Tao Articles

“Can you maintain undivided concentration until your chi is as supple as a baby’s?” – Tao Te Ching

Of all the chi cultivation methods taught in the Healing Tao, the Iron Shirt packing technique is the one most often abused — with potentially dangerous side effects. At summer retreats, nothing pains me more than to watch students packing their breath in Embrace the Tree posture. Their faces turn beet red from holding their breath too long. Their mouths are clenched in a grimace, as their brains overheat from excess warm chi rising up from a pounding heart. The air finally burst from their stressed lungs in a huge sight of relief. A student, gasping to recover, feels a vague pride at having suffered through his daily dose of bitter medicine.

If this describes you, read on. You are not properly practicing chi kung (“energy mastering exercise”) – you are butchering a very gentle internal art designed to build power over time. Iron Shirt chi kung can and should be a pleasurable way to cultivate your chi without strain on your lungs or heart. The worst types are those who pack and squeeze as many extra breaths into their body as possible. I know this personality type well, as it once described me.

For the first two years after I learned Iron Shirt 1, I took great pride in swallowing an extra twenty breaths and forcing them from my lungs into my organs and fascia. My whole chest and face glowed red hot. The more intense it felt, the stronger I thought my chi was getting. More likely I was a case of my over inflated energy causing my ego to balloon as well. Then one day after practice, I noticed a mass of little red dots spread all over my chest. The blood vessels were beginning to pop. That shook me up. I stopped all packing immediately. But the red dots didn’t disappear, and six years later many of the blood spots remain, grim reminders of youthful excess.

1. Breath Packing Does Not have to Strain Your Body

It took me those two years of practicing the wrong way before I finally gave up and realized that the breath packing process should be done without any strain to your body. If you are straining your self, you are probably creating subtle injury to your lungs, diaphragm, heart, or blood vessels. If you have any heart weakness or irregularity, there is a danger of aggravating it with breath packing and you should do the postures with NO packing.

What is it about packing that makes it so powerful? There are three simultaneous processes that deliver a triple whammy:
a. Squeezing muscles compresses the fascia, draws blood to a local area.
b. Inhaling air injects oxygen, which is converted into available energy by the body. Holding the breath causes you to burn reserve chi stored in body cells.
c. Mental concentration directs the chi from the organs, blood, and oxygen to the local point being squeezed.

At what point does holding your breath strain your body? If you feel any dizziness, or your lungs are straining for oxygen, or your heart is pounding, your blood pressure is rising to your head, you are probably stressing yourself. If you find your self obsessed by the thought, “Can I breathe now?”, you should be breathing air.

2. Single Biggest Danger of Packing is Failure to “UNPACK”

Packing is an intense contraction of your physical and energy body. It needs a counterbalance of relaxation and expansion. Failure to relax the muscles squeezing the chi into the bones and fascia sends a negative message to your body. Most people are unaware they’ve left instructions for the body to remain “uptight”. Excess packing tension is also imprinting psychic stress on your energy body. This may show up later as a blockage in your meditation if it goes uncorrected.

Master Chia had warned me years ago that I was packing too hard, but I ignored his warning. The same warning is issued at workshops today, but with the number of students multiplied a hundred fold, it simply is not possible for many students to get the repeated feedback they need. Other students are so out of touch with their bodies that they actually don’t know when they are stressing it. The net effect is the same — Master Chia’s warning not to hold the packed breath if strain is felt goes unheeded.

3. Packing is Historically an Advanced Method

In China, the Iron Shirt methods were historically used by more advanced martial artists seeking to make their bodies invulnerable to blows. There was a lot of secrecy, so that your potential opponents wouldn’t get the benefit of this powerful internal technology. It probably originated in the Shaolin Temple schools, which make it a Buddhist chi kung practice, as they often used more force on the body than the Taoist methods, which stress effortlessness.

There are hundreds of schools and thousands of different chi kung forms in China, so many of the Buddhist and Taoist methods have been borrowed and mixed together in endless combinations over the centuries. Master Chia has taken this training method for fighters and adapted it for purposes of fighting off illness and accelerating development of the energy body.

According to one friend who studied in China, oriental martial artists do not try any powerful packing of the breath until they have undergone preliminary warm-up exercises and supervised body training for at least two years. This is to ensure their body will be able to handle the additional chi pressure that is created in all the organs without negative side effects – high blood pressure, heart stress, chi imbalances, etc. This body training also insures that they will be able to relax and “unpack” the effects of doing the Iron Shirt chi kung.

So what is the lesson for those Americans, who are in lousy shape physically, if they want to learn Iron Shirt chi kung? You might start by attending a Healing Tao summer retreat, where you could receive more intensive instruction. Unfortunately, due to the nature of weekend teachings and lack of follow-up correction by a qualified instructor, many students do not properly learn Iron Shirt chi kung.

Master Chia has often said you cannot hope to learn the Iron Shirt chi kung in a weekend workshop. The basic principles of chi kung are taught there, but its difficult to absorb them on a body level. Individual feedback is essential from a qualified instructor after you have practice a bit. The summer retreats offer a better chance to practice daily, get your structure and rooting tested, and take the time to learn to pack your breath gently, without strain.

4. Gentle “Pulsation Packing” is Easier

Today I often do Embrace the Tree, but I rarely use any physical packing of the breath. I stand in the posture, and I go deep within the energy channels of my body and the earth, and pack the chi using my mind only. This is the true goal of Iron Shirt chi kung — to increase your ability to breathe internally. I’m completely relaxed, and enjoy it immensely. Not only is there no feeling of strain or forcing my body, but I use the process of pulsing the breath to gently release stress from my body into the earth.

I call this pulsing of the breath “pulsation packing”. It is the same as regular Iron Shirt packing, only more gentle. You frequently release the breath before any strain can build up. I inhale, gently squeeze a point for 2 to 5 seconds, exhale and completely relax. This is repeated at the same point 5 to 15 times. After pulsation packing at the perineum, I would then move to the sacrum, kidneys, chi ball, and chi belt, repeating the same process at each point.

This warms and opens each point without straining the body. I never pack above the waist, for the simple reason that so much chi is generated by the pulsation packing in the lower tan tien that the chi naturally overflows and fills the upper body. The idea is to pulse your breaths and squeeze the muscles as delicately as you would do a tai chi movement. Or pretend you are a young baby doing Iron Shirt — can you squeeze your muscles with the same soft delicacy, letting only your chi be firm and strong inside?

5. Gentle Packing of Lower Body: A Simplified Sequence

I advise most of my students to develop the lower half of their body first — feet, legs, perineum, kidneys, naval — before even trying to build up chi into the upper body. I personally never physically pack breath into my upper body — if the spring below is gushing forth, it will naturally pulse above into a full fountain.

The only packing I do in my upper body is with my mind. It is too easy for stress to accumulate in the chest and shoulders without further squeezing and packing them physically. If you are already carrying a lot of stiffness and tension in your upper body, you should especially avoid tightening those muscles. If you lead an extremely active physical life and your upper body is very loose, your body may tell you its o.k. If you listen carefully inside to what your body says, it usually includes the message: “Be Gentle, Don’t Hurt Me!”

This lower body approach helps keep your mind calm and brain cool, but warms up your lower tan tien, which is the key to good rooting. I tell students to follow this sequence for the first six months, with heavy emphasis on bone breathing, long, slow breaths, keeping the brain cool, and extremely gentle squeezes in the lower body followed by total release of all muscle tension:

a. Set your structure for standing. Begin with arms hanging relaxed at the side in standing position. Focus on standing with proper structural alignment: weight on the center of the foot, sacrum sinking, jade pillow rising, spine, bones and joints clearly aligned.

b. Begin bone breathing, earth to navel. Put your hands over your navel. Slowly inhale as with your mind you draw chi from the earth through your bones and meridians up to your lower tan tien. Slowly exhale from your navel back down to the feet into the earth. After a few minutes, your mind will get very cool and calm, and the navel will start to tingle.

c. Visualize all the channels and points you wish to strengthen. As you bone breathe, see the key energy points of Iron Shirt and just mentally spiral energy at those points. Emphasize the lower half of the body. When the lower half of your body fills up, the chi will naturally flow up the spine and down the front of the chest.

d. Gently begin to pack. Hold breath for 5 seconds max. Hands may remain over navel or raised into Embrace the Tree position. Ever so gently as you inhale from the earth to the navel, pause at one point per breath. Delicately squeeze on the inhale and then release the muscles completely on the exhale back down to the feet. With a slow, cool, breathing rhythm, repeat 10 or 15 times squeezing only one point per inhalation: perineum, or kidney / ming men, or chi ball, or chi belt.

e. Repeat above, but spiral and squeeze at each point. Combine the pulsation of gentle squeezing-packing at each point as you inhale with mental spiraling. This will help train your mind to open the points later without any inhaling or squeezing the point. As your mind gets more steady, you will be able to do a double spiral at each point, one clockwise and one counter-clockwise spiral, without any strain on your lungs. If you start to feel any strain, do a quicker spiral – and release the breath sooner. Then inhale to the next point, and repeat.

f. Stand quietly, and breathe internally. (See following description of internal breathing.)

6. What Kind of Chi are You Storing in Your Body?

One goal of Iron Shirt chi kung packing is to increase your capacity to store chi in your body. It will then be available whenever you need it – to live creatively, or to survive any crisis. But if you want to become an internal alchemist, the higher process leading to complete realization of the Tao, you need to understand some fine distinctions about the type of chi you intend to store in your body.

The major distinction is between “wei chi” — the external or post-natal chi, and the “nei chi” — the internal, or prenatal chi. Food, sunlight, water, and air energies are all post-natal, or acquired after birth. They strengthen the body, but only temporarily.

Ching, or vital essence, and the original chi bubbling forth from your tan tien are examples of pre-natal chi. It would also include your DNA and inherited physical and mental abilities, which are innate to you. These prenatal energies are much more concentrated and potent. Both wei chi and nei chi are necessary to life, and humans must constantly regulate and balance these inner and outer energy sources.

I draw these distinctions in reference to Iron Shirt packing, because many students forget that packing a lot of air into their fascia is giving only a temporary boost of energy. That packed air is post-natal chi that is destined to be shortly consumed or spent. However, the purpose of all chi kung is long term. In the case of Iron Shirt packing, the short term purpose is to open up the energy channels in our vital organs and fascia with the external chi so that the body is proteced from illness or blows.

The long term goal of Iron Shirt packing is to create more room in our energy body for internal chi to circulate during meditation. This is why I urge students not to get overly focused on the external aspect of the packing, and cultivate the internal chi as they stand in postures. In this high sense, Iron Shirt chi kung becomes a standing meditation that increases our capacity for internal breathing.

7. Internal Breathing Requires Deep Relaxation

After you do this systematic contract-release breath for a few minutes, your whole body begins to rhythmically pulsate. If you surrender your mind to this pulsing process, your body begins to breathe and pulsate itself automatically. But your mind must be very calm and 100% focused internally. This pulsing is the first stirring of internal breathing.

I focus my breath in my lower tan tien with very light packing, and then exhale and release it into the earth. I begin pulsing between the earth and my navel. Then I just stand quietly, and spiral the Fusion belt routes to clear my body’s energy field and connect it with Heaven and Earth. If I am calm and my mind is clear, the Tao fills me with fresh chi that pours in through my feet, my bones, and my three tan tiens – navel, heart, and crown. This is quite blissful, and the chi circulates spontaneously through the channels I have opened through more formulaic meditation.

One of the goals of all Taoist chi cultivation practice is to increase your ability to breath internally. Taoist adepts and yogis from other traditions have long claimed this marvelous state is attainable with proper training. Some students misinterpret this and think that by forcibly holding their breath, they can stop physical breathing and begin internal breathing.

You cannot force your breath into stopping, and thereby gain instant enlightenment. This confused belief leads to abuse of training methods like Iron Shirt packing. You have to “charm” your autonomic nervous system and vital organs into a deep state of relaxation. If you convince your vital organs that your body has a surplus of internal chi, then they don’t need to bother working so hard to gather extra post-natal chi from the air, sunlight, sex, etc. Instead you begin breathing at the lower tan tien, which connects you to your primordial, or original breath (also called pre-natal chi).

8. Internal Breathing is Spontaneous Pulsation

The few times I have experience true internal breathing have occurred spontaneously and unexpectedly – not because I willed it. But I had created the right conditions: my mind was very calm and focused inward, my physical breathing so deeply relaxed as to be negligible. The air was moving imperceptibly between my two nostrils. Suddenly, my physical breathing stopped completely. My breath was literally snatched away by the explosion of inner energy and light.

When this kind of total internal breathing occurs, you have activated your internal atomic power, sometimes called the kundalini. You realize that your soul is always breathing the “Original Chi”, the primordial breath of God, which arises from within. That is why the Taoists often refer to it as “embryonic breathing” — you feel like you are back in the primal womb, breathing through an umbilical cord connected directly to the purest source, the wu chi, the un-nameable & unknowable Tao.

But what would internal breathing be like in a more ordinary, less mystical state of consciousness, i.e. when you’re standing in posture? This primordial breath is experienced in your subtle body as an extreme fin yin/yang pulsation. On the physical level, it stimulates inhalation – exhalation. But this is not just a mechanical sucking in and out of air.

It is your soul body – your higher mind – drawing the chi from the oxygen and feeding it to the vital organs, glands, blood, etc. With this chi, your body can function and your soul can operate your five senses to enjoy life on this plane. So while standing in Embrace the Tree, simply be aware that it is your soul body/spirit that is breathing in the oxygen that sustains your physical pulsation. This will sharpen your awareness of the internal breathing that is happening unconsciously in you every moment.

9. Safe & Pleasurable Packing Power: Five-Point Plan

I believe a safe practice for Americans seeking the powerful benefits of Iron Shirt chi kung would include the following:

a. Always do 10-15 minutes of warm-up to increase your chi circulation before doing any packing practice. These are taught at the summer retreats, and are as important as the practice itself. This is not a muscle warm-up like joggers do. This is a chi warm-up. Stretches must be done slowly, with full awareness of chi flowing in your blood and meridians. Develop a warm-up routine that is a gentle movement chi kung, and do it every day.

b. Exhale frequently to prevent tension buildup. Follow a long term program that begins with very gentle breathing exercises. Give your self a spacious time frame of months or even years. Inhale to the energy point you are working on, i.e. perineum or kidneys, and then exhale. Inhale to the next point, and then exhale. After a few weeks or months, you may be able to comfortably hold your breath for two or three points before exhaling. In this way you will gradually build up the capacity of your body without straining it.

c. Holding the breath is not important — opening the energy channels is what counts. In Embrace the Tree and other postures, keep the emphasis on training your mind to open up energy channels. These channels can be opened in many different ways — with movement, with meditation, with sounds, with dozens of different types of breathing techniques. The Iron Shirt breath packing techniques can be used to quickly stimulate the energy channels, but you don’t want to develop a dependency on them, or it will slow your progress later. They are crutches meant to be thrown away as soon as you can walk (breath internally).

d. Listen to your own body, and do what it tells you is safest. If an instructor is leading you in the Iron Shirt practice, and he/she is holding the breath longer than you can comfortably do it, don’t be afraid to exhale and resume normal breathing. Just follow along by spiraling the chi at each point instead of packing it. It’s o.k. to pack the chi mentally, without squeezing your muscles and holding your breath. And don’t copy nearby students who are straining their bodies.

e. Keep your chi kung practice simple and fun. If you start with gentle breathing methods and keep your mental focus simple and calm while in each posture, you will love the fresh vitality you’ll feel daily and get addicted to your practice!

But if you feel stress from doing the packing, this will create mental resistance and you will eventually stop practicing. Remember, packing is only a small part of iron shirt chi kung — your structure, rooting, keeping a calm mind and internal circulation of chi are all equally important.

10. Rooting and Packing: Two Different Processes

There is a tendency among the beginners to try to root themselves by packing their breath and squeezing their abdominal and neck muscles tightly. This actually makes it easier for someone testing your structure to uproot you, because the body is being held rigid as one piece by muscular effort. Genuine rooting develops only after you relax both your mind and your body. When these are both as soft as a baby’s, your internal chi easily mixes and absorbs the earth’s chi.

So what does genuine rooting feel like? In Embrace the Tree posture your body is rooted when it literally feels solid as a mountain. Your feet and legs connect with the Earth chi below and they merge into one piece. You feel “packed” — but it’s not a feeling of high internal pressure. It’s cooler, more still. Yet you still feel movement inside your body/earth. There are underground rivers and lakes hidden inside the body/mountain — your chi meridians and tan tiens which serve as the transportation and storage system of your energy body.

There are two points worth noting about the effect of packing on rooting:
a. Breath packing can help to partially open energy channels, but if your mind cannot control the chi, it will probably rise up to your head and actually uproot you rather than sink down and root you to the earth. There is no benefit in indiscriminately opening up energy channels or creating strong internal chi pressure — it is the balance and harmonious flow and high quality of your chi that is important.

b. Breath packing is a method of taking the chi from oxygen in the air and converting it into body energy. Rooting occurs when your body’s chi is mixed with the earth chi. Do not confuse the chi absorbed from air and the chi absorbed form earth, as they serve different functions.

The air is the fire element, which has a tendency to rise up. The earth holds the water element, which is heavy and flows deeper into the earth. Thus water is far superior as guide for rooting into the earth’s gravitational field. It is also much cooler for packing and condensing chi in the body.

In my own case, my tendency to over-pack had over-stimulated by heart and lung fire, so my mind was jumping about wildly and it was impossible to really root. After I stopped excessive packing of breath, my rooting improved dramatically. This was because I was able to relax, and let my mind sink down into the cool earth and contact it’s chi. We are all naturally rooted — it is only our own mental resistance that uproots us. If we put on our Iron Shirt gently, and pack it slowly and safely for a few minutes each day, our bodies will begin to glow with good health.

This essay on the feminine nature of Taoism is by a Russian professor who has penetrated to a very deep philosophical perception of the Tao. My own perception, based on alchemical practice, supports this view.

It is one reason why Taoist teachings are so very important at this junction in global history. The feminine has been culturally and economically suppressed throughout the world, but healing this requires a deeper spiritual understanding and a practical alternative to the way the major paternalistic religions use their idea of spirit to oppress or dominate matter/body/sexuality.

Taoist alchemy avoids this imbalance by holding the truth is the neutral boundary between the yin and the yang. This essay shows how that Mysterious Pass or neutral point also is described through essentially feminine images and functions of birthing. It also helps explain how the Tao embraces the body and sexuality without limiting itself to or being controlled by sexual/bodily needs. – Michael Winn

The Doctrine of the “Mysterious Female” in Taoism: A Transpersonalist View

by Evgueni A. Tortchinov, Department of Philosophy

St. Petersburg State University, Russia

The principal purpose of this paper is to suggest the approach of transpersonal psychology for analysis of some important aspects of the Taoist doctrine, that is, the concept of the Tao as a female universal principle and the Taoist attitude “to be like an infant” or even as an “embryo.”

To understand these Taoist principles, we must begin from the very beginning-from the central concept of Taoism, that is, Tao (the Way, the True Way). This concept designates the prime ground of the World, the source of all life and the limit of every existence, as well as the rule and measure of beings.

The female, maternal image of Tao is the crucial point to understanding the psychotechnique (or psychopractical) approach of Taoism. It is possible to demonstrate its importance by citing some passages from the Tao Te ching (The Canon of the Way and its Power) or the”Lao-tzu,” a famous Taoist classic:

1. ?6:

The valley spirit never dies-it is called ‘the mysterious female”;

The gate of the mysterious female is called “the root of heaven and earth.”

Gossamer it is,

seemingly insubstantial, yet never consumed through use.

2. ?25:

There was something featureless yet complete, born before heaven and earth;

Silent-amorphous-it stood alone and unchanging.

We may regard it as the mother of heaven and earth.

Not knowing its name,

I style it the “Way.”

3. ?28:

Know masculinity,

Maintain femininity,

and be a ravine for all under heaven.

. ?61:

A large state is like a low-lying estuary, the female of all under heaven.

In the congress of all under heaven,

the female always conquers the male through her stillness.

Because she is still,

it is fining for her to lie low.

E. M. Chen (1974), in her article dedicated to the role of the female principle in Chinese philosophy, notes that some aspects of Lao-tzu’s concept of Tao makes it possible to propose that the formation of the teaching about Tao as a philosophical idea was preceded by the cult of some Mother-Goddess which was connected with the genesis of Taoism (Chen, 1974, p.53; Kravtsova, 1994, pp.208-213). She notes that in the description of Tao in the Tao Te ching there are all the meanings which are essential for the Mother-Goddess cult: Tao is like an empty vessel (?4); voidness (?5); mysterious darkness (?1); it is nonborn, but, nevertheless, it is the predecessor of the Heavenly Lord (?4); it is the Mysterious Female which is the gate of Heaven and Earth (?6); mother (?1, 20, 25, 52); female (or hen-?10, 28); female (?61); and Mother of all under heaven (?25, 34). In addition, Tao is often described as water (?8, 78) and as valley (?6, 28, 32, 39, 41). Clearly this valley is the principle of generation which bears all beings in its depth.

The Tao Te ching speaks much about the pre-existential, nonmanifested aspect of Tao which is the philosophical opposition to the manifested phenomenal existence as some potential being (wu). In this regard, ? I is rather interesting. It describes this nonmanifested or mysterious (occult) aspect of Tao as the womb of the universal embryo, the womb which generates Heaven and Earth, which is the source of life. Briefly speaking, it is nothing but the Mysterious Mother of the world:

The nameless is the origin of the myriad creatures;

The named is the mother of the myriad creatures. Therefore,

Always be without desire

in order to observe its wondrous subtleties; Always have desire

so that you may observe its manifestations…

Mystery of mysteries,

The gate of all wonders!

This passage develops the leading idea of ?1 about two aspects or “hypostases” of Tao: about Tao as “mysterious womb” and

Tao as mother-nurse of all beings. Here we can recall the words of the famous commentator and thinker, Wang Pi (3 A.D.),

that “Mysterious” (or “Unnamed”) Tao nourishes and bears all creatures, and phenomenal named Tao feeds them; the

analogous description Wang Pi gives to the character of the interrelations between Tao and Te.

What about the last sentence of the passage? It can be said that the character miao (mystery) of the sentence consists of two elements: “woman” and “little.” We can suppose that its use here is not arbitrary. It is not too difficult to “ascribe” its etymology (probably it is not a scientific one) as this:

“something, that is little inside a woman,” that is, embryo hidden in the womb, like the prototypes of things (see ?21) are hidden in the “womb” of Tao. This opinion may be supported by the fact that the images of the womb and embryo are often used by Taoists to describe the “Tao-world” relation. So Tao can be metaphorically defined as the mother of the world, the source of life and being, and the universal female archetype. It is quite essential to understand the Taoist doctrine of immortality as well, because this doctrine considers Tao to be the life-giving principle which gives eternal life to the adept who has obtained unity with it. The Tao Te chitig also says (?52):

Having realized the mother,
you thereby know her children.

Knowing her children,
go back to abide with the mother.

To the end of your life,
you will not be imperiled.

Let’s look at the child of the “Mysterious female of all under the heaven.”
?55 of the Tao Te ching says:

He who embodies the flillness of integrity is like a ruddy infant.

Wasps, spiders, scorpions, and snakes will not sting or bite him;

Rapacious birds and fierce beasts will not seize him.

His bones are weak and his sinews soft, yet his grip is tight.

He knows not the joining of male and female, yet his penis is aroused.

His essence has reached a peak.

He screams the whole day without becoming hoarse; His harmony has reached perfection.

Harmony implies constancy;

Constancy requires insight.

Striving to increase one’s life is ominous;

To control the vital breath with one’s mind entails force.

Something that grows old while still in its prime is said to be not in accord with the Way;

Not being in accord with the Way leads to an early demise.

Here, an infant (a baby; the text uses Ch ‘ih tzu, “red,” or “ruddy” infant, i.e., a just newborn child) represents the image of the perfect sage hill of the vital force. An infant in the Tao Te ching is something like an androgyrie who does not know the parting of male and female, and who, because of this, is overflowing with vitality. His energetic essence (ching) does not flow below; it does not change into semen yet, and so it is perfect. Thus, an infant is like the great Tao itself Tao is a source of life, and like an infant also can not be tired, because exhaustion is a result of energetic deficiency. An infant enjoys absolute security; nature is not dangerous to it because he or she is at the center of its forces and powers. We should note the following words: Striving to increase one’s life is ominous; To control vital breath with one’s mind entails force. Here we can find a direct reference to the relation existing between ideas of obtaining immortality and religious psychopractice.

Taoism proclaims that a human being is nothing more than an inseparable psychosomatic unity. So people can obtain inimortality only when their body-microcosm becomes a self-sufficient whole–a self-containing reservoir of the vital energy from one side, and when it realizes its potential, isomorphism with the world-body of the cosmos from another side. One of the most important means on the way to this exalted state is the so-called “regulation of the vital breath” (or “regulation of the pneumata” – hsing ch ‘i), that is, a complex of gymnastical and breathing exercises, the aim of which is to obtain mind control over the flowing of the energy streams in the human body.

The most important principle of such techniques is often repeated in medieval Taoist writings: “Pneuma (breath, ch’i) is led by will-consciousness (yi).” This means the presence of some volitional enforcement which leads the streams of the vital energy along the channels of the body (analogous to the meridians of acupuncture) in the desirable direction. The Tao Te ching is just one text which clearly formulates this idea in ancient times. Instead of the “volitional impulse” (yi), the Tao Te ching speaks about “mind” or “heart-consciousness” (Hsin), but it is the same idea.

It was thought for a long time that the concept relating the Taoist ideas of immortality and different practices was described only in medieval tests, but recent archeological discoveries in Ch’angsha Mawangtui (Hunan province) demonstrate the profound antiquity of both. Thus, the Mawangtui texts describe numerous respiratory exercises for the “regulation of the Pneumata” (hsing ch ‘i) and postures of the Taoist gymnastics (tao yin). Special pictures painted on silk, which were known under the general title, Tao yin t ‘u (Schemes of Gymnastics), were even dedicated to such practices. So it may be concluded that these practices were well-known in China in the days when the Tao Te ching is now regarded to have been composed (4-3 B.C., rather than the traditionally accepted period of 6-5 B.C.).

The Tao Te ching everywhere prefers the softness and weakness of the infant to the strong hardness of adults. Strictly speaking, a newborn child is the concentration or manifestation of the vital energy. This is quite clearly demonstrated in ?76:

Human beings are

soft and supple when alive,

stiff and straight when dead…

Therefore, it is said:

The rigid person is a disciple of death;

The soft, supple, and delicate are lovers of life.

But the theme “infant-sage” cannot be reduced only to the metaphor of the newborn child. Much deeper and more interesting is the image of the nonborn child, which also plays an important role in the teachings of the Tao Te ching. Let us cite a part of ?20 of the text:

All the people are glad and joyfull

as if they are celebrating upon the great sacrifice of oxen,

as if they are mounting a tower in spring.

O! I am the only who is quiet and silent,

like a baby who is not yet a child.

O! 1 am fastened and tied

and I have no place to return.

All people behave themselves

as if they have more than enough

and I alone am bereft.

O! I have the mind of a fool!

O! Muddled and mixed!

All people are luminously clear

and I am the only one who is dark and conhised.

All people are exact and definite

and I am the only who is obscured and vague.

O! I am wavering like an ocean.

O! I am flying in space and I have no place to stop in.

All people behave themselves

as if they have a purpose

and I alone am uncouth and simple.

I am quite different from others by honoring the mother-nurse.

This passage is worthy of careful analysis. It appears to me to offer a key to the understanding of the most essential features>of Taoism. And the sentence: “O! I am the only who is quiet and silent, like a baby who is not a child yef’ (in Chinese: wo tu p’o hsi ch ‘i wei chaoju ying erh chih wei ‘wi) is a key to this passage. So, it is best to begin an analysis of the passage with this phrase.

What is the meaning of the words “a baby who is not a child yet” or “a baby who did not become an infant yet”? I think that the text is speaking about the foetus in the maternal womb. In fact, even those commentators and translators who think that the hai (infant, child) here must be changed into its phonetical and practically graphical omonym (the difference between two characters is only one classificator “mouth” written before the original grapheme) agree with this interpretation. The second character hai means baby’s cry or baby’s smile. But a not-yet-crying baby is a not-yet-born baby.

Therefore, Lao-tzu here compares himself with the nonborn baby. What does he inform us about this baby? This baby-sage is “fastened and tied” by his embryonic “clothes” and umbilical cord, which unites him with the maternal body. This holy foetus has “the mind [or heart-the thinking and conscious organ according to Chinese tradition] of a fool,” while at the same time it possesses the highest wisdom. This wisdom seems like nothing but stupidity to ordinary people proud of their common sense. This nonborn baby wavers in the ocean of the womb and “flies” in these maternal waves. The connection with the motherly body and nourishing and feeding the foetus is depicted quite clearly also at the end of the passage where “mother-nurse” (shi mu) is mentioned.

If the baby of ?20 is a sage, Lao-tzu himself; who then is the mother? The information above makes it possible to conclude that this mother is the great Tao itself; it is the eternal and unspeakable Way and mysterious ground of every existence; the hidden depth of this Tao is the womb wherein the baby-sage dwells. This image directly correlates with Taoist cosmology and cosmogony. It considers Tao to be something like a cosmic womb which embraces the whole universe. The universe enjoys absolute unity (chaotic unity – hun yi) with the maternal body of the Way until its birth, differentiation and divorce from the Way in the course of cosmogenesis. Nevertheless, even in the “born world” some unity with Tao is preserved: it is fed by the power of Tao, which is called Te or Power-Virtue.

For example: “The Way gives birth to them and integrity [i.e., Te] nurtures them” (?51). Thus, the connection between birth in the course of the cosmic evolution world and Tao looks quite like the connection between a mother nourishing her child, and the baby itself But in the case of humans, there appears a self concept, an independent, self-containing “I,” as an unchanging subject of actions. This kind of egoistic self-consciousness harms the original unity, and humans begin to counteract Tao. The predominant attitude of human actions is no longer the law and measure of the cosmic rhythm of Tao, but egocentric preferences, which change spontaneous natural life into purposeful activities based only on bare subjectivity. Taoism sees egocentricity as the cause of all human sufferings, pains, frustrations-from mortality to social collisions.

The only means, not only to become liberated from sufferings but to obtain the highest happiness, is to restore original unity with Tao, to broaden consciousness and to put an end to the egocentric attitude, that is, to return to the state of the nonborn child who does not know a distinct difference between his or her own body and the maternal body, who breathes the maternal breath and eats maternal food. This coming back to the womb of the Mother-Tao is connected with the broadening of the personality to the cosmic scale, when “eternal integrity never deserts you, You will return to the state of infancy” (?28) and “a man is sparing of his body in caring for all under heaven” (?13). This state of the nonborn child is the state of immortality, peace, and unity with all beings and with one’s own nature: The return to the root is called “stillness,” stillness is called returning to the “fate-vitality,” the return to the fate-vitality is called “constancy.” One who knows constancy is called “enlightened” (?16).’

Tao explicates itself on all levels of micro- and macrocosm, and because of this, the Taoist texts distinctively describe an isomorphism between cosmogonic process, development of the foetus and birth, and in the reverse sequence, the steps of the Taoist cultivation. So, for the Taoist, the returning to the womb of the Mother-Tao is not simply a metaphor, but a kind of expression of some profound essence of the isomorphous structure of the universe. It is also the reason why practicing Taoists try to imitate the prenatal states in their self-cultivation. One example is the famous technique of “embryonic breathing” (t’ai hsi), first depicted in Ko Hung’s Paop ‘u-tzu (4 A.D.). It is very still and quiet breathing, minimizing inhalation and exhalation. This kind of breathing control gives the impression that the practitioner does not breathe at all, like a foetus in the maternal womb, obtaining vital energy (ch ‘i) from the blood of the mother.

Prenatal symbolism permeates the whole text of the Tao Te ching. The comparison of Tao with water and the important role played by the symbolism of water in this text in general is well known: For example: “The highest good is like water; Water is good at benefiting the myriad creatures but also struggles to occupy the place loathed by the masses. Therefore, it is near to the Way” (?8). The reason for the importance of the water symbolism lies not only in that, archetypically, water has female nature; it can be proposed, following Lao-tzu, that water is of the same nature as the nature of the waters of that embryonic ocean in which the baby-sage washes and wavers (?20 of The Canon of the Way and its Power).

In this regard, it is rather important to evaluate the name-pseudonym of the sage, who according to a tradition more than two thousand years old, is considered to be the author of the Tao Te ching, that is, Lao-tzu, Old Sage, and also Old Infant. Let us once again reflect upon this infant with the grey beard.
Up to the first centuries A.D., the teaching was formed about the divinized Lao~tzu (Lord Lao or Lao-jun). But the tendencies to divinization were very old. Thus, in the 21st chapter of the Chuang-tzu, Lao-tzu says that he was wandering in the origin of things. The divinized Lao-tzu was associated with Tao and with original chaos-undifferentiated energetic pneuma (ch ‘i), that is, with the source of the universe itself. (Detailed research into the process of the divinization of Lao-tzu may be found in Seidel, 1969.) The texts of the Han dynasty period (3 B.C.-3 A.D.) describe Lao-tzu as the Body of Tao. All of the texts use synonyms to express the idea of the body in this context: hsing (form, pattern), shen (body, person, personification), and ti (body, substance, incarnation) (Schipper, 1978, pp. 358-361).

But further still, identified with the chaos in its mythological personification of P’an Ku (cosmic pananthropos, typologically akin to Purusha of the Rig-Veda and Adam Kadmon of the Kabbalah), Lao-tzu became the creator of the world: “Lao-tzu has changed his body. His left eye became the sun, his right eye became the moon, his head changed into the K’unlun mountain, his beard changed into the stars and heavenly space, his bones became dragons, his flesh-beasts, his viscera-snakes” (Maspero, 1950, p. 108; Schipper, 1978, p. 361). In his evolution from the undifferentiated chaos to his cosmic “birth,” Lao tzu goes through nine stages, reflected in the myth of his “historical” birth. As K. M. Schipper points out (1978, p.361), this corresponds to the concept of ?21 in the Tao Te ching which describes the transformations of the universe from the unqualified “blurred and nebulous” to the Name-Mother of all creatures. The famous commentary of Hoshang-kung (2 B.C.) says:

In relation to myriad beings, Tao is such: it is wandering hither and thither and it has no definite place to be grounded there. Tao dwells in the formless of the “blurred and nebulous,” but it is the only principle pattern of all beings. Though ‘Lao is nothing but “blurred and nebulous,” the One exists in it; the One contains in itself all metamorphoses. Due to the presence of the pneuma-ch’i, it becomes materialized. Though Tao is only formless darkness of mystery, it has spermatic energy [ching] and though in its essence its divine numinous mind [shen ming] is very subtle, it lies in the basis of the yin-yang interaction. If one can say anything about the nature of the spermatic pneuma [ching ch ‘ij, it must be declared that its mystery is absolutely real; it does not need any decorations, Tao hides glory in itself; Tao contains name in itself-here is sincerity and truth [hsin] in the midst of it. (Hoshang-kung, in Tao Te ching, 1989, p.55)
It is timely to recall here the myth about the historical and cosmic birth of Lao-tar. There are very interesting details in the canonical text San t ‘ian nei ‘chieh ching (Canon of the Esoterical Erplanation of Three Heavens) written during the Han period. First of all, the text describes the cosmic birth of Lord Lao as a kind of theophany:

Then in the midst of darkness, Cave of Emptiness was born [K’ung tung]. In this Cave of Emptiness, Great Absence was born. Great Absence changed itself into three pneumata: Mysterious, Original and Principal. Being in chaotic mixture, these pneumata gave birth to Jade Maid of the profound Mystery [Hsuan miao yu n?]. After her birth joining pneumata twisted in her body and by their transformations they bore Lao-tar… When he was born he had grey hair. So he was called Old infant [i.e., Lao-tar]. This Lao-tzu is Lord Lao. By his transformation he created from his pneumata Heaven and Earth, people and things. Thus he has created everything by his transformations.

This passage clearly tells us that Lao-tar was his own mother. Another passage tells us about the “historical” birth of Lao-tar:
In the time of King Wu Ting of Yin dynasty, Lao-tar once again entered the womb of Mother Li . .. When he was born, his hair was grey again. Therefore he was again called Old Infant… What about his coming back to the embryonic state in the Mother Li’s womb?; it must be understood that he himself has changed his subtle various body into the body of Mother Li, entering thus his own womb. In reality there was no Mother Li. Unwise people now say that Lao-tar entered Mother Li’s womb from inside. In reality, it is not so. (Tao tsang, Vol.876; see also Schipper, 1978, p.365)

K. M. Schipper notes that none of the most ancient myths about Lao-tar’s birth tell about the father of Lao-tar. Even his family name (Li) Lao-tar received from his mother (“Li” literally means “plum”). According to some versions, Lao-tar was born because his mother ate the kernel of a plum (Schipper, 1978, p.365).

Thus, in Taoist texts, Tao is conceived of as a female maternal principle personified in the image of the male-female androgyne Lao-tar (Berthier, 1979; Seidel, 1969, p.64). Moreover, texts stress only his female aspect, because Tao bears the universe by itself; its “male” aspect does not participate in this process at all.

In the myths mentioned above, the founder of Taoism is conceived of as universal panantropos, the All-Man, who enjoys everlasting bliss in the maternal womb of Tao with which he is connected so perfectly-like a foetus and its mother constituting one and the same body. It is quite obvious that myths of this kind (myths of a rather early date, as we have seen), underline the importance of the theme of perfection as a prenatal state for Taoism. They also explain in great part why the authorship of such a basic (though not uniquely basic) text of Taoism was ascribed to the person called Old Infant. (I refer here to the traditional view of Lao-tar as the author of the Tao Te ching.) It is also interesting that the Taoists prefer to interpret the name of Lao-tzu as Old Infant or Old Baby but not as Old Sage. It seems to me that understanding the role and meaning of the prenatal symbolism in Taoism would serve as a general key to the right insight into the whole system of Taoist thought.

Here it is also possible to suggest a hypothesis about the relationship existing between prenatal and perinatal themes and their archetypic images from one side, and different kinds of myths about miraculous conception, which are known to practically every civilization, from another side. It can be suggested that the mythologem of miraculous conception is a manifestation of a subconscious wish to enjoy the synergetic unity with the mother which was attainable during the period of prenatal development. This wish is, in addition, accompanied by the elimination of every (and first of all, fatherly) mediation of this unity. In any case, Taoist materials undoubtedly connect the state of immortality and perfection with returning to the state of the sage-infant (compare the biblical phrase “If you do not change and become like little children you will never enter the Kingdom of heaven” [Matt. 18:3], and the idea of the combination of the wisdom of a snake and the simplicity of a pigeon, the topic developed and explained by St. Paul). This sage-infant of Taoism eternally dwells in the universal womb of the Mysterious Female, Tao as Great Mother of the world, and this womb is isomorphic, but certainly not identical to, the maternal womb in which the embryo enjoys happiness before its birth.

Li Erh, Lao-tzu, Eternal Infant of Taoism, the founder of this teaching and the teacher of the kings, age after age appearing on the earth in the name of highest wisdom and highest simplicity (nonpolished wooden block- p’u, and raw silk-su, are quite common designations of original simplicity as one of the most important values of Taoism. he/she is that paradigmatic figure to which Taoism appeals and calls for identification with.

Taoism proclaims that the human body is a microcosm, an “image and likeness” of the macrocosm, the universe. “A man is but small heaven and earth,” is an often mentioned Taoist saying. This teaching, extremely important for the Taoist tradition, is also well-known in other religious and philosophical doctrines, in the East as well as in the West, including Christianity, especially in its Gnostic variety (the Russian theologist Father Pavel Florensky considers it to be absolutely orthodox).

The Taoists also evaluate body as the image of the state; the state according to Chinese philosophical concepts is a part of natural, universal integrity. This doctrine of the similarity of the body and the universe is the true foundation of the Taoist practice of “inner alchemy,” the aim of which is to produce the so-called elixir of immortality inside the body of an adept from its energies or pneumata which are a microcosmic analogue of the metals and minerals of the outer world. It is obvious that the processes of the body were thought of as analogous to the processes and changes of the outer laboratory, alchemy, the cauldrons of which represented a specific acting model of the macrocosm as well.

Strictly speaking, treatises on the inner alchemy (nei tan) tell us about the creation of a new immortal body of the Taoist which must be created inside the old “corrupted” body. If the process is successitilly finished, a new immortal body replaces the old one. being “born” of the mortal body. For our thesis, it is important that the process of the creation of the new sacred body from the pneumata of the profane one is described in the texts in terms of pregnancy, embryonic development, and birth.

The image of the creation of the new perfect body is rather widespread in the religious beliefs of quite different peoples of the world. In Shamanism, for example, it is used in the imitation of death, which is accompanied by contemplation of flesh decay, which is followed by rebirth after the creation from the skeleton (substantial ground of the body) of the new “Shamanic” body. This form of practice is rather common for shamanistic initiations (e.g., Eliade, 1972, pp. 63-64). Such rituals are also known in some Indian yogic sadhanas, especially those of Tantric origin: in the course of this practice, the yogi creates a new indestructible yogic body (yoga deha), corresponding with the old one as mature and green fruit, or (in terms of”rasayana,” “vehicle of alchemy”) as vulgar profane metal and mature alchemical gold (Fliade, 1958, pp. 274-278). The contemplation of a skeleton is also a common practice in classical Buddhism.

But the semantics of this contemplation in Shamanism or Taoism are quite different than in Buddhism. In the first case, the skeleton is a symbol of some basic or original substance, which coming back to gives new powers to the person and brings him or her to a new level of existence. The adept returns to it in his or her experience of mystical death and rebirth, and then obtains new powers and creates from this substance a new sacred body. The Taoist image of coming back to the maternal womb as an unborn child in the Tao Te ching and its ontological connotation, that is, returning to the womb of the emptiness of Tao and obtaining a new everlasting life, are also of the same kind. From the depth of darkness of the “chaotic and obscure” womb of the Mother-Tao (huang hu), the Taoist sage creates the light of enlightenment (ming) and new life by passing through the experience of mystical death (reduction to embryonic state in Tao) and rebirth-resurrection.

But this rebirth does not lead to the separation from Tao: this Mysterious Female forever remains the mother-nurse of the Taoist baby-sage. In the case of Buddhism, however, such contemplation is directed at recognizing that existence is inherently subject to impermanence, destructibility and mortality, that is, the purpose of this kind of meditation is an interiorization of the understanding of the ubiquity of samsara (world of deaths and rebirths) as suffering and frustration.

For an understanding of the Taoist inner alchemy, two pairs of interrelated concepts are of predominant importance: natural essence (hsing) and vitality (ming); precelestial or prenatal (hsian t’ian) and postcelestial or postnatal (hou t’ian). The Taoist texts explain these concepts thus: The teaching about alchemical melting is the teaching of the method of melting of the natural essence and vitality to make them perfect. The law of the natural essence and vitality has two sides: the natural essence given by Heaven, which must be nurtured, and the natural essence of the pneumatic quality, which must be overcome. The vitality which is confirmed in separation must be pacified; bodily vitality must be fed. These are the principal two sides of the teaching of the Way (Tung Te-ning, a Taoist of the 18th century, commentary on the “Chapters of the Insight into the Truth” of Chang Po-tuan, 11 A.D.).

A famous representative of inner alchemy, Wu Ch’ung-hsti (born in 1574), also tells us that precelestial nature is the pneuma received by the foetus at the time of conception, and the postcelestial one is the pneuma or energy received by a foetus due to the breathing of its mother or (after its birth) through its own inhalations. The first pneuma is concentrated in the navel, the second one in the nostrils. The inner alchemy is directed towards the harmonization of the “natural essence” and “vitality,” the elimination of any collision between them. When this purpose is realized, an “elixir of immortality” appears inside the body of an adept which, in turn, changes itself into the so-called “immortal embryo” (hsian t’ai) growing into the state of the new immortal body of the alchemist.

Therefore, the body of the Taoist is a female body, maternal body, and the adept himself or herself appears to be his or her own mother, like Lao-tar of the cosmological myth, who also was, as we have seen, the mother of himself/herself. Certainly, “immortal embryo” is a fruit of the conjugality or hierogamy of two principles, yin and yang, like everything in the world, but this sacred marriage has its place in the body of a Taoist who, like all beings, obtains his/her life in the maternal womb of the Mysterious Female, the great Way (Tao) of the universe. The body of the Taoist is a female body, too; in this body the conjunction of the principles takes its place and the fruit of this union is nothing other than the miraculously transfigured Taoist himself/herself. Thus the body of the Taoist is an analogy to the mystical body of Tao which is of paradigmatic value for the Taoist (Schipper, 1978, p.371).

We can continue to compare “embryological” and “psychotechnical” aspects of Taoism. The Taoists pay much attention to the teachings about the states of development of the foetus. Why? It seems to me that the reason lies in the deep isomorphism between the steps of embryonical growth, the stages of the process of cosmogony, and the phases of the formation of the “immortal embryo” in inner alchemy”: “The foetus obtains his definitive bodily form for ten lunar months and afterwards the baby is born. Like this, the numinous foetus also needs ten lunar months to be born. The spirit obtains its fullness and then goes out” (Wu Ch’ung-hsti, 1965, p.45). In the teaching of the “inner alchemy,” therefore, two sides of the Taoist concept of the female take their place: the identity of the body of the adept with the female body, and the correspondence of the latter with Tao as an ontological pattern from one side and the teaching about transubstantiality of the mother-adept and ‘her” child from the other side.

Nevertheless, Taoists understood ambivalence of the perinatal patterns. So the maternal womb was seen by them, not only as a source of life and energy, but as the grave as well-the resulting summary of life, built on the expenses of the vital force. It resembles the idea in transpersonal psychology of the ambiguity of the perinatal experience (Grof; 1993): BPM I (Basic Perinatal Matrix) provides an experience of the maternal womb as a blissful and secure place, and BPM 2 and BPM 3 places of suffering and disease. One of the most famous Taoists of the T’ang period, Lu Tung-pin, according to tradition, declared the following: “The gates, through which I came to life are also the gates of death” (Schipper, 1969, p.38). This sentence was repeated in the famous didactic and erotic novel of 16 A.D., Chin, Ping Mei (The Plum Flowers in the Golden Vase) to warn readers against frivolous spending of the life energy, but here, in a sexual context. In any case, the ambivalence of the female principle has never been forgotten in China.

What kind of transpersonal experience is typical for Taoism? To answer this question we can use the classification of Grof (1993). Grof mentions a specific kind of ecstasy he calls “oceanic’ or “Apollonic” ecstasy.

According to Grof (1993, p.336), oceanic ecstasy (recall the sea waves in which the unborn baby-sage of the Tao Te ching swims) may be characterized by bliss, freedom from any stress, loss of any limitations of “ego,” and the experience of absolute unity with nature, universal order, and God. This state is concerned with a deep, direct understanding of reality and cognitive acts of universal meaning. It must be noted that the ideal of Taoism is a spontaneous and absolutely natural following of one’s own primordial nature (which is rooted in the empty Tao itself) and the nature of all other things, the nature of the universal whole (shun wu, “following things”). This “following the Way” suggests the absence of mentally constructed, reflective, purposive activity-a state devoid of any real ontological status ego-subject of activity (non-doing, wu we:). We must also note that Taoist texts demonstrate for us a profound and direct vision of reality. Phrases like “returning to the root, coming back to the source” are very typical of Taoist texts. These texts also proclaim the epistemological ideal of Taoism:

“One who knows does not speak; one who speaks does not know”.

According to Grof; the conditions of oceanic ecstasy correspond to the experience of symbiotic unity of a baby and its mother during the period of foetal development and of breast feeding. He writes (cited in reverse translation from Russian): “As we could expect, in the state of oceanic ecstasy there is presented the element of water as the cradle of life . . . The experience of the foetal existence, the identification with different aquatic forms of life or the consciousness of the ocean, visions of the starry sky and the feeling of the cosmic mind are exclusively widespread in this context” (Grof; 1993, p.336).

All these characteristics correspond to the description of the Taoist experience. It is also interesting to note how late Chinese sects with a Taoist background use the theme of the unborn. Here, Female Tao takes the image of Wu sheng lao mu (Unborn Old Mother). Unfortunately, sinologists have not noticed the paradoxical nature of the worldview of the sectarians, looking upon themselves as the children of the unborn mother! The paradox of a mother who is herself unborn is as astonishing as a Zen Buddhist koan. Even the very word “unborn” is paradoxical, and we know about the cases of enlightenment of some Zen monks meditating upon the sense of this word. Indeed, the unborn mother of the unborn child is but Great Tao itself.

In Grof’s Beyond the Brain (1993, p.380 of Russian edition), in fact, there is a picture presenting the image of archetypical Lao-tar-the baby-sage, an infant with grey hair. The picture was made by a participant in a psychedelic session and is concerned with the experience of BPM I. In the picture we can see a baby sitting with crossed legs on a lotus flower. The baby has long grey hair and has an umbilical cord conjoined with the unseen body of its mother. Grof says: “Identification with the foetus in the period of the peaceful prenatal development has, as a rule, divine qualities. The picture demonstrates obtaining, during a high dose LSD-session, an intuitive insight into the connection between the enibryonic bliss and the nature of the Buddha” (Grof, 1993, p.380; reverse translation from Russian). Here we once again meet with the exceptionally important question of the correlation between perinatal and transpersonal or “mystical” experience. The question is: Is it possible to reduce the mystical experience of transcendence to prenatal or perinatal experience and to recollections about it? At the present time, we cannot resolve this question conclusively. Therefore, below I shall suggest some hypotheses which remain to be verified in the course of future transpersonal research.

First of all, like Grof I do not equate transpersonal (mystical, psychopractical) experience with recollections of a perinatal character; I think it is quite incorrect to reduce experience of the first kind to experience of the second kind. Secondly, it is well known that perinatal recollections of the adult are principally different from the amorphous and rather simple experience of the foetus. The first kind of experience is much richer, broader, and varied. This type of experience is connected, as one can suppose, with much deeper levels of the unconscious representing the archetypical dimension of the mind. Probably these archetypical patterns and gestalts are something like a priori forms of the repetitive experience of the perinatal state~as in Kant’s philosophy, time and space are a priori forms of sensual intuition which determine our form of vision of the transcendent to these forms-reality as it is. Briefly speaking, our profound archetypical levels of the unconscious may be the source of patterns forming the experience of the perinatal states by adults. And those archetypical patterns, in turn, are akin to some kinds of mystical vision.

Nevertheless, we can observe a kind of parallelism between the perinatal and mystical experience. In this parallelism, perinatal gestalt correlates with the corresponding transpersonal (mystical) state.
Moreover, in some cases, we can speak of the superimposition or interplay between perinatal and mystical experience. In such cases, perinatal experience may be a sort of key opening to the mind gates to mystical experience.

We can only explain this phenomenon hypothetically by a kind of likeness or analogy existing between some perinatal and mystical states. For example, there is some analogy between the feeling of peace and security of the foetal existence of BPM I and the transpersonal experience of the unjo mystica, or the experience of universal unity. Therefore, the attainment of the perinatal state serves to eliminate the barriers of the unconscious, opening its deepest levels which correspond to this unity, thereby enabling the mind (or self-consciousness) to penetrate there. In other words, a person who achieved the experience of symbiotic union with the mother of BPM I can more simply and easily attain a parallel but higher experience of the universal unity: the first kind of experience gives way to the openness of analogical but highest (or deepest) strata and levels. Probably, the personal or individualistic limitations dividing the psychical worlds of different individuals are already absent on such profound levels of subconscious existence. (I do not use the word “subconscious” here in the psychoanalytical sense; perhaps it would be better to call it “superconscious.”)

Therefore, we may cautiously suppose the existence of some kind of isomorphism of basic states of consciousness of different levels, rooted in the holistic and polistructural (“holonomic” in Grof’s terminology) nature of reality as such, including its psychical dimension. But the problems of the ontology of consciousness are too subtle to discuss briefly. For now, we can only note the distinctive interplay of perinatal and transpersonal levels of experience in the Taoist tradition.

Taoist tradition, undoubtedly, is a precious part of the spfritual heritage of humankind. Many of the basic ideas and images of Taoism have a profound humanistic sense, deeply rooted in the very structure of our psychical experience. Do we not see the image of the Mysterious Female-Mother of all under heaven in Sophia or Eunoia of the Gnostics, in Shekhina of the Kabbalah, or in Sophia, the soul of the world, the image of the coming all-unity of the Russian philosopher and mystic Vladimir Solovyev?

I have seen everything and everything was only one:

The only image of the female beauty.

Unlimitless entered its measure,

In front of me, inside of me, there is only you.

-Vladimir Solovyev, “Three Meetings”

NOTE

1.1 have used the English translation of the Tao Te ching by Victor H. Mair (1 990). In cases of disagreement with his interpretation of the text, I provide my own translation, which is indicated with the superscript “I.” The concluding translation by Solovyev is also my own.

reprinted from: Everything Is According to the Way: Voices of Russian Transpersonalism
(Bolda-Lok Publishing and Educational Enterprises, Brisbane, Australia ?1997 )
Edited by T. R. Soidla and S. I. Shapiro

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Seidel, A. (1969). La divinisation de Lao-tseu dans le taoisme des Han. Publications de I’ Ecole Francaise d’Extreme Orient, 71. Paris: Adrien Maisonneuve.
Tao Te ching. (1989). Lao-tzu. Tao Te ching. Han Hoshang-kung chu (Laotzu. The Canon of the Way and Its Power. With the commentaries of Hoshang-kung of the Han dynasty].

Chungkuo ch ‘i kung ta ch ‘eng [Compendium of the Chinese Ch’i-kung gymnastics]. Ch’angch’un: Chum k’ohsue chishu ch’upan she.

Wu Ch’ung-hsu. (1965). T’ian hsian cheng ii chihiun tsengchu [“Straight discussions about the true law of the celestial immonals” with commentaries]. Taipei: Tzuyu ch’upan she.

Inside Tao News/Chi Flows Naturally:

1. Essay: five reasons why qigong is better for our health than ordinary
exercise for us humans struggling to “stay in shape”. How can qigong be better
if it doesn’t build bulk muscle or tax the heart with an aerobic workout? Taken
from my new Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) section, which will be posted
within a week.

2. The 2007 Summer Retreat schedule is posted. These are at Dao (Tao) Mountain
in the Catskills, 90 minutes from NYC. Start planning now – these low cost
retreats are fun “learning vacations” and a boost of high energy not to be
missed. Note the 2007 schedule has been compressed into eight weeks (instead of
ten): June 16-Aug. 5. Contact: retreats@healingdao.com or visit
http://www.healingtaoretreats.com/#c.

My personal schedule has also been updated:

http://www.healingdao.com/pages/asheville/index.html

3. Congratulations are in order. Daoist Body Cultivation, ed. Livia Kohn (my
chapter is on sexual alchemy), has received the prestigious Outstanding Academic
Title Award from Choice magazine, the main source for librarians. Only a few
books receive this award every year for academic excellence and pioneering work.
Read my book review and get your copy, or send one to a friend as a gift:
http://www.healingdao.com/blk1.html

4. Thinking of gifts this Winter Solstice season? Consider the gift of glowing
health for family and friends. Give a qigong DVD or homestudy audio-video
course. Some DVDs like Primordial Qigong/Tai Chi for Enlightenment or the Five
Animals/Six Healing Sounds are already in home study packages (Qigong
Fundamentals 1 & 2) that are effectively half price. But everything else is on
sale.

4a. SALE OFFER to Tao News/ Chi Flows Naturally subscribers and their friends:
Starts Tuesday Dec. 5 until Friday midnite, Jan 5, 2007:

Sale price of all my Qigoing DVD’s is $29.95. (35% discount off $45. retail
price), plus s/h. AUDIO CD & DVD PACKAGE prices for Fusion of 5 Elements,
Taoist Sexual Secrets/Healing Love, Dream Practice, and Lesser Kan & Li are
discounted 10% off their web price (note: no further discounts on Qigong
Fundamentals 1-4).

VHS videos are all $19.95 (50% off) plus s/h. AUDIO CASSETTE courses are
discounted 25% off web price while stock lasts. VHS and Cassettes are being
discontinued, except for the Primordial and Fundamentals 1& 2 courses and a few
higher Kan & Li courses. Everything else will be in DVD/CD audio format only in
the future.

To receive discount, please phone the super-efficient Wendy, manager of our new
Office of Satisfaction: 888 999 0555 noon-4 pm Eastern time, or email:
info@healingdao.com. Local numbers: 828-505-1444 (-1044, fax).

4b. For the really unusual gift, give someone the “Tai Chi Dynamic-Sit Sexy Ergo
Ball Chair”.
http://www.healingdao.com/ballchair.html

4c. For the high end special “art” gift, consider a hand-painted calligraphy
infused with Qi by my friend, the qigong artist Wu Zhongxian:
http://www.healingdao.com/calligraphy.html

5. Thanks for all the feedback on our new copper roof. Yes, both sides of the
roof are grounded – via two ten-foot copper rods buried in the ground. We had a
wonderful meditation last saturday, and everyone is invited again on Friday Dec.
22, 7pm-midnite, for the Winter Solstice meditation.

6. Still space in the Dec. 9 -10 Sat/Sun Internal Chi Breathing & Bone Rooting
workshop.
email: winn@healingdao.com.

. Tax-deductible Donation: Support the Tao vs. Black Hole of Government

I give thanks and feel deep gratitude for your interest, support, and good
energy around the healing and spiritual work we are doing through our non-profit
501c3 organization. As the 2006 tax year approaches its end, I’d like to remind
all US citizens that you CAN choose where you want your Federal tax money to go?
and it doesn?t HAVE TO go into the black hole of government spending.

The IRS makes it legal to make large, 100% tax-deductible donations to official,
tax-exempt, non-profit, 501(c)3 organizations like Dao Alchemy Research
Institute (d.b.a. as Healing Tao USA). You can make these donations instead of
paying your federal taxes. Talk to your accountant or financial advisor if this
makes sense for you. It’s a way to put your money to work more effectively.
Donations could include cash, real estate, art, or creative services.

Your donation is a way to make a noble statement and simultaneously ease the
burden of staff costs and ever rising advertising needed to keep the website up
and the summer retreat program happening. I donate many hundreds of hours of
unpaid labor each year to support the vision of Healing Tao USA. My vision is of
a dynamic community of smiling, heart-centered beings, dedicated to the Way of
cultivating our original nature and unfolding each person’s unique creative
potential. My work is to make available the most effective body-centered methods
of self-cultivation.

lf donations don’t make sense for you, please know that your purchases or
attendance on a China Dream Trip also qualify for partial tax deduction – and
are greatly appreciated. Sending you a big smile in advance!

————————————————-

Dear Souls that are Curious about Good Health,

Question: Why is Qigong (chi kung) better for health than regular exercise or
sports?

Answer:

I think sports and physical exercise is great, it’s one way to enjoy your body
and explore its potential. I?ve tried just about every sport. I am a top skier.
I was a professional white water rafting guide, with 40 trips down the Grand
Canyon. I?ve hiked in many of the world?s most famous mountains. I swim a mile
in the Caribbean ocean every day during my winter retreat. I especially love
outdoor sports, as they put me in direct contact with nature?s energy field.

Sports are totally compatible with qigong. But none of the sports or other forms
of exercise I’ve tried ultimately can compare to the benefits I?ve received from
daily practice of qigong. If I do a sport, I still practice qigong the same day,
as it balances and refreshes me. If possible, I always practice qigong outdoors,
to absorb more natural chi.

Below are five reasons I find qigong to be a superior form of exercise. The same
benefits apply to tai chi, which I consider to be a long martial form of qigong.
But tai chi is longer and thus harder to learn. For this reason I’ve found
qigong delivers faster and deeper results for most people.

1. Qigong is a whole mind-body exercise.

The main difference is that qigong is not just a physical body exercise, it is a
body-mind exercise. The mind could be defined as our ability to shape energy
into thoughts, feelings, sensations, or other perceptual patterns.

When you exercise the full spectrum of your body-mind using qigong, a completely
different experience happens. You begin to shape energy into flowing patterns of
harmony and balance and peace. You connect your body to the sky above and the
earth below, and your heart opens up a vast open creative space inside the body.

If you practice qigong in a group, you begin to experience the ?group heart? of
your fellow practitioners. If you practice alone, it opens a peaceful space in
your heart that is easy and wonderful to share the rest of the day. This whole
body-mind involvement of qigong is also what makes it a perfect complement to
passive sitting meditation.

2. Qigong overcomes our resistance to physical exercise.

Qigong is so much fun, it becomes a ?healthy addiction?. People love being
relaxed while they exercise. Many folks tell me they cannot wait to practice it
each day. Unfortunately, most Western people treat physical exercise as
something that you ?do to your body? or to your muscles or ?to? your heart. They
hate going to gym.

Why do so many people hate physical exercise, and drop it as the first excuse?
Their mind is separated from their body. Hence, there is an unconscious fear and
sometimes loathing of the body. The modern top-heavy mind sees the body like a
difficult and needy child, that cannot really be controlled or satisfied.

Many modern people live in their head, and just visit the lower part of the body
occasionally to get it into shape. They exercise mostly so the head/face will
look good sitting on top of the body. Others can only experience their body
through sex. Then they quickly shift back into their head immediately
afterwards. People engage in sex-ploitation of their own body without realizing
it. It?s much healthier to have a full time relationship between your mind and
your body.

Example: many joggers listen to music as they run in mindless circles around the
block. They are not focused on what their body is experiencing while running.
They ignore the joy of movement or the exhilaration of moving through space.
Instead, they listen to their favorite band because they find their body
incredibly boring to hang out with. Exercise is a chore. They resent having to
work hard, to sweat to get the fat off their flabby muscles. There is no deep
mind-body communication happening during their exercise.

With qigong it?s different. You don?t push the river, you find a gentle rhythm
and you repeat it with slow, relaxed, often circular movements. Different
movements open different energy channels in your body. The process invites to go
deeper. You gradually find the body moves by itself effortlessly, as if
propelled by some invisible energy field. You relax and enjoy a ride on an easy
feeling of flow.

3.Qigong delivers better & quicker health benefits than ordinary exercise.

I could go on for an entire book all the health benefits that come about from
this kind of relaxed movement. About how ONLY gentle circular movements will
stimulate your lymphatic system, which is the backbone of the body-mind?s immune
system. Jogging and aerobics actually shut down the lymphatic-immune system
during vigorous exercise!

Why would fast exercise cause your immune system to shut down? When you go
running, your body assumes that you need to conserve energy. It thinks (in the
deep instinctual brain) that you are running away from a bear chasing you down
for a meal. Your belly-instinct brain doesn?t see your $200. nike running shoes,
it thinks you are in survival mode, so it kicks the adrenaline on and shuts the
immune system. It considers your immune system an optional at that survival
moment.

So vigorous exercise is not optimal for your lymphatic and immune system. It may
do other things for you, and is certainly better than rotting in your chair!
Does your heart need the ?fast? aerobic exercise? According to Chinese medicine,
no. It posits that the heart is already over-worked, and actually needs a
vacation. Qigong gives the heart a vacation by getting the chi meridians and
blood vessels of the entire body to take over the heart job of blood
circulation.

That is why top athletes have low blood pressure ? their circulatory efficiency
is so high that the heart doesn?t need to overwork. Chinese sports athletes
already know that qigong training will give them a secret edge over their
competitors, but they don?t advertise it.

Does science back up the claim that qigong offers superior health benefits?
Please check our the research from the past director of the Stanford Research
Institute on the 3500 science studies proving the health benefits of qigong.
https://www.michaelwinn.qlogictechnologies.com/cgi-bin/articles.pl?rm=mode2&articleid=40

4. Qigong gives you more energy than you expend practicing it.

You get more energy back from qigong than you put into it. When you do qigong,
you are exploring the natural of perpetual motion. Your body is really a ?free
energy device?. Physicists admit that humans expend more energy than they take
in from food, water, and air. But they cannot answer the mystery as to where the
extra energy comes from.

If you practice qigong regularly, it is like making a really safe, profitable
investment. You get all your invested principle back, plus huge interest. Most
physical ?body-only? exercise result in a net energy loss. People work hard,
they sweat, afterwards they feel pleasantly exhausted. The addiction here is
different ? it is the need to release pent up or stuck energy in the body.

So even this type of physical workout is healthy for you, up to a point. But
consider this: body builders who develop huge muscles often die young of heart
attacks. Why? Because as they age, their heart has to feed blood to all that
muscle, and it gets exhausted early. The big muscles turn to fat, and reduce
efficiency of circulation.

Qigong in my progressive training has you store the extra chi gained in your
bones, tendons, and vital organs ? not in the muscles. These require far less
maintenance and are part of the qigong secret to producing longevity.

5. Qigong is easy, fun, & all ages can practice it anywhere.

You can learn qigong and begin to feel the chi flow within minutes. It?s really
a universal exercise ? it?s super easy to learn, whether you are 8 or 80 years
old. You can practice anywhere, anytime ? indoors or outside, even in a small
apartment space.

With qigong exercise, less is more. Less effort gives better results – the more
relaxed and soft you are, the more the chi can flow through you. Forget the ?no
pain, no gain? exercise theory. When you push the river, you get tired of it
eventually. Ordinary kinds of exercise can make your body strong, but they wear
you out energetically.

With qigong exercises, you can forget the sweaty workout. Stop treating the body
like a dumb sheep that needs to be herded by a head that ?knows? what is best
for the body. Qigong exercise is about appreciating your body-mind, respecting
its intelligence, and giving it love and energy while you are moving it. The
body-mind together keep you young and healthy. Qigong doesn?t push or stress the
body into a hard sweat ? it seeks to release stress from the body.

Wishing you love, flowing chi, and radiant health,

Michael Winn

?Who takes Heaven as his ancestor, Virtue as his home,
the Tao as his door, and who becomes change ? is a Sage.?

? Chuang Tzu, Inner Chapters

“The Tao is very close, but everyone looks far away.

Life is very simple, but everyone seeks difficulty.”

— Taoist Sage, 200 B.C

Inside Chi Flows Naturally:

1. Story of how Healing Tao summer retreats 2007 had to
suddenly relocate, due to sale of its Catskill center.

By grace of Tao and guidance from I Ching, we have a
new (and better) site: Heavenly Mountain, a former
luxurious spiritual center of Transcendental Meditation
(TM). It’s nestled in the beautiful Blue Ridge
Mountains near Blowing Rock, North Carolina. At 4000
feet high, it is energetically far more powerful than
our old Catskill site. These are the highest mountains
on the east coast and have fabulous waterfalls, caves,
rafting and hiking nearby. It’s close to Asheville,
with its many attractions. Details below. Photo link:
http://www.healingdao.com/heavenly_mountain.html

Nearest big airport is Charlotte, N.C.. New schedule is
very close to the old schedule, but there are changes.
Mantak Chia’s June 16 start date is unchanged; all
other retreats run Friday dinner to Wednesday lunch,
with more weekend options. Tuition costs unchanged,
better accomodations, and single rooms are cheaper. New
schedule, travel details below. We need a chef and more
workstudy students.

Website is being updated, but may take a few days.
Check www.HealingTaoRetreats.com for ongoing info – we
have space for expansion now and may be inviting other
Tao masters to teach their art. Contact our registrar
Rob Renahan with questions: retreats@healingdao.com
(email is best for us) or 1-888-750-1773 (noon – 4 pm
EST, M-F). After April 8, Rob’s cell is 828-242-0968.

2. We are still accepting late signups for China Dream
Trip, subject to change in air costs.
Contact: winn@healingdao.com.
See full trip itinerary at:
http://www.healingdao.com/chinatrip2007.html
See my top 60 China Dream Trip photos at:
http://www.healingdao.com/china_dream_trip_photos.html

3. Fusion of the Five Elements 2 & 3 on April 28 & 29,
in Asheville, NC. Added plus for those travelling:
Asheville is only a short drive up the Blue Ridge
Parkway to our new retreat site near Blowing Rock, a
magnificent drive this time of the year. Contact:
winn@healingdao.com
————————–

Dear Lovers of the Natural Way,

The Tao is about Change. Taoist self-cultivation
studies Nature because it teaches us how to change
gracefully. Tao teaches us how to dance with the all
pervading Life Force as we move through our personal
life cycles. Sometimes, Change happens quickly, like a
spring thunderstorm.

Dealing with Bad News

Ten days ago, the summer retreat program got slammed by
a small tsunami of Change. I received an email
informing me our N.Y. Catskills retreat center is being
sold and that our rental contract to hold 25 Healing
Tao University retreats this summer was being torn up.
The Jeronimos who own the Catskills center are good
folks, but for personal reasons are desperate to sell.
Their desperation was our potential ruin.

That kind of change can take your breath away. It
affects hundreds of people, a faculty of 20
instructors, and a tightly crafted schedule of 25
retreats. With a year’s notice, it would be a small
feat to relocate. On three months notice, it was like
asking an ocean liner to suddenly behave like a
speedboat.

The strange thing is that the I Ching, the ancient
Chinese book of wisdom (lit. “Book of Unchanging
Changes”) had already warned me last summer that we
would be moving. But I thought it wouldn’t happen for
another year, so I signed the 2007 contract. I am
reminded, once again, that the forces of Change wait
for no man. The Year of the Female Fire PIg is kicking
in full strength, bringing new abundance for those
properly aligned, and the chaos of separating Fire
Above and Water Below for those who are not.

I did an intensive search for New England sites,
starting in the Catskills and radiating outward. I
called the top dozen likely candidates. Of course,
everyone was mostly booked or could offer only choppy
dates sandwiched in between other groups. Totally
unsatisfactory for the quality of energy work we are
doing, and for the type of space we have been holding
internationally for the Taoist community. I was getting
a bit concerned, and wondering if the retreats were
even meant to happen in 2007. So I asked the I Ching
what to do, and it suggested “the situation is changing
rapidly, the Way is Open. Be open to receive assistance
from a new direction. Great Harvest.”

Following the Dragons to the Southeast

I decided to look at other mountain locations, the
traditional favorite for Taoist cultivation. I chose to
live in the Blue Ridge mountains near Asheville, North
Carolina because the earth chi is so powerful. There
are powerful “dragons” in the land, what other
traditions would call “ley lines”. These mountains are
the oldest mountains on earth, some 400 million years
old according to geologists. A deep earth wisdom lies
within their bones. The Appalachian mountains of North
Carolina are loaded with crystal of such high quality
that 96% of the silicon used in computer chips in the
USA comes from here.

The crystal stone circle in my backyard came from a
woman near Blowing Rock, North Carolina who didn’t want
the garage-sized crystal boulder in the middle of her
driveway…. So I sat in my stone circle, where I often
meditate or practice qigong, and asked for help. I
followed the vibration of the Stones, tracking them to
their source within the land for inspiration. And I
suddenly remembered ten years earlier, my younger
brother Steven visiting me. We went up to Blowing Rock
to visit a TM center, an enormously ambitious project
built by two of his TM friends, Earl and David Kaplan.

The Kaplans were inspired in 1993 by their TM guru
Maharishi to build a retreat center to hold a thousand
“professional meditators” who would be meditating and
chanting all day to radiate out World Peace. The idea
was to get critical mass going, to send out an
energetic wave to the planet. What a lovely idea, quite
alchemical. One drop of pure consciousness shifts the
entire polluted field. But the trick is getting the
right alchemical essences into that one drop. Then the
vibrational intent penetrates to the very heart of
matter. Very different, in my training, than simply
praying to Spirit. Spirit, I believe, is just half of
Matter. And Spirit wants us to use our free will and
love to directly shape Matter – not beg Spirit to do it
for us.

In 1997 my brother Steven and I drove up to Blowing
Rock, an old Native American area that is now a popular
tourist site. It is close to Grandfather Mountain,
Linville Falls, deep caverns, and Mt. Mitchell (at
7,000 ft. the highest peak on the East coast). Blowing
Rock itself is a famous precipice with a stunning 80
mile vista over the Blue Ridge Mountains and the green
valleys below. When the wind blows, the Rock makes its
own music. There is an old Cherokee and Catawba legend
that lovers from the two tribes – who were at war – met
at Blowing Rock. The man felt called by duty to return
to his tribe, and leaped off the rock to his death. The
woman called to Spirit to bring him back – and the Wind
blew him back up onto the Rock into the arms of his
lover.

Steve wanted to go to Blowing Rock to do a special
meditation to solve a personal problem he had at the
time. So in 1997 we sat on the land at Heavenly
Mountain, the name given to the 5000 acres purchased by
the Kaplans. They had hired top fengshui experts from
both the Chinese and Vedic (Hindu) traditions to study
the land and its layout before building on it.They had
security guards swarming all over the mountain to
guarantee its privacy. So we drove off to a secluded
patch of forest that called to me, to get away from the
temples and meditators and guards.

While Steve chanted to the heavens, I did my Taoist
meditation, which included going deep into the earth to
talk with the spirits there. I had a powerful
meditation, it was easy to go in deep, the earth
spirits were very open. I had done TM meditation back
in the late 60’s and early 70’s, and it had helped me
greatly to release tension. In fact, it cured me of
eye headaches and assisted me in surviving the rigorous
study needed at my Ivy League college. I never took
formal TM initiation. I just used their method, taught
to me by a friend, with a mantra of my own spontaneous
choosing (which unbeknownst to me at the time, was the
named of a major Hindu God…)

Tracking the Perfect Retreat Center

Sitting in my stone circle ten years later, I flashed
back into that meditation at Heavenly Mountain. It was
filed deep within a library of frequencies stored
within my subtle bodies. All memory is really subtle
energy patterns, which is why its possible for us to
access any experience stored in the universal
time-space vault. My connection to Heavenly Mtn.
flowed back into my bones.

A few minutes later I got up and called my brother
Steve, to locate the Kaplans. I knew that they had
become disillusioned with Maharishi from a posting on
the Healing Tao forum – an open letter by Earl Kaplan
to the TM community you can read HERE:
http://forum.healingdao.com/general/message/3110/ It
was his reasons for kicking out the 800+ meditators at
Heavenly Mountain, and why he thought folks needed to
move beyond the old Guru model. It is a brilliant
detailed expose on the danger of giving up one’s power
to anyone else.

I try not to get too involved in spiritual politics,
and focus on spiritual practice. But I could see that
Earl Kaplan was likely moving in the direction of more
grounded, body-centered meditation that Taoist
cultivation offered. Long story short, Heavenly
Mountain was sitting empty, awaiting completion of
legal battles with the meditators who were evicted.

I called Earl Kaplan in Boulder, and he sounded
interested in the Taoist work. He knew that he needed
to shift the chi at Heavenly Mountain, and get it
moving in a fresh new direction. That’s our speciality,
I informed Earl. The chi in the Catskills was dead when
we arrived 5 years ago, we awakened it with deep
embodied meditation and qigong training. Taoist
spiritual technology is Earth centered; Hindu spiritual
technology is Ether centered. Both are valid spiritual
approaches. But my experience is that we are currently
in a cycle in which the Earth chi is doing the
expanding, making it the more vibrant, grounded path at
this time.

After talking to Earl, I drove to Blowing Rock the next
day. I was shown the east campus, where all the women –
the “Divine Mothers” – lived and meditated. The chi
there was more appropriate for Taoist cultivation, with
its focus on Water and Fire alchemy, on the
feminine/yin side first. The energy there was nice, but
a bit ethereal, not really connected to the earth chi
in the mountain. Within 3 days we had a deal, securing
a new home for Healing Tao USA’s summer retreat
program.

Advantages of Heavenly Mountain

Of course, for those in the northeast, it may seem
inconvenient and more expensive to travel further
south. But our top flight faculty – many from NYC and
Boston – are making the trip, and they are excited
about it. If you have your doubts, a little
investigation will soon have you excited and
surrendering to Change as well!G

A good place to start off is with PHOTOS of Heavenly
Mountain and nearby areas. Go to
http://www.healingdao.com/heavenly_mountain.html

It also has maps of where Blowing Rock is – 78 miles
from Charlotte, the capitol of North Carolina. Heavenly
Mtn. is a few miles from Blowing Rock and Boone, just
off the Blue Ridge Parkway. The parkway is widely
considered to be the most beautiful drive in America –
a good reason to drive to the retreat.

MUCH QUIETER – no road traffic, the main thing driving
me away from our Catkskills location. Heavenly Mountain
is totally private and secluded, and thus easier to
build a real and sustained energy field.

BETTER FACILITIES – better meeting rooms, all with
quiet central a/c and chairs designed for meditation.
The bedrooms are bigger, more modern construction, less
mold, with each room having full a/c and heat control.
We are lowering the price on the singles because we
have so many available. Plus higher quality doubles,
incredible mtn views, laundry facilities on each floor.
There is an outdoor pool, and hot tubs are being
installed. Of course, we will have our Taoist
Bookstore, with its unsurpassed collections of titles
and cool Tao T-shirts.

BETTER FOOD -Healing Tao is taking control of the
kitchen, and supplying our own chef. (Contact me asap
if you are interested in the job- just hit reply to
this email). There is a state of the art kitchen, a
dining hall that can serve 250 people. For those
staying between retreats, there is a smaller private
kitchen and big refrige space.
Note: We’ll have MORE WORK STUDY spaces available to
man the kitchen and laundry facilitities, great for
those who want to trade work for room/board (you still
pay tuition). Contact retreats@healingdao.com

MORE NATURAL BEAUTY – On the east campus where we will
be, there are two giant crystals. One is a 6,000. pound
Amethyst geode, the largest in the world (see photos).
The other is a 10,000. pound quartz crystal, also said
to be the largest of its kind. Both offer unique
energetic opportunities. A short hike from campus is
the “blue hole”, a magnificant swimming hole with a
river flowing into an emerald pool. See photos of the
nearby Linville Falls, Grandfather Mtn, Blowing Rock,
Falls Creek, and many other fabulous natural sites that
will happily occupy your time between retreats. We are
located in the heart of some of America’s most
beautiful sites that make coming to a retreat a double
vacation.

SPIRITUALLY ATTUNED OWNERS AND STAFF – Earl and David
Kaplan are super serious spiritual seekers, totally
committed to supporting others in their path. Quite
different from the hoteliers we had in the Catskills.
Debbie Triplett, the business manager, is committed to
giving the Healing Tao the best experience possible.
The Kaplans have hired a half-welsh, half-Native
American sensitive named Cynthia Hart to be the
Gatekeeper at Heavenly Mountain. She is a wonderful
earthy soul, a former Park ranger with divinity degrees
and doctorates in many world religions. Her job is to
continually clear the land of negative energy and to
keep positive chi flowing. When I first called her, she
immediately asked, “Are you bringing the dragons I’ve
been dreaming about for the last three days?”

TRAVEL – The Charlotte airport is my favorite in the
USA – clean, spacious, with a piano bar, nice
restaurants, rocking chairs and trees to rest under.
Much nicer than passing through New York City. Its an
international airport with direct connections abroad.
It’s about 2 hours drive to get to Blowing Rock – no
farther than the Catskills. Our registrar will be
keeping a bulletin board for travellers looking to
share rental cars and/or shuttles (we are negotiating
deals on that). Having a car will be really nice, given
all the nice sites worth visiting nearby, and the
convenience going to/from the airport. You can also fly
into Greensboro, NC, and they have a cheap bus up to
Blowing Rock.

TRAVEL DISCOUNTS/REBATES: If you are a past attendee of
Healing Tao retreats and our shift is causing you
economic hardship to get to our new location, i.e. you
used to drive and cannot afford to fly or drive south,
call our registrar to see if we can help with a special
discount this first year. If you already booked a
flight to NYC and are forced to change it to Charlotte,
we’ll deduct any reasonable cancel/ change fee from
your registration cost.

Insider’s Guide to 2007 Summer Retreats

(reposted from last email):

It’s time to decide if there is summer retreat awaiting
you. A fun week that will hopefully awaken the sleeping
essence within.

How does one choose between 25 retreat offerings? Easy.
Read the list below slowly. The close your eyes, drop
your focus down into your heart. Breathe in and out of
your heart a few times. Then ask, which retreat serves
my highest good? Your heart won’t lie to you.

In 2007, we are still offering the only live-in retreat
with Mantak Chia. It’s great to just hang out with him
at meals and around the campus. He may not be
travelling here forever, so don’t postpone the
opportunity to check out the heavy chi pumping out
through his energy field. He’s offering a totally new
topic, DNA repair and Immune Building Qigong, plus
Tao-Yin (Taoist Yoga).

David Twicken is continuing his brilliant integration
of Chinese Astrology, Feng Shui, and Qigong. I will be
offering his books shortly in the new astrology section
of my website, and you will be able to get a Free natal
chart. David offers a free detailed reading to each
person attending his seminar, which also carries CEU
credits.

We’ve got a hot new Classical Tai Chi training from
Tina Zhang, to match Frank Allen’s unsurpassed 3 part
Bagua training. Tina and Frank recently authorized an
excellent book on the Norther Wu Style, a style I
happen to practice and really love. Tina also has a
Women’s Earth Qigong retreat.

We have all the old standbys – the HealingTao Senior
Instructors offering a top notch Instructor
Certification training (courses open to the public):
myself, Marie Favorito, Masahiro Ouchi, Rene Navarro,
and recently tapped for Senior status, Karin Sorvik.
This is the core curriculum track – Qigong
Fundamentals, Iron Shirt, Fusion, Healing Love, and for
the body workers Chi Nei Tsang.

Minke de Vos is coming out from Vancouver to share her
20 year insight into healing love. She developed her
Happy and Healthy Heart Qigong course after undergoing
a heart transplant. Read her amazing story on
www.HealingTaoRetreats.com

Adding new spice is my friend Robert Peng, an top
qigong healer who shares his secrets in a Qigong
Healing Intensive over the July 4 week. Robert is
lovely, humble, and powerful – he was born with the
ability to “spark” chi in a tangible form, like an
electric current. If you want to learn Qi Emission,
Robert is the man.

We have the irrepressible Madam Wang Yan, a spry 70
year old who is a walking encyclopedia of medical
qigong and the Grand Madam of weight loss qigong in the
West. If you want to breathe away fat and lose 4-6
pounds a week, it is achievable by natural means. Her
stories and insight into the world of Chinese qigong is
alone worth the trip.

Another healer and empath is Judith Poole, who has
gather the top Energy Medicine and Energy Psychology
tools under her single roof. If you’ve got an intense
crisis or issue to heal, Judith is the Woman.

Finally, our Retreat Registrar, Rob Renahan, is
unveiling his stuff for the first time at Dao mtn. He
is developing his version of Zen Qigong, based on his
extensive practice in the Zen tradition and his
integration of it into the Taoist qigong and inner
alchemy tradition. If you want to get to deep quiet
space, Rob is the Man.

They are all great teachers, and they attract wonderful
people who create a beautiful synergy. These are high
energy retreats where you will walk away with new
skills, new friends, and a burst of amazingly high
energy that you will surf on for months.

Now that we have more teaching rooms available at
Heavenly Mountain, I may be inviting other worthy
teachers that we never had space for in the Catskills.
We will let you know of further developments.

Sharing the Joy of Unchanging Change with all Lovers of
the Way,

Michael

?Who takes Heaven as his ancestor, Virtue as his home,
the Tao as his door, and who becomes change ? is a
Sage.?

? Chuang Tzu, Inner Chapters

“The Tao is very close, but everyone looks far away.
Life is very simple, but everyone seeks difficulty.”

— Taoist Sage, 200 B.C

Get a free 12 page brochure on Healing Tao University,
the largest Tao (Dao) Arts & Sciences program in the
West with 25 week long retreats featuring “chi kung”
(qigong) and inner alchemy (neidangong) training. For
more info, see www.HealingTaoRetreats.com.

Or visit www.HealingTaoUSA.com, www.HealingDao.com to
order books/videos/tapes from the Tao Chi Kung Home
Study program. Call the Healing Tao USA Fullfillment
center at the Mystical Number 1-888-999-0555 or more
ordinary numbers: 828-505-1444 (-1044, fax), or email
info@HealingDao.com

Visit www.Taichi-Enlightenment.com for a glimpse into
the world’s most magical form.

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Inside Chi Flows Naturally:

note: if your email changes, to update simply
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will auto- delete.

1. Essay on whether its possible to achieve
Enlightenment in one week. Hint: the answer is yes. In
fact, it generally happens in less than a week. It all
depends on one’s ability to grasp the value of
Ignorance. That makes my essay about enlightenment akin
to chasing a greased pig into a pit of
quicksand….i.e. it is a very slippery topic.

1a. Essay is followed by an insider’s guide to the 25
very cool one week retreats this summer in the New York
Catskills. These offer great possibility for fun,
friendship (or find a spiritual playmate, as I once
did), high “chi” experiences and the deep wisdom of
seasoned masters in their field. Note: these retreats
carry no guarantee of enlightenment – but do raise the
probabilities….

We’ve upgraded the website so you can fully register
online for housing as well as tuition, with our low
prices and numerous discounts. Details at:
www.HealingTaoRetreats.com.

2. “Taoist Hermit One Cloud’s 1st Formula – Advanced
Training” is the Spring Equinox retreat Mar. 17-23 in
Holland. It’s already full. I mention it because my
monster 23-CD audio recording of it (last time I was in
Holland) I feel is my best integration of the broad
range of Taoist foundation qigong & meditation
practices.

Part of the quality of this recording is due to the
impressively high level of preparation by the 35 Dutch
students, each with 4 to 7 years practice in the
foundation Tao methods. So the questions they ask are
deep. It’s also a credit to the seven Dutch Healing Tao
teachers, who have developed a wonderful synergy and
commitment to Tao as a community process. Perhaps
they’ve mastered the beauty of living in a small
country. I’ll be journeying with this disciplined group
through all the Kan & Li formulas in coming years.

A few thoughts on One Cloud’s 1st Alchemical Formula.
it is essentially a summary of the whole of internal
Chinese medicine. it embraces Inner Smile, 6 Healing
Sounds, Microcosmic Orbit, Internal Chi Breathing &
Bone Breathing and Rooting, Fusion of 5 Elements 1,2,3,
and Healing Love/Taoist Sexology. These are all the
foundation practices for cultivating your Energy Body
from every possible angle. It’s a potent spiritual
cocktail, and a lot to digest. The equivalent to
getting a good education at a top private school.

After you graduate from the the 1st Formula, one gets
into the “college level” Water & Fire “soul
enlightenment” alchemy formulas – Lesser, Greater, and
Greatest Kan & Li. These practices move into deep areas
of the collective unconsicous, from bloodline ancestral
to sun-moon and planetary/astrology cycles. For your
Phd, you go for Star Alchemy and Heaven & Earth
Alchemy. Of course, this is all metaphor. No matter
what your skill level, we are all constantly being
tested in the Tao of living in each moment. Everyone
has a front row seat with the Life Force flowing
through them. The challenges we face ground us in our
Way, our process of endless transformation.

If you’ve been studying the foundation practices for a
while, you might be interested in my integration of One
Cloud’s formula in this week-long set of 23 CD’s. This
is not intended to be a replacement for doing these
courses separately, but does summarize all the
refinements I’ve added over the last 27 years. The
audio does not duplicate any of the qigong training on
my DVDs, it assumes you have/will get those DVDs or
know the forms. This 23-CD audio set is not on the
website, you’ll have to call the office at 888-999-0555
or email at info@healingdao.com to order. $295.
Healing & Universal Tao instructors receive a 40%
discount.

3. Fusion of the Five Elements 2 $ 3 on April 28 & 29,
in Asheville, NC. This lays bare the infrastructure of
the “macro-cosmic orbit”. This is about the Eight
Cosmic Forces that flow in the body via the Eight
Extraordinary Vessels. These are key in preventing and
healing chronic illness and undiagnosable “mystery
diseases”. It develops the psychic skill of your five
shen/organ spirits that control the eight channels –
the interface of your Energy Body with the environment.
Cost: still only $144. April is a lovely time to visit
the Blue Ridge mountains surrounding Asheville. The
Fusion 1-2-3 courses are most powerful taken in
sequence, but could be taken as stand alones.
winn@healingdao.com.

4. We’ve still got a few spaces on the May 18-June 3
China Dream Trip. We do accept last minute signups, but
airfare may be higher for late signups. See full trip
itinerary at: http://www.healingdao.com/chinatrip2007.html
See my top 60 China Dream Trip photos at:
http://www.healingdao.com/china_dream_trip_photos.html

Dear Seekers of Any Kind of Enlightenment,

The question is sometimes asked, how long will it take
to find enlightenment once I embark upon the “pathless
path” of the Tao? I once had this question, asked with
some angst, by someone thinking of signing up for one
my summer retreats. The hidden question was, “Can I get
enlightened by the end of this week?”

Normally I decline to discuss the topic as a hopeless
quagmire of hard to define concepts. But in this case,
after enjoying a silent chuckle, I gave my best answer:
“Only the most Doltish and Dorky adept would take a
whole week to achieve enlightenment”. I explained that
in my opinion, enlightenment happens all the time, it
is part of the natural process of living. And it always
happens spontaneously and in a split second in which
perceptions are expanded to some new level.

There is no waiting for a week. It is not a time-bound
game. And yet I also believe it is a loser’s game to
chase after some Final or True Enlightenment beyond
time. From my study of the Life Force, for humans there
is no Absolute State. We humans – including those who
transcend death and achieve immortality – are destined
to experience transformation and endless change, tiny
cells in a vast multi-verse. Likewise, in my
understanding, all deities, including any Creator God,
must follow the Principle of Change initiated by the
Life Force.

Is Enlightenment a Process or a Permanent State?

If the Life Force is about Process, then humans
necessarily reflect that, at all levels of awareness.
It doesn’t matter if we have a clunky physical body of
flesh or one of glorious radiant light – change still
happens. The most ancient Chinese wisdom classic, the I
Ching, is also known as the Book of Unchanging Changes.
To put it in religious language, God/dess can’t stop
creating. S/He/It is a compulsive Creataholic, and the
endless cycles of the zodiac is the local 12 step
program to work out the kinks and bad habits. The
purpose of this cosmic game plane is to strengthen the
ground of love and free will, so they can manifest more
effortlessly.

In a cultivated human life, enlightenment of the Taoist
variety offers the promise of a somewhat smoother life
process. The sharp edges of our suffering gets
polished, yet stubbornly insists on remaining, lest we
grow too comfortable and stop changing. The doors of
perception can somehow always open wider, to
increasingly paradoxical levels. A small pain triggers
a memory, which unleashes an odd neuron, which sets off
a strange new bliss. And so it goes.

Our souls are bound to the collective stream of
consciousness of our ancestors and children, and our
future selves stare at us with bug eyes from alien
lands. We are on an endless journey between creation
and source and back again. This is the great or
Macro-cosmic cycle of life, mirrored in the meditation
practice of the Taoist Micro-cosmic Orbit. Most
puzzling of all, this endless spiral of life is
mysteriously fed by and feeds back into a core silence
that is somehow not quite human.

The question of “achieving enlightenment in one week”
did honestly express the concern of an ordinary mind
engaged in the flow of physical events. These events,
the chunks of life that constellate into our most
poignant memories, appear to be happening in linear
time. It seems much of life in the linear time zone is
spent reveling in the mundane. You must pay your bills
on time, show up at work on time, and settle the fight
with your partner in a timely fashion before it leads
to divorce.

From this ordinary mind perspective, the Time Frame is
always there. It is a legitimate to ask if
Enlightenment-Beyond-Time really exists, and if so,
where it fits into the Time Frame. How will achieving
it affect our life destiny? If Enlightenment doesn’t
really affect us – if after achieving “IT” we just go
back to “chopping wood, and fetching water”, then why
bother with cultivating it?

To Kill or Not-to-Kill The Ego?

The question also comes because of a lot of fuzzy ideas
floating around about Enlightenment, part of the modern
tension between Eastern and Western spiritual cultures.
The New Age is perhaps the largest repository of that
fuzziness. There is a separate interesting path this
discussion could take that compares Eastern ideas to
the Western Renaissance notion of Enlightenment, which
I am not entering, nor the esoteric Western traditions.
Here I discourse upon an Old Age cosmology and specific
terminology which I’ve adapted into English from the
Taoist tradition in China.

Let’s deal with one of my pet peeves, the notion that
for Enlightenment to occur, the ego must be killed. Ego
is just a concept of self invented by psychologists in
recent times. My view is that just because
Enlightenment is spontaneous, it doesn’t mean the
ordinary sensory mind entrained with linear time has to
be “killed” or “de-activated”. Yes, I’m all for
transforming our reactive, compulsive aspects, and
embracing the shadow side of the mind. But ordinary
mind functions remain an essential part of human
nature.

Silencing the chattering Monkey Mind is one (widely
advertised) aspect in the process, but ofttimes is
taken to rigid extremes of asceticism and body denial
in a doomed effort to silence desire. Silence can never
be final or total while living in monkey bodies in
linear time. The function of silence is to give us
clarity in unfolding who we truly are. We are always
going to think, feel, act and perceive as long as we
have a monkey body and have enough chi to enough to
respond to our environment.

Veil of Ignorance is Mankind’s Greatest Virtue

Contrary to popular myths about shutting down the
Monkey Mind, without the ordinary mind (“xin”, or
Heart-Mind to the Taoists), Enlightenment does not
exist and would cease to exist. It is the very
ignorance of the ordinary mind, the very boundary of
sensory perception, and its corresponding sexual and
psychic tension, that allows the process we think of as
Enlightenment to even exist. Ignorance has been
unfairly given a bad name as the cause of all desire
and evil. I believe the human Veil of Ignorance is the
ultimate driver behind the human quest for spiritual
development and creativity.

Ignorance is a good thing. We could even go so far as
to say that Ignorance is mankind’s greatest virtue, our
gift to the universe. Its our common defining
characteristic. Other animals are born knowing who they
are and what to do. Only human animals are baffled by
life and obsess on its meanings. Perhaps it’s why
aliens in high-tech ships hover in nearby dimensions,
spying upon us humans stuck in our 3-D zoo. I suspect
they are amazed and baffled at our sophisticated level
of Ignorance, in the same way we humans are fascinated
by animals in the wild.

Perhaps they ponder, how can humans possibly survive
the level of chaos caused by their Ignorance? Mind you,
I’ve never met an alien, but I have friends who claim
to have been poked by aliens, the way we might
fearfully poke a wild animal with a stick. There are
many who report that aliens seem afraid of human
unpredictability – and are trying to figure out how
that can possibly be programmed into our genes. Its
like we have built-in “Ignorance software” that they
cannot decode. Yet that very same ignorance is also the
source of our wildest enlightenment. It is what leads
us to emerge from the dark, and perpetually bring new
forms of consciousness to Light.

I believe it’s why our “formless, all-knowing soul” is
veiled when it begins to crystallize itself into a
clump of flesh, an embryo floating in the amniotic
fluid of our mother’s womb. The soul intentionally
separates itself from the transcendent mind of
Heaven-Earth in order to challenge itself, to discover
something new through physicalization in human form.
Who else but our soul, putting on the blind-fold called
Monkey Mind, would ask the curiously dumb questions?
Its our monkey-ness that veers off into unexpected
directions, or tosses out wildly unconscious energies –
that lead to fresh insights and stimulate new solutions
to old problems. The Soul is not stupid when it dons
the Veil of Ignorance. Ignorance is just Wisdom waiting
to be born.

The Black Hole of Enlightenment Talk

Of course, any discussion of what Enlightenment
actually “is” immediately falls into the black hole of
language problems and the limits of conceptual
definition. English may be particularly limiting, with
its mushy boundaries between words like “soul, energy,
spirit, mind” or “God, Absolute, Void”. This is
further beclouded by quantum physics attempting to
muscle in on the consciousness act with “zero point,
wormhole, and parallel universe/self” dancing at the
end of a musical super-string. Enlightenment language
becomes a giant bowl of cosmic alphabet soup. Our
monkey mind stirs the letters and sips the tasty
potential, but is unable to shape them into coherent
sentences.

The net result? A lot of paradox talk about
Enlightenment. It often takes the form of those who
allegedly “know” what its like to live in the space
beyond Earth time, dropping hints to those still asleep
or doped up on the sensory explosions of event-driven
linear time (i.e. birth, sex, love, death and any
intense low or high points in between). These whispered
hints from the Already Enlightened could be viewed
either as acts of kindness or as the spiritual
arrogance of those who’ve become self-convinced of
their elevated state or appointed position.

But what do these Perennial Philosophers whisper to the
monkey mind when it asks, “If we monkeys are all
destined to end up with a single consciousness of
Oneness beyond linear time, why does Nature/space
continually explode into endless new life forms, an
expanding spiral of complexity and Manifesting
Many-ness? “Patience, child, patience – you will
understand someday” comes the patronizing answer.

Instant vs. Gradual Schools of Enlightenment

Historically in China, there have been two major
schools of Enlightenment – the Gradual School and the
Instant School. The Taoists are mostly in the Gradual
School, as they are process oriented. You might
gradually experience a series of “instant” mini or even
mega-shifts. But they are still part of the never
ending process of the chi field. These shifts require
integration with the flow of linear time, which
includes completing one’s destiny on earth.

The Instant Schools often disregard the body or worldly
destiny. They are more oriented towards seeking sudden
shifts into “permanent states” of higher consciousness,
that are identifiable to their believers. We simply
need to wake up, as from a dream, and live in some
higher dimension once the Veil is lifted. These instant
schools tend to be more other-worldly – some would say
escapist. Does “permanent enlightenment” mean “no more
change”? Does detachment from worldly life create
spiritual freedom, or is it an unconscious tactic to
avoid deeply embrace of Earth and avoid accepting
responsibility for what manifests?

Or is there a grid, a series of recognizable states and
stages that can be mapped out, as per the Ken Wilber –
Alan Comb’s Matrix? Comb’s “Radiance of Being:
Understanding the Grand Integral Vision” is an
excellent summary of research and contemporary thinking
on these consciousness issues. This is the domain of an
emerging spiritual science, which is trying to redefine
the ground on which older schools of Enlightenment
stand. It is trying to plow a new field somewhere
between religious belief and empirical science. It
explores issues often not resolvable by old models. The
most frequent problem: the difficulty of using our
subjective interior states of experience as evidence.

So why bother even talking about Enlightenment? Are we
better off silently chewing bubble gum, than blowing
hot air about the wattage in our cosmic light bulbs?
Well, since I have the podium, I’d say a focused
discussion about Enlightenment can be beneficial on
several levels. It might positively affect the mental
body reading the words. Concepts can lead to trying out
useful practices that are more embodied. Words might
occasionally stimulate shifts in perception in other
subtle bodies. The subtle bodies are all linked
energetically, so if the mental body shifts, it ripples
through the others. Words have chi in them, one of
humanity’s special gifts. Words are part of the dynamic
flow of Humanity.

Mind Enlightenment vs. Whole-Body Enlightenment

People will drink in talk about the Light Fantastic
according to their need and their interest. Some will
seek Head Enlightenment, and claim their body no longer
really exists – they are now Pure Mind, the body is
relegated to illusory status. Is this transcendence,
or just another mind-body split being projected out as
Enlightenment? It depends on your belief, and on what
the “words” like Pure or True Mind mean.

Others will sense the intentional chi flowing behind or
through the words, and use the body to concentrate the
chi power and intention hidden within language. This is
more likely to lead to what I call Whole-Body
Enlightenment, which is typically sought by the
immortality schools of Taoist alchemy. This approach
focuses on the invisible essence that underlies
physical form, or “jing”.

The fire/spirit in the head and heart must be brought
down into the instinctual center of the belly, or lower
“dantian”. This becomes an internal cauldron space in
which spirit and matter are “cooked” into a more
refined state. In Western alchemy, it’s known as the
process of refining Prime Matter.

Why cook the spirit/shen in the lowest center? It’s
because the belly is our center of gravity in the
physical present moment. It’s where we create our body
from. In women, its where babies come from. The
instinctual belly-brain is also the most spontaneous
brain, unlike the head brain with its complex
self-reflections and manipulations. The belly brain,
known to scientists as the enteric or gut brain, is the
brain that is functioning in new born infants. So the
instinctual brain is more spontaneously itself, just
like babies don’t worry about impressing others. That
need to impress is acquired. Spontaneity is the key to
the Taoist notion of enlightenment.

Wu Wei: Spontaneous Action as Enlightenment

The Taoists have terms to suggest enlightened qualities
of being. One is “authenticity” (zheng), another is
“self-so” or “self-arising” (ziran), a third is
“spiritual virtue” (de). But I believe the Taoist
equivalent of Enlightenment is best summed up by the
term “wu wei”. Wu wei is inacurrately translated by
some as “non-action”, giving Taoists a reputation for
quiescence and passivity. According to the scholars of
ancient classical Chinese that I trust, wu wei is
better translated as “spontaneous action” or
“effortless action”. Wu wei is the quintessence of the
Way.

Wu wei implies that Enlightenment is very much involved
with living in the world and completing one’s destiny.
It is about allowing the LIfe Force to guide us to live
in harmony and balance with a chaotic world. The key is
to live without resistance or struggle, while
maximizing our creativity. That involves integrating
the Heart-Mind (ego-self) and allowing one’s inner soul
– from the Timeless Realms – to express itself through
the vessel of the physical body into the Linear Time
Realm. It could be called the Soul in Action in the
World.

Example? When I am deciding whether to buy a book or
not, I hold the book and close my eyes. I mentally ask
my shen – the vital organ spirits that manage my
biology, psychology, and spirituality – to quickly read
the book first and let me know if my brain-centered,
slow sensory ordinary mind will benefit from reading it
word-by-word. I get an immediate vibrational response,
ranging anywhere from dead silence to excited pulsation
to hearing the sublime music of the spheres.

Did my liver or heart spirit actually read the book on
some deep level of my unconscious? No. They just
tracked the vibration of the book back to its author at
the moment of writing, and responded to that by
vibrating my body. All knowledge is stored in the
field of Life Force’s universal memory bank – otherwise
known as Nature. Our body is a microcosm of Nature,
which makes our body divine. Thus the Taoist focus on
on the belly brain and whole-body enlightenment – the
body is the true and innocent ground of the mind. The
essence of the physical body is really our closest
portal to the higher dimensions.

The Practical Use of Enlightenment

At the end of the day, I am a pragmatist. Enlightened
talk is designed to speed enlightened action. It’s
meant to inspire either outer deeds of selfless virtue
in the world or internal deeds, a practice that deepen
one’s chi flow – qigong, tai chi, meditation or other
chosen self-cultivation modality. The faith that at
some level our Becoming is flowing out of an
action-less Being (call it Original Spirit, Creator,
God/dess, or Void) may be reassuring.

But these transcendent agents are ultimately irrelevant
to the ordinary mind. The ordinary mind is busy
navigating the flow of those chunky linear events that
sometimes appear like icebergs in our path. We are
being constantly challenged to choose, to act, to
exercise our free will in navigating the flow of
events. We are provoked to survive, to be creative and
to love in enlightened ways that transcend mere
survival. Our life challenges us to peek behind the
Veil of Ignorance. Praying for some God to pull back
the Veil for us is a childish dream. Its our job to
grow up and pull back the curtain, as far as we need
to.

Of course, anyone can decide for themselves what
qualifies as enlightenment in the chaotic context we
call life. Who besides yourself is qualified to judge
the relationship between your own soul and
personality-in-a-monkey body? Why give that power away
to someone else, to an abstract deity or even a great
teacher?

In my book, any moment you accept some new level of
self – you are enlightened. The toughest part is the
challenge of truly embracing our physical body and
accepting that it arises directly from Source via the
pathway of own divine Soul. Whenever we embrace
embodied life in the present moment with a deep hearted
Inner Smile, we experience a moment of enlightenment –
our body vibrates its divine support to that child we
call our mind.

Embracing the Neutral Point is Key

My experience is that our Monkey Mind’s innate
cleverness can be directed to good use. The monkey has
a heart-mind that can be trained to embrace the neutral
point between past and future, Water and Fire, Female
and Male, form and formless. There is a neutral
observation point where the Soul is hanging out, in the
portal between different dimensions of the self. When
the personality brings its free will and focuses its
sexual volatility at that neutral point – Bingo! Our
old resistance to change in linear time/3-D space is
overcome. Soul and Heart-Mind couple and a new identity
is birthed.

String enough of those mini aha! moments together and
the Monkey Mind gradually begins to accept the timeless
perspective of its own Soul as an equal reality to its
linear physical perspective. This can ignite an
alchemical marriage between lesser and greater self.
Neither side dies nor kills the other; the appearance
of spiritual battle between spirit and matter is
finally revealed as illusory. They both live happily
ever after – that’s the Tale of Eternal Life. In China,
its called Immortality, and implies that some essence
from the personality continues to create after death.
We simplify the tale for this short essay. There are
other dimensions to Self and Mystery not discussed
here.

Rewriting the Enlightenment Story

I frankly would like to re-write the Enlightenment
Story as its generally been received into popular
culture. In my version, it’s not about escaping into an
ideal spiritual paradise of Enlightened Beings or
Angels living in a (boring) world on Cloud Nine without
challenges. Nor is it dying to a Supreme Nothingness
State in which absolutely no change is allowed to
manifest less we suffer once again on the Wheel of
Life. To be fair, many hold a story somewhere in
between those two extremes.

I prefer a story of growing a multi-dimensional bridge
between the Time and Timeless aspects of our Self. I
envision a more playful continuum, a Great Process or
Way, that is functional in new ways. I vote for a new
paradigm of Enlightenment in which both the embodied
personality and the timeless soul release their need to
suffer extremes (aka violence and illness) as part of
the learning curve.

I am investing my energy into a process in which we
humans can more easily transform challenges and pain
into greater bliss. Perhaps the Veil of Ignorance
becomes translucent, but is not lifted entirely. The
Veil that keeps humans ignorant is a needed boundary,
put there for good reason. The veiled boundary gives us
definition, and keeps us creative and alert to
unfolding our essence.

Insider’s Guide to 2007 Summer Retreats

“Talk does not cook the rice” is a old Chinese proverb.

So enough talk of Enlightenment. Its time for practical
action in the world.

It’s time to decide if there is summer retreat awaiting
you. A fun week that will hopefully awaken the sleeping
essence within.

How does one choose between 25 retreat offerings? Easy.
Read the list below slowly. The close your eyes, drop
your focus down into your heart. Breathe in and out of
your heart a few times. Then ask, which retreat serves
my highest good? Your heart won’t lie to you.

In 2007, we are still offering the only live-in retreat
with Mantak Chia. It’s great to just hang out with him
at meals and around the campus. He may not be
travelling here forever, so don’t postpone the
opportunity to check out the heavy chi pumping out
through his energy field. He’s offering a totally new
topic, DNA repair and Immune Building Qigong, plus
Tao-Yin (Taoist Yoga).

We’ve got a hot new Classical Tai Chi training from
Tina Zhang opening up the summer with Mantak Chia. She
recently authorized an excellent book on the Norther Wu
Style, a style I happen to practice and really love.
Tina also has a Women’s Earth Qigong retreat later in
the summer. Co-author witih Tina is Frank Allen, who
offers three of the best Bagua Zhang training seminars
in the USA at Dao Mountain.

David Twicken is continuing his brilliant integration
of Chinese Astrology, Feng Shui, and Qigong. I will be
offering his books shortly in the new astrology section
of my website, and you will be able to get a Free natal
chart. David offers a free detailed reading to each
person attending his seminar, which also carries CEU
credits.

We have all the old standbys – the HealingTao Senior
Instructors offering a top notch Instructor
Certification training (courses open to the public):
myself, Marie Favorito, Masahiro Ouchi, Rene Navarro,
and recently tapped for Senior status, Karin Sorvik.
This is the core curriculum track – Fundamentals, Iron
Shirt, Fusion, Healing Love, and for the body workers
Chi Nei Tsang.

Adding new spice is my friend Robert Peng, an top
qigong healer who shares his secrets in a Qigong
Healing Intensive over the July 4 week. Robert is
lovely, humble, and powerful – he was born with the
ability to “spark” chi in a tangible form, like an
electric current. If you want to learn Qi Emission,
Robert is the man.

Later in the summer we have the irrepressible Madam
Wang Yan, a spry 70 year old who is a walking
encyclopedia of medical qigong and the Grand Madam of
weight loss qigong in the West. If you want to breathe
away fat and lose 4-6 pounds a week, it is achievable
by natural means.

Another healer and empath is Judith Poole, who has
gather the top Energy Medicine and Energy Psychology
tools under her single roof. If you’ve got an intense
crisis or issue to heal, Judith is the Woman.

Finally, our Retreat Registrar, Rob Renahan, is
unveiling his stuff for the first time at Dao mtn.
He is developing his version of Zen Qigong, based on
his extensive practice in the Zen tradition and his
integration of it into the Taoist qigong and inner
alchemy tradition. If you want to get to deep quiet
space with, Rob is the Man.

They are all great teachers, and they attract wonderful
people who create a beautiful synergy. These are high
energy retreats where you will walk away with new
skills, new friends, and a burst of amazingly high
energy that you will surf on for months. Plus the real
kicker – the discovery that you’ve achieved
Enlightenment in less than one week. 🙂

Love, Chi, and the Blessing of Enlightenment in One
Week,

Michael

?Who takes Heaven as his ancestor, Virtue as his home,
the Tao as his door, and who becomes change ? is a
Sage.?
? Chuang Tzu, Inner Chapters

“The Tao is very close, but everyone looks far away.
Life is very simple, but everyone seeks difficulty.”
— Taoist Sage, 200 B.C

Get a free 12 page brochure on Healing Tao University,
the largest Tao (Dao) Arts & Sciences program in the
West with 25 week long retreats featuring “chi kung”
(qigong) and inner alchemy (neidangong) training. For
more info, see www.HealingTaoRetreats.com.

Or visit www.HealingTaoUSA.com, www.HealingDao.com to
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