • Intermediate Cultivation β€” Nurturing within: Like a chrysalis transforming inside the cocoon, you grow through reverence for the Greatest Creator, awakening to the Dao, and recognizing Buddha-nature
  • Advanced Cultivation β€” Breaking free: At last, you burst through the cocoon and emerge as a Celestial Being

The Guide Xuefeng puts it most vividly:

Elementary Cultivation is spinning the cocoon; Intermediate Cultivation is nurturing new LIFE within the cocoon; Advanced Cultivation is breaking free from the cocoon and becoming a Celestial Being.

Where does Advanced Cultivation begin?

It begins from "forgetting both self and world."

When you reach the highest state of Intermediate Cultivation β€” your whole being at ease, your mind and spirit profoundly light, the boundaries between self and the outside world dissolved, soaring through a realm of celestial beauty you have never visited before β€” you are standing at the doorway of Advanced Cultivation.

Forgetting self and world is the highest level of Intermediate Cultivation and the lowest level of Advanced Cultivation.

Why must you "break through form"?

This puzzles many people: Elementary Cultivation spends so much effort establishing rules and norms. Why does Advanced Cultivation then say to "let go of all rules and regulations, let go of all precepts"?

The answer is simple: a cocoon is meant to protect the chrysalis β€” but the chrysalis cannot stay in the cocoon forever.

All forms are cocoons. At the beginning of learning, the cocoon protects; once learning is complete, one must break through the form.

Rules are the protective shell of the learning phase. Once you have grown, the shell becomes a cage that keeps you from flying. Advanced Cultivation is the stage of breaking that shell.

This is not a license to act however you wish. It means that someone who has truly awakened to the Dao has already internalized the laws of the universe β€” they no longer need external rules to guide them; they have become the principle itself.

What does Advanced Cultivation actually involve?

Advanced Cultivation has no unified "51 codes" or "11 guidelines." The Guide has given us several methods, each allowing practitioners to practice according to their own readiness:

Zero-State

Keep your awareness empty, clear, unattached to anything β€” like a brand-new scale resting at exactly zero, ready to accurately measure whatever is placed upon it.

Keeping oneself always in a "zero-state" is a form of Advanced Practice.

Return to Zero

Let go, at any moment. Do not rely on past merit, past achievements, past anything. Each time you clear the slate, your awareness becomes a little cleaner and lighter.

Creating the Celestial LIFE Structure

This is the deepest method β€” continuously transforming your consciousness so that the inner structure of your LIFE upgrades toward that of a Celestial Being:

When consciousness changes, the LIFE structure changes accordingly. When we completely possess the consciousness of a Celestial Being, we accomplish the LIFE structure of a Celestial Being β€” and we naturally live in the environment of a Celestial Being.

What is the connection between Advanced Cultivation and becoming a Celestial Being?

Becoming a Celestial Being is the destination of Advanced Cultivation.

When your consciousness frequency rises to match that of the Thousand-year World or the Ten-thousand-year World, your LIFE structure transforms accordingly into a Celestial structure β€” and you naturally enter that level of LIFE space. This is becoming a Celestial Being: not mythology, but the natural outcome of LIFE's energy reaching the corresponding height.

Advanced Cultivation is the final stretch of the road that leads there.

In one sentence

Elementary Cultivation lays the foundation; Intermediate Cultivation builds the walls; Advanced Cultivation β€” opens the window and sees the sky.

Elementary Cultivation Β· Intermediate Cultivation Β· Zero-State Β· Return to Zero Β· Self-Nature (Buddha-Nature) Β· Becoming a Celestial Being and a Buddha Β· Thousand-year World