Tao Articles

Inside Chi Flows Naturally:

1. Year of the Fire Pig – what’s coming in the next
spin of the earth around the sun. Energetic analysis
and chinese astrology predictions that can affect your
health, your wealth, and your spiritual practice.

2. Some top photos I took on China Dream Trips. This is
just a small sampling of 40 pics, with captions. I plan
to post more soon. Landscapes, people, temples, quirky
details, doing qigong in wild places. I’ve travelled to
nearly 100 countries – just fulfilling the demands of
my astrology. China is amongst the most deep, rich,
profound places I’ve visited in this lifetime. The
Dream Trip is designed to be a portal to what I call
“deep earth” – we tap into layers of ancient
consciousness that helps to ground us in the core of
our soul’s immortality.

There is still space on the May 18-June 4, 2007
Dream Trip. We have a great group signed up – I
invite you to join us and fulfill your own hidden
dreams. Come practice “Tai Chi for Enlightenment”
a.k.a. Primordial Qigong, on three marvelous sacred
Taoist mountains of Mt. Emei, Mt. Qing, and Mt.
Hua. Plus all the exciting cultural highlights of
China, at below-market cost. We usually can squeeze
in last minute signups and help you get creative
with financing of the trip. See full trip itinerary
at: http://www.healingdao.com/chinatrip2007.html

Amusingly, my favorite Taoist hangout on Mt. Hua
(Flower Mtn) has hit it big time. A Super bowl TV
ad for Snapple Green Tea features a hiker on
Huashan’s spectacular sheer cliffs. The ad exploits
the spiritual authority of a monk living on top, to
tell the hiker that what’s in the green tea is good
for him. Better hurry and see these remote parts of
China before they are engulfed by the new face of
China….which looks a lot like the face of big
western corporations. To see the ad:
http://www.cbs.sportsline.com/nfl/postseason/superads
and then click on fourth quarter ads, Green Tea.

In the past, I think some Taoist monks and nuns
chose monastic life to escape the bleak realities
of communist China. The dream of big money sweeping
across China makes it very challenging for young
people to choose the lifestyle of a Taoist mountain
recluse. Perhaps it is positive, useful in weeding
out those who chose temple Taoism for the wrong
reasons.

See my photos at:
http://www.healingdao.com/china_dream_trip_photos.html

3. Time to plan for summer fun at Dao Mountain in the
New York Catskills. 25 Retreats featuring, according to
one happy camper, “the highest quality energy body
training on planet Earth”. These are very special – do
yourself a favor and scan down the list of stellar
offerings. You only need to make a $100. deposit
online to hold your spot. It’s low-cost, high-energy,
good-people place to cultivate your chi! The
accommodations are spa quality, with two pools, sauna,
& hot tub. www.HealingTaoRetreats.com or if questions,
email retreats@healingdao.com

4. “Cultivate True Feeling” at the Fusion of the 5
Elements workshop in Asheville, N.C. March 10 & 11.
This is very powerful energy work that cuts to the
heart of dissolving negative emotion and growing the
seed essence of one’s soul. This takes qigong practice
into the realm of Taoist depth psychology and five shen
theory. It trains you to FEEL the five-phase cycles in
your body that lie at the heart of the astrology cycles
described below. Only $144. for the weekend, $90 to
review. Prerequsite: Qigong Fundamentals 1&2, life or
by homestudy. Contact: winn@healingdao.com.

5. A quick winter season Kidney-building Qigong
Breathing tip. The healing sound for the water/kidney
element is “chuuu”. Normally this is exhaled in certain
positions to detoxify the kidneys and release the
cold/fear that can get trapped in the kidneys. During
winter season you can also REVERSE and INHALE the
“chuuu” sound so the cool air is sucked between one’s
teeth. The teeth are your only exposed bones in your
body, and they vibrate into the kidney spirit and
charge it up with the chi extracted from the incoming
air (metal/gold element).

Inhale by sipping the “chuuu” sound in 3 or 5 times
(any odd number), keeping the mind focused on the
mingmen, the point between your two kidneys near the
center of your body. Then close your mouth, and
exhale gently but forcefully, feeling the breath is
directed into the mingmen. Do this for five minutes
every day, and your kidneys will glow like a
recharged battery. Most powerful when done between 3
and 7 pm. Can be done before or after other kidney
qigong, such as the Cosmic Swimming Dragon, Deep
Earth Kidney Pulsing, or the modified Marriage of
Heaven and Earth qigong forms taught on the Sexual
Vitality Qigong DVD. See:
http://www.healingdao.com/healinglove.html

————————————–

Dear Cultivators of Nature’s Great & Mysterious Cycles,

The Year of the Yin Fire Pig (Ding Hai) , a.k.a. Year
of the Female Red Pig, began on Feb. 4, 2007. That’s
the first day of the lunar Tiger month. Because the
Chinese lunar calendar needed to insert a “short leap
month”, the Chinese New Year itself doesn’t begin until
the new moon of Feb. 18 in China (Feb. 17 in USA and
Europe). Chinese astrology is fundamentally lunar. But
it also uses solar calculations which make it complex,
but contributes to its accuracy as being energetically
attuned to the macro cycles of change.

That’s why I’m currently constructing an online Healing
Tao Chinese Astrology center that will allow readers to
calculate (at no cost) a natal chart that shows your
strong and weak elements and ten year luck cycles. If
you combine that information with qigong practice and
5-element nutrition and feng shui, it becomes an
extremely powerful practical tool of Tao
self-cultivation. I will have available ebooks by
Mantak Chia and David Twicken on how to interpret and
use that information in sophisticated ways.

Chinese love the Year of the Pig, the 12th and final
animal in this cycle. It’s not just because they’ve
mastered the art of making pork tasty. Note: the pork
in China tastes very different from American pork, so
different in fact I thought it was a different species
of pig. I mention it because I had been a vegetarian
for 7 years when I first visited China in 1985, as a
photo-journalist following Marco Polo’s route for four
months across the remote parts of China. It was the
tasty Chinese Pig that ultimately caused me to switch
diets…But I digress.

2007 is a Fire Pig Year, considered one of the most
auspicious years to give birth to children, out of the
whole 120 year astrology cycle (10 celestial stems x 12
terrestrial branches = 120). A higher rate of reported
pregnancies in China – up 30% from last year by one
count – is one reflection of the popularity of the Pig
Year. Websites for ?Golden Pig Mothers? have sprouted
up, and special “Pig Mother” maternity deals are being
offered by hotels. So we’re not talking about the
quaint superstitions of peasants. Even the Chinese
government has issued a Pig stamp and commemorative
gold and silver coins with a Pig on them. Why the big
fuss over a Pig?

Role of the Pig in Chinese Culture

First, Westerners need to put on a new pair of cultural
lenses. In the West, pigs are often seen as dirty, fat,
lazy creatures who lie sleeping all day in filth. Call
it the Year of the Boar if you cannot get over your
image of dirty pig. In China, pigs are highly
respected. In ancient times they ran wild and were
considered to have strong shamanic powers. In the
famous novel “Journey to the West”, the Monkey King
(symbolizing the evolving human travelling on a
spiritual adventure) has “Pigsy” as his main companion.
Together they get into a lot of trouble – and fun. I
summarize the story (see Godchecker.com for more
details):

Pigsy the Pig spirit was actually the ex-Marshall of
the Hosts of Heaven, who was sent down into a pig’s
body after lusting after angels and stuffing his face
with food at every opportunity. The last straw was one
day he guzzled too much immortal peach wine and got
fresh with Chang-O, Goddess of the Moon.

An uproar ensured, and the Jade Emperor turned into a
monstrously ugly pig spirit on earth to teach him a
lesson.

But it didn’t work. As Pigsy, his lustful nature
multiplied and soon he was revelling in troughs and
chasing pretty ladies for all he was worth. After many
mis-adventures, with the help of Kuan YIn, their quest
was fulfilled and Pigsy achieved enlightenment. In
heaven he was rewarded with the title Cleaner of the
Holy Altar, and thousands of worshippers send him
offerings to this very day. Moral of the story: it CAN
pay to be a pig – just play your part well!

Note: To read this delightfully fantastic tale, try
Arthur Waley’s short version or Anthony Yu’s 4-volume
classic. I found this 16th century novel dramatized as
a Chinese TV serial when I first visited China, so it
is very much present in the modern culture.

The modern Chinese are acutely aware of both their long
history and their current rise to prosperity on the
global stage. In 621, a Fire Pig Year, the Tang dynasty
marked a golden age of art, religion, and prosperity
that lasted for nearly four hundred years. In that
year, the emperor introduced a single national currency
called the ?Jin Zhu? which literally translates into
?Gold Pig.? This communist government is happy to
reclaim the ancient Gold Pig mantle for itself, heading
into the 2008 Olympics.

The Pig Character

In China, the Pig’s character is considered to be
honest, tolerant, well-meaning, and friendly. The Pig
is noble and courageous; its steady perseverance leads
it to prosperity. Pigs are known for ending their days
well-off and contented. The Fire Pig is especially
known for its traits of wealth, prosperity, luck and
fertility. So naturally everyone wants their “one
allowed child” to be born in such a year, as it will
make the parents life easier.

The shadow side of the pig character is they can be
very naive, gullible and overconfident, or even
downright stupid about money. But even though they can
lose lots of money, it always seems to come back to
them. Some might see the Chinese national character
reflected in the way pigs eat food with great gusto,
enjoy sleeping all day long and worry about nothing –
life works out for them in the end.

The Fire Pig is more vivacious, bold and relentless in
achieving its goals than the other types of Pigs. The
Pig is ordinarily associated with the water element,
and thus appears lazy. But even the Water Pig may just
be biding its time until the opportunity ripens. Once
in motion the Pig, like a strong river current, is
unstoppable. A Fire Pig “boils” the Water, which makes
this year’s energy potentially turbulent. I will
discuss the political and economic implications of that
shortly.

I have a personal story to relate here. On the small
Caribbean island where I winter, my neighbor Sam raises
pigs. Sam told me how he bought a baby pig once, put it
inside a gunny sack, effectively blindfolding it. The
piglet was tied atop a donkey, which took it some five
miles over a mountain to its new home. The baby pig
slyly waited for an opening, escaped and immediately
ran back the 5 miles to its mother. That is a very
clever and persistent pig.

Bad Weather Hidden Inside a Silver Cloud

The Fire Pig year will be generally auspicious, but it
may also bring calamity. This is mostly due to the
conflict between the heavenly Female Fire and the
earthly Water. 2006 was a Yang (Male) Fire Dog year,
and this yang Fire played itself out much as predicted
in relationship to the Dog/Earth element – civil war in
Iraq, sudden change of political power in the USA, and
public outcry over global warming threatening the
earth. Trials that “outed” corrupt politicians and
lobbyists. More media exposing the inconsistencies
around 9-11.

The Female (Yin) Fire is described by some astrologers
as “candlelight”, i.e. gentle and soft. This is a big
mistake, like under-estimating the potential fury of
ordinarily sweet women that slowly cooks within until
it explodes. Yin Fire is ultimately more powerful than
Yang Fire. It gets held in suppressed emotions, hidden
tension, anxiety and continuing struggle over failed
dreams.

The problem here is that the celestial Yin Fire is
ABOVE the Watery Pig energy below, which means they are
separating. This is revealed in Hexagram 64 of the I
Ching, the Classic of Unchanging Changes. Fire (Li) is
above water (kan). Look it up in whatever I Ching
translation you have. This separation of fire and water
leads to chaos and conflict.

This volatile water-fire energy in 2007 can explode
into natural disasters such as hurricanes, El Nino,
tsunamis, earthquakes, chemical fires, or industrial
explosions. In 1995, a Wood (expanding) Pig year, an
earthquake rocked Kobe, Japan. Natural disasters can
strike anyone, anywhere. Be thankful if you avoid them
and instead find the Pig’s good fortune – and share
your wealth to help the less fortunate. This female
fire celestial energy is generally beneficial, but in
certain places and people it will produce excess or
deficiencies, particularly to the South (excess fire)
and West (controlled/deficient metal).

The destructive 5-element cycle reveals that
Metal-dominant people will have the most difficulty in
a Fire year, as Fire melts Metal/Gold. Water types are
a close second, as uncontrolled Fire plus Water in
spells disaster. Health issues are most likely to
involve the heart, tongue,and small intestine in Fire
types. The negative results of too much passionate fire
activity could include stress, strained relationships,
and a hot temper. In Metal types the problem would be
lung infections. This could get played out on a macro
scale as a bird flu virus spreading in certain areas,
perhaps the south and west of whatever country you live
in.

On the other hand, the Pig Year is great time to use
the fire to move with great gusto to finish projects
and engage in passionately chasing your dreams or true
love. The secret, as always, is holding the balance
point. Depending on your personal astrology, that could
be natural or terribly challenging. Based on the “Law
of Mutual Attraction”, the three animal signs that will
benefit the most in 2007 will be those born in Rabbit,
Dog, and Tiger years. Pig Years favor those who hold
the space of peace and mediate for stability vs.
violent change.

1947: The Last Fire Pig Year

Yin Fire is very explosive and can symbolize firearms.
The AK47 assault rifle was designed and began
production in 1947, the last Fire Pig year. It has
become a global symbol of revolution. The CIA was
established in the US (water rules secrets) and that
year marked the birth of the Cold War that lasted
another 40 years. The seed energy of East-West
separation.

In 1947 the separation of India and Pakistan took place
and resulted in 4 million Hindus and Muslims changing
their homeland. By the end of the year, the two were at
war, and it is still flaring up. Palestine was
partitioned in 1947, another case of water and fire,
arab and jew, not finding harmony 60 years later.
Hopefully, we are in an upward spiral, but more
purification may yet be needed.

2007 may thus be a good year for terrorists and violent
upheavals, even if they ultimately fail. I predict the
partitioning of Iraq into Kurdish, Sunni, and Shiite
territories will begin, a solution that will ease the
civil war but is unlikely to bring lasting peace to the
region.

As we shift to the second half of 2007 the Fire element
may lose its explosiveness as the Pig watery force
begin to re-assert itself. The Fire chi will begin to
ground itself as it flows into the next Earth Rat
cycle. But the water element resurgence in the second
half of the year may bring into consciousness
contraction and fear in various forms. Secrets are also
ruled by the Water element. With Fire (ideals) and
Water (secrets) co-existing in the 2007 chart we can
expect clashes of values over secrecy. The US
government has never been so secretive as under the
Bush administration, and I expect this year will bring
fierce attempts to restore transparency.

1947 brought the report of a crashed UFO near Roswell,
New Mexico. This crash has since dominated UFO
research. I think the UFO issue may arise again very
strongly in 2007 as more of this secrecy gets unveiled.
I find myself reading material on this topic. If you
want more dramatic and detailed evidence of US
government MJ-12 (Majestic, top secret agency)
relations with aliens, listen to intereview of an MJ
government scientist Dan Burisch who was assigned to
medically heal a captive sick alien. He says he’s been
allowed to speak because the govt. finally wants the
truth to start seeping out….

http://www.eaglesdisobey.net/ scroll down to navigation
links on left side for 2 hour free video interview.

Economic Effects of Fire Pig Year

Financial markets will be influenced by these
fire-water tensions. Investment themes for 2007 may
center around the effects of peak oil and global
warming, disease and famine. Commodities, especially
the softs (grains) should do very well. The economy
will blow hot or cold from geopolitical events and
psycho-social trends. Financial mergers and
acquisitions will continue and we will see widespread
consolidation. Larger Pig companies will gobble up
smaller companies. Water-related businesses will do
well by the end of this year.

Fire and Water can contribute to sudden breakthroughs
in technology or new and dramatic inventions to
generate power or solve medical problems. Note in 1947
Bell Labs invented the radio transistor and a plane
flew fast enough to break the sound barrier for the
first time.

The Stock market may benefit from the fire/heat in the
first half and cool in the second half. In 1997, also a
Yin Fire year, the Asian markets collapsed in the
second half.

Spiritual Practice in 2007

This year, the water and fire are NOT naturally
harmonized – so it is up to humanity to mediate the
struggle that unfolds. That means you and me! This
water-fire conflict within the Lunar Pig sign is
somewhat analogous to the energy of the Scorpio sun
sign in western astrology. Scorpio is a very deep,
penetrating energy controlled by water, but also
simultaneously containing fire.

An un-evolved Scorpio type can do a lot of damage with
the unconscious sexual-water power that gets unleashed.
They have to harmonize the fire and water within
themselves. Hence, an evolved Scorpio is often an
alchemist. This relates directly to the heart of the
Healing Tao path of Water and Fire alchemy, which
focuses on harmonizing the two forces by reversing them
so the fire stabilizes below and gently “cooks” the
water above. Another way of describing inner sexual
alchemy, the coupling of the male and female forces
within one person.

Note: the Healing Tao has attracted many people with
sun, moon, and/or rising signs in Scorpio….my
webmaster is a triple scorpio. I’ve got my moon and
rising sign in Scorpio. Scorps, we need you during this
Pig year! Good time to do lots of Taoist inner alchemy
on behalf of the planet, to speed up its process and
thereby reduce the collective suffering.

Other advice for dealing with a Female Fire year: avoid
burnout. Avoid accumulating internal fire/emotional
stress. Seek the Earth element in your life – a great
reason to go on the China Dream Trip this year, or tale
the summer retreat of your choice. Those who took that
advice during last year’s Yang Fire Year certainly were
grateful for it.

Slow down and make relaxation an art form. Do lots of
qigong and tai chi, yoga, other body-centered
activities. Gardening, working with clay, and petting
animals will increase the Earth element in your life.

Love, Chi, and Blessings during the Fire Pig Year,

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

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Inside Chi Flows Naturally:

1. Summary of “9 Essential Principles of Tao Self-Cultivation”.
This is my personal short list of qualities that maximize the
process of self-realization. This is another way of describing
the Union of our Human self with the Way or Great Process of
Nature.

2. Cultivate Qigong in Winter, Harvest in Summer. A discussion of
seasonal qigong – how following the cycles of nature preserves
robust health. How to choose the best qigong to practice in
winter time.

3. Followup on Winter Solstice. We had a wonderful group
meditation on solstice. During a break between our second and
third sittings, the Great Jade Stone arrived by special delivery
after a troubled four month journey from China. U.S. Customs,
under the withering pressure of solstice, had turned a new leaf
and released the precious cargo without undue fees. What fabulous
timing! It added a very special deep earth energy to our final
midnite meditation.

We ended up renaming it the “Jade Tree Immortal” because we
realized that after spending 250 million years inside the earth,
the essence of this tree qualified for immortal status .
“Petrifry” means to “change into stone”. Scientists don’t really
know why wood petrifies and in rare cases turns green. The lead
theory is that the tree falls into a marsh, and liquid silica
minerals from jasper and chalcydony penetrates into the cellular
level. They gradually replace the wood particles with crystals
shaped identical to the original tree. It is very alchemical, as
heat from volcanic flows or deep earth fire is needed to keep the
process cooking.

Bottom line: the Jade Tree Immortal inspires me to tune even
deeper into our Great Mother’s earth chi. I feel my bones light
up when I do qigong beside it, as my bone crystals love to
resonate with the green quarzite crystal. The tree decided it
wanted to stay in the center of my living room, see photo link
below.

The other unusual phenomena was a photograph I took of my crystal
stone circle during the Winter Solstice “hour of Tzu”. This is
the Taoist favorite hour for meditation in the 12-hour chi clock
cycle: the hour before & after midnight. I took a series of
photographs, starting at sunset, of a candle burning in the
center of the stone circle. The midnite photo of the circle,
taken without flash, appeared totally black except for the candle
flame. When I increased the exposure on the photo, dozens of
marvellous colored spheres appeared. I thought at first it must
have been refraction from the candle or some wierd digital
technical effect.

My in-house techie Mike Teeters examined the whole series of
photos and declared the “floating pearls” were not a mechanical
effect. You can decide for yourself whether these are the “light
bodies of the beings of all directions and dimensions” who
accepted my invitation to join the winter solstice meditation. Or
just random reflections off a ghost in my camera. See:
http://www.healingdao.com/stone_circle_&_jade_tree_immortal.html

4. Announcing the posting of a new section on my website,
Frequently Asked Questions.
http://www.healingdao.com/faq_qigong_fundamentals.html

The FAQ’s are still a work in progress. Feel free to email me at
winn@healingdao.com to suggest new questions you would like to
see answered (I still have a long list myself). Or just log onto
the Healing Tao forum and ask your question.

These FAQs are like a small book. It is likely is too much to
read in one sitting. I plan to offer an option to have them
auto-sent to subscribers in small doses. Note: not all the
sections listed below are complete.

FAQ’s on Qigong Fundamentals
Where to start? Tao Inner Smile, Five Animals shamanic qigong,
Six Healing Sounds medical qi gong, Microcosmic Orbit meditation,
Internal chi breathing & bone rooting. Why is chi kung superior
to ordinary exercise? How long to get results?
FAQ’s on Advanced Qigong Training
Fusion of Five Elements. What is Taoist depth psychology? Eight
Extraordinary Vessels as Macrocosmic Orbit. Can Chi Kung deliver
super powers? Tao dream practice, Deep Healing Qigong for healing
chronic illness. What kind of people do this stuff?
FAQ’s on Tao and Taoist Lineages
What is Tao? Is it philosophy or religion? Taoist mountain vs.
temple lineages, Michael Winn’s relation to Mantak Chia and
hermit One Cloud. Is lineage needed? Buddhism vs. Daoism vs.
Confucianism.

FAQ’s on Taoist Sexual Practice

How do I master Taoist sex? Is it risky? Why avoid million-dollar
point. Differences in male & female practice. Medical sexology
vs. bedroom arts vs. spiritual sex.

FAQ’s on Inner Alchemy Meditation

How change happens. How alchemy works, what are benefits? 7
stages of spiritual development. Qigong vs. neidan gong. Inner
vs. outer alchemy, spiritual science vs. material technology.
FAQ’s on Michael Winn Who is this dude? Short & long bio,
background in kriya & kundalini yoga, Dzogchen, Tantric Buddhism.
Teaching style, master-student issues.

4. March 10 & 11 is next workshop in Asheville. Fusion of the 5
Elements 1: Cultivating True Feeling & Dissolving Negative
Emotion.. Prerequisite: Qigong Fundamentals 1&2 (homestudy accepted).
contact: winn@healingdao.com

5. Plan ahead. Reserve a space for this summer’s retreats online.
We’re working on a full online registration system. Until its
ready, you can only leave a $100. deposit for the retreat(s) of
your choice. Questions? Email retreats@healingdao.com. Or visit:
www.HealingTaoRetreats.com
—————————-

Dear Seekers of Elusive Truth in the Cold Heart of Winter,

It is winter in the northern hemisphere, although until recently
it was hard to tell. But your body isn’t really faked out by the
surface temperature. We still live in animal bodies, even though
we’ve let many of our instinctual animal skills atrophy. Our
animal self knows where the natural chi is flowing, and its down
and in. Why else do we instinctively face the sun? Because our
front chest “water” channel, known to acupuncturists as the
conception or yin or water channel, instinctively feels balanced
by the yang heat of the sun. So the sun is like the magnet that
attracts our body’s spiritual compass.

Likewise, our body knows instinctively that in the winter, the
chi flows deep into the earth. I recently bought a gas
refrigerator. The noisy hum of electric models disturbs my hunger
for deep silence. But gas refrigerators are finicky, and we have
to monitor the temperature. I notice it keeps things colder in
winter than at the same outdoor temperature in summer.
Apparently, even my refrige isn’t faked out by the surface
temperatures…as if it could also sense the underlying cold
contraction of the winter season.

Why does this matter? How can we take advantage of the seasonal
shifts in chi flow? The barometer of this changing energy flow
are our vital organs. So in winter the Kidney spirit (“shen”)
which rules the water element in our body, follows the cue of
Nature and goes into deep contraction as it senses the cold. The
kidney intelligence is the dominant vital organ in the winter
cycle, so it sends that message out to all the other vital organ
spirits that together make up our mind. It is like a bear
hibernating in the winter. The kidney chi wants to hibernate all
winter – but when it does come out in the spring, it has stored
up a LOT of energy.

Moral of story: if you do a lot of qigong and meditation during
the winter months, you’ll get a big payoff later when Nature’s
chi begins to expand in Spring and Summer. You’ll effortlessly
expand along with it as your kidney chi comes out of hibernation.
If you overwork now and don’t store up any winter chi, your fuel
tank will feel a bit empty come spring. You’ll feel a little
older each year, instead of growing younger.

The Life Force doesn’t age, nor does Nature, which has no
resistance to its flow. Tao conclusion: imitate Nature, drop
resistance to Life Force (qigong practice and aligning with
natural cycles) and you will feel yourself growing younger.

That is why the Taoists devised what is known as “seasonal
qigong”. In winter they do qigong to build the kidneys and
strengthen the water element, which includes conserving sexual
energy, drinking plenty of fluid, and absorbing earth chi into
the bone marrow, where your blood is manufactured. You could
cultivate your bone marrow with Qigong Fundamentals 3&4, Internal
Chi & Bone Rooting & Breathing.
(see http://www.healingdao.com/ckf3.html)

Or you could use kidney building qigong. I spent 20 years
gathering the best kidney building qigong I could find and put
them on my Sexual Vitality Qigong DVD. You only need to go deep
with one or two qigong exercises. I’ve put 25 qigong forms on the
DVD that boost your kidney power – to give variety and let people
choose what attracts them the most.
See: http://www.healingdao.com/healinglove.html

As part of my deep winter contemplation I recently distilled out
what I felt to be the 9 essential principles of Tao
self-cultivation. The Chinese are masters of distilling big
complex things down to their core essence -that is what yin-yang
and five phase theory is. I’ve noticed that many other spiritual
traditions have begun using yin-yang language to try to explain
the essence of their own process.

That means yin-yang theory is so simple and true that it has
become embedded in global consciousness. I’m just honoring that
tradition, trying to boil down the thousands of years of wisdom
and zillions of different health and spiritual practices into
nine essential principles. Here it is, my gift to anyone who
wants it: 9 ways to ponder life’s mysteries more deeply this
winter:

9 Essential Principles of Tao Self-Cultivation

Surrender. If we trust and surrender to the Life Force (Chi or Qi
Field), the Life Force will flow into our body-mind. The Life
Force supports us to effortlessly unfold who we truly are.
Surrender is the prerequisite to expressing the highest level of
our individual free will and creativity.

The central challenge our ordinary ego-personality (heart-mind or
?xin? in Chinese) faces is the separation, fragmentation and
dispersion of our underlying soul essence. Cloudy and reactive
emotions, poor sexual habits, bad diet, shallow breathing,
self-judgments, negative thinking and rejection of the spiritual
nature of our physical body results in struggle, disease,
suffering, and unhappy feeling of incompletion in life. Our
resistance to life is what kills us. Self-cultivation teaches us
to let go of our resistance to the Life Force.

Harmony. The Life Force is about Process. It is made of three
streams of vast flowing consciousness or chi that harmonize all
life: negative-receptive-female (Yin), positive-creative-male
(Yang), and neutral-stabilizing-primordial (Yuan). This chi field
is all-penetrating, yet remains neutral or paradoxically still
even as it moves. Likewise, our soul rests in stillness while the
Life Force moves in Yin-Yang and Five Phase (element) cycles
through our essence.

These flowing cycles/seasons offer a simple and perfect mirroring
between our changing inner thoughts, feelings, perceptions and
the outer action of Nature. Taoist qigong is the Process of
communicating with the Life Force. Qigong trains us to speak the
language of subtle energy or chi. We learn practical ways to
harmonize the three currents of chi flowing amongst our self, our
community, and Nature.

Simplicity. On the outside, life is very complex. On the inside,
it is very simple. The Inner Smile is the Tao path of simplicity.
It?s simple when you open the heart of your soul to
unconditionally accept first your own body-mind. Second phase is
to accept everything ?Other? as part of a unified, flowing
essence of the Life Force. The Inner Smile is the simplest way to
keep your path heart-centered.

This simple, continuous act of acceptance ends all separation and
loneliness, causing a soul peace to arise within our personality.
Our path in each moment is to allow our smiling presence to
embrace life?s wonderful complexity. It is this simple foundation
of smiling, unconditional acceptance that allows all spiritual
qualities such as love, kindness, compassion and forgiveness to
unfold spontaneously.

Grounding. Taoist qigong & meditation fuse our ego into a strong,
grounded, integrated whole. Qigong allows our heart-mind and
physical body to achieve optimum health. Meditation merges our
personality and body with our soul, or ?ling?. This ?whole-body
enlightenment? can be achieved while living an ordinary life in a
physical body. Being centered in life means being grounded,
physically and spiritually.

Integrity. Qigong (chi kung) movement exercises and meditation
(neigong or nei kung) are two main pillars of Tao
self-cultivation. They empower a third pillar – the expression of
personal integrity or innate spiritual virtue (?de?) in daily
life.

Study of the I Ching (Book of Unchanging Changes), feng shui,
Chinese astrology, the outer elixirs of Chinese medicine
(massage, nutrition, herbology), sexual energy cultivation, and
self-expression through creative arts complete the eight pillars
of our personal Tao or ?Way?. Together these eight offer us
practical skills to grow the central ninth pillar, and realize
our soul highest destiny, our integration with the Great Tao.

Sexual Sagehood. Our volatile male-female sexuality is reflected
in the polar split between the two halves of our soul, the
Heaven-formless spirit and Earth-form sexually embodied aspect.
But sex is our soul?s secret alchemical elixir. If we know how to
tap our sexual volatility, we can quickly transform spiritually.
Taoist sexual practice with a partner and solo meditative inner
sexual alchemy both use our tangible sexual essence to ?capture?
and crystallize the invisible essence of our spirit. This union
of our sexual and spiritual selves births a ?third self? ? an
androgynous, bi-sexual Inner Sage that manifests our immortal
non-dual Original Nature. Our Inner Sage is able to embody
non-dual energy (yuan chi) while present in a sexually polarized
male or female body and simultaneously express our unique
individual will.

Transformation. The core Taoist spiritual practice is Internal
Alchemy (neidan gong). Alchemy is transformation, the process of
speeding up internal change. Both science and art, this
meditative process offers a heart-centered systematic method to
transform the apparent spirit-matter split within a single
lifetime.

Inside every human being lives a mystical trinity. In the West
this trinity might be called body-mind-spirit, but their meaning
is vague. In Taoism, the trinity is jing-chii-shen, with very
precise meaning. Alchemical meditation speeds up the
transformations between sexual essence (?jing?), subtle breath
(?chi?), and intelligence-spirit (?shen?). The three are really
the same, but vibrating at different speeds, to give our soul
greater freedom of expression.

Immortality. Tao inner alchemy offers Seven Alchemy Formulas for
Eternal Life. These seven stages are a practical map to
spiritually rebirth the mortal self into an immortal
consciousness that continues functioning after death. This is not
a quest for physical immortality. Ordinary souls dissolve after
death. Enlightened souls hold enough integrity to reincarnate
consciously, a kind of soul immortality.

Spiritual immortality is the stage beyond enlightenment. It
allows us to complete the natural process of soul individuation
that is happening in both our Lesser Self/personality as well as
our cosmic Greater Self. Spiritual Immortality is Nature?s way to
allow the most worthy individual beings to participate in the
ongoing creation of the divine multi-verse.

Spontaneity. Every soul seeks two things. One, to complete its
unique worldly destiny. Two, to achieve a high spiritual destiny
of consciously merging back into its Original Spirit. But destiny
is not a fixed or pre-determined path. There is only the
effortless spontaneous unfolding of each moment (?wuwei?).
The Supreme Mystery (Wuji) that births the Life Force will always
remain unknowable and unpredictable, even as we gradually merge
with the vastness of the Tao. This central Mystery lives in the
core of our inner self and keeps all life eternally fresh,
joyful, and spontaneous.

Love, Chi, and Blessings of the 9 Principles of Tao,

Michael

Inside Chi Flows Naturally:

1. Essay on why my inner alchemist felt inspired to install a copper roof on our
humble log cabin.
Why Copper? The mysteries of the sun, metallurgy, astrology, feng shui, inner
and outer alchemy, artistic beauty and the practicality of solar heating – all
fused into one copper roof. Are you ready to join me, and get off the old
psychic grid? Photos of copper roof :

http://www.healingdao.com/copper_roof,_sun,_the_alchemist.html

2. Free Meditation beneath our newly copper-domed roof this Sat. Nov. 18, 7
pm-11:30 pm. Three silent sittings, leave early if you wish. Everyone is
welcome, Tao embraces all paths and types of meditation. Light refreshments
afterward. Joyce and I are picking up any Thanksgiving strays. Its a great time
to absorb the deep earth changes happening, and a warm up for Winter Solstice.
Please email if you’re coming, send your Energy Body if you aren’t. We always
manage to squeeze last minute arrivals in. For directions and rsvp:
winn@healingdao.com

3. The China Dream Trip 2007 (May 18-June 4) is starting to hum with signups
from a really interesting international group of spiritual adventurers,
including one returnee from the 2006 trip. The people who come on this trip are
at least half the fun. They are folks excited about exploring China, from the
Great Wall to Mt Emei, Mt. Qingcheng, and Mt. Hua. No prior experience in qigong
required. We will be practicing qigong together every day in different power
spots. A qigong training video is sent in advance to all who signup. For more
info or to make a deposit, contact: winn@healingdao.com
Full itinerary at: http://www.healingdao.com/chinatrip2007.
Spectacular photos from a two-time China dream tripper:
http://www.arrowofmoonlight.com/China.html

4. Dec. 9-10. Qigong Fundamentals 3 & 4 workshop in Asheville, Internal Chi
Breathing and Bone Breathing & Rooting.
Gets you deep into your bones, your ancestors, and the relationship between
inner breathing and outer breathing. Open your dantian/ center of gravity more
powerfully. Five simple standing-in-stillness postures. Natural, reverse, and
counter-force breathing. “Ocean, Sky, Great Heart Breathing” qigong form.
Excellent for preventing and healing all kinds of chronic illness, which is
often diseased chi pushed down into the joints and bones. For more info or
homestudy course,
visit http://www.healingdao.com/ckf3.html
Contact: winn@healingdao.com

——————————

Dear Lovers of the Mystery of Transmutation,

I recently completed a dream of mine, to add a little copper shine to the roof
of my and Joyce’s humble log cabin in the Blue Ridge Mountains near Asheville,
North Carolina.

This story begins in 1994, in Finland, on a journey above the arctic circle, on
the solid land closest to the North Pole. I was headed to an initiation with a
saami shaman and my Atlantean guide, which took place on a pyramid island in the
middle of a frozen lake, where there was a potent 3-way crossing of earth ley
lines. That story is for another time, consider it colorful backdrop. We stopped
in Helsinki, the capital, and visited a church that had a hammered copper roof
inside its chapel. The energy in the place was intense; I could feel the copper
was holding the charge of people’s prayers.

The warm vibration from that copper roof experience stayed with me. It made me
remember Wilhelm Reich, the inventor of the “orgone box”. His orgone box was
made of layers of copper and wood and cotton. You would sit in the box and the
dynamic tension between these natural elements would ostensibly concentrate the
life force in your body, and effect healing. He was imprisoned by the Feds for
constructing an unlicensed medical device, and sadly, died in prison in 1957.

Reich was mostly hated because of his theory that “orgone” (chi or prana) was an
orgasmic force at the center of the universe and every human being. This is
similar to my own understanding of yin-yang pulsation theory. But his use of
copper in conducting that force is what aroused my curiosity.

From my study of Taoist inner alchemy and fengshui, I know that metal is an
excellent conductor of chi. In the outer world, the conducting function of
copper is obvious in electrical wiring, and the widespread reliance on other
metals in technology to transfer force (i.e. metal structure of a building, or
metal weapons, cars, trains, planes). The key virtue of the metal element is its
strength and versatility. It can be shaped into many patterns and still hold
great integrity.

Inside the human body, the metal element is linked with the lungs and breathing.
The spiritual job of the lung spirit (“po” soul in Taoist worldview) is to
conduct chi between heaven and earth. Humans do this by using subtle breath in
our body’s internal channels. These channels are well mapped out by the Taoists,
and can be activated using qigong and inner alchemy. The basic training in this
internal breathing I cover in my Qigong Fundamentals 3 & 4.

Since visiting that church in Finland, I have long speculated that having a
copper roof on my home might facilitate that subtle breathing process, and add
some extra kick to my meditation process. A kind of house-sized orgone box,
where even mundane household chores would feel slightly more orgasmic. Actually,
I was perfectly happy with the flow of cosmic chi in my meditations. But Joyce
and I had done much to improve the feng shui of our little cabin, and we noticed
that with every improvement, the land on which our home rested seemed to be
happier.

We built two stone terraces to stop the chi from rushing downhill, and to create
level land for the ambitious gardener in Joyce. The earth element was given a
huge oomph by the crystal stone circle, which we wired in energetically to Lao
Tzu’s ascension site in China. We added a waterfall, and the plants and trees
seemed to rejoice at the presence of the water element. This beautiful “flow
form” waterfall, with a sexy vulva shape and jade finish, was acoustically
designed by New Zealand artist Iain Trousdell. It can be seen in the opening
shots of my Qigong Fundamentals 3 DVD, “Ocean, Sky, & Great Heart Breathing
Qigong”.

I know that fengshui, using adjustments to the external environment, has it
limitations. The figure I accept is that aligning natural forces with fengshui
methods can improve one’s energy flow in a home or office up to about 20%. The
other 80% efficiency needs to be achieved via greater biological and
psycho-spiritual conductivity within the human body. Most of our resistance is
internal, and it is the major work for every human to overcome that resistance.
Hence the Taoist emphasis on “wu wei”, or spontaneous action, and the
development of qigong and inner alchemy methods to cultivate Original Chi (yuan
qi) in opening a “super-conductive” relationship with the Life Force.

But the “Great Work” of alchemical transformation includes working with natural
forces to establish greater harmony and balance between humans and the
macro-cosmos or Nature. Other than keeping us dry, the cheap asphalt-tar roof
over our head just didn’t seem to be adding much. Copper would offer better
protection from high winds and forest fires. It would be more beautiful, and
last longer. But these were secondary considerations, added justification for
the expense of adding a copper roof. The real question: what kind of subtle
energy would it add to our home and land?

This brings us to a fascinating aspect of copper – its close relationship to
gold, the quintessential alchemical metal. In Chinese, the metal element is more
accurately translated as the Gold (“jin”) Element. If you visit Wudang mountain
(scheduled for the 2008 China Dream Trip), the highest and most powerful point
is Golden Peak, with a temple magestically perched high above the clouds and
surrounding peaks. The Golden Peak temple roof is covered with copper, supplied
by the emperor.

Note that only the Taoists include this gold/metal element in their five
element/phase system. Gold/metal is missing in the Indian, Egyptian, Greek,
Arabic elemental systems, although esoterically those systems all focus on the
alchemical production of gold. The base metals buried within the earth are all
considered to be evolving towards the solar purity and incorruptibility of gold,
in the same way that plants grow towards the sun. As above, so below. In western
alchemy, copper is linked with the earth element and the alchemical process of
“conjunction”. Copper and silver were often added to gold to “grow the gold” –
hence the popularity of alchemists with kings seeking to bolster their treasury.

Copper was considered to be the metal closest to gold in its spiritual
evolution, i.e. closest in vibration. The capstone of the Great Pyramid and
every temple in Egypt had an obelisk at its center covered with “auriculum”.
This was a gold-silver-copper and other rare earths natural alloy mentioned by
Plato in his account of Egypt and Atlantis. Auriculum has apparently since gone
back underground, its a rare earth metal no longer found on the surface. The
“au” in its name later became the chemical symbol for gold and the “cu” symbol
for copper.

Auriculum was used to conduct power between the earth and the heavens in Egypt,
and was the core source of spiritual power that radiated out from every temple.
It protected the auric field of those doing spiritual practice within it. The
pyramid’s capstone produced a blinding light when the sun shone upon it.
(Perhaps if we covered the pyramid atop the Washington monument obelisk with
auriculum, America would recover its spiritual compass….?).

Before choosing a copper roof, I considered the astrological affiliation each
metal has with a planet:

Sun: Gold

Moon: Silver

Mercury: Mercury

Venus: Copper

Mars: Iron

Jupiter: Tin

Saturn: Lead

The alchemical transmutation process starts with lead (Saturn, called “true or
original earth” in Taoist alchemical texts), and proceeds through tin, silver,
mercury, iron, copper and finally becomes gold. Note that copper is highly
evolved, sitting next to gold, and its reddish-yellow color approximating that
of gold. Only the last four metals on the list would be economically feasible
for roofing material. Having a Jupiterian/tin or Saturian/lead roof could also
be balancing for someone (and they have metal roofs now in stunning colors).

I chose copper because of of it close affinity to gold and its ability to
conduct the solar, lunar, and stellar forces into the earth. Copper also
directly expresses the chi of Venus, the planet of love, beauty, and sexual
transmutation. There are many myths surrounding Venus as being the planet from
which humanity’s original 144,000 souls were “seeded’ into earth. Copper is
holding the corresponding Venus vibration within the earth. Interesting that in
the classic book of Unchanging Changes (I Ching), the trigram for lake/metal,
connected with the Spirit of the West and the planet Venus, is the only one
which is also associated with Heaven/gold.

Is this planetary – metal resonance “real”? The scientific basis of these subtle
alchemical-planetary correspondences has been challenged recently on the Healing
Tao forum. I consider any resonance “real” if you can feel it clearly – no need
for external scientific proof to verify what you know is energetically true. But
there are interesting experiments in this case. Rudolf Steiner, the Austrian
occultist, said “So long as substances are in a solid state they are subject to
the forces of the earth, but as soon as they enter the liquid state, the
planetary forces come into play.” (As an aside, this suggests interesting
reasons why Taoist water-fire alchemy is so effective. The metal/jing yin
elements in human blood are used to establish a deep resonance with spiritual
intelligence of the vital organ spirits and their planetary affinities).

Steiner inspired Frau L. Kolisko to perform an experiment over the Sun-Saturn
conjunction of 1926, described in her book, “Workings of the Stars in Earthly
Substance”. Image patterns normally formed by lead (affiliated with Saturn)
were in a dissolved silver nitrate solution. These lead patterns completely
disappeared during the Saturn conjunction, and later reappeared afterwards. This
experiment was successfully repeated by others, suggesting a physical change in
liquified earth metals due to the resonance. I recall my first teacher in the
spagyric arts (external or laboratory alchemy), Dan Travers, proudly showing me
how he had liquified gold at room temperature. I eventually gave up spagyrics
for inner alchemy as a more direct method. In any case success in inner alchemy
is necessary for the external alchemy to proceed.

Nick Kollerstrom, a former scientist, has also conducted astrological research
on what he calls “The Eureka Effect”. He showed a statistically significant
relation between moments of inspiration in scientific work and the presence of
septiles and quintiles among transiting planets. He’s done interesting studies
involving metal-planet correspondences, showing how in the chart for the first
creation of Plutonium, Pluto was on the ascendant. None of this should be
surprising to modern folks slowly getting used to the possibility that our
quantum universe is intelligent and that every event entails a complex set of
resonant forces.

Part of my mission in spreading body-centered Taoist internal alchemy meditation
and its external component of qigong is to resurrect alchemy as the oldest
science on the planet, preceding even the development of religion. This process
of recovery entails revealing alchemy as the hidden foundation for modern
science, which I believe will eventually evolve to reclaim its alchemical roots.

It may surprise some to learn that the first famous American scientist was the
alchemist George Starkey (1628-1665), educated at Harvard College, who wrote
numerous alchemical treatises under the name Eirenaeus Philalethes (“a peaceful
lover of truth”). Starkey became the “chymistry” teacher of Robert Boyle, who
borrowed heavily from Starkey and would go on to acquire fame as “the father of
modern chemistry”. Starkey’s works acquired a huge audience that included
luminaries like Isaac Newton, John Locke, and Gottfried Leibniz.

The million or so words that Newton composed on alchemy are heavily indebted to
the theory and practice of Philalethes, and were the hidden driver for most of
Newton’s famous discoveries. it was Newton’s belief in alchemy that drove him to
fathom the subtle forces of nature like gravity. He pursued the secrets of
alchemy until his death. He believed the mere physical forces he had discovered
were superficial to deeper underlying spiritual forces. Alas, like most western
alchemists, he had no teacher of inner alchemy.

Newton left clear directions for making alchemical furnaces and other apparatus,
as well as processes for star regulus, a copper-antimony alloy called “the net,”
a beautiful purple metal that forms crystals. Newton wrote a manuscript
discussing metallic “vegetation,” the formation of dendrites from salts and
metals. To Newton, the fact that metals could be made to grow in a flask was a
sign that they possessed a sort of life, and could therefore be made to ferment,
putrefy, and ultimately multiply.

These alchemical speculations become even more interesting in light of modern
discoveries about metal. I read a piece in Scientific American describing how
the earliest complex life forms on earth did not begin in a primordial sea
struck by lightning. Life more likely evolved in ponds with metallic
concentrations that allowed single celled organisms to form complex life forms
using metals/minerals as their infrastructure. This is born out today by the
spray of thousands of tiny metal ions that are showering out from every cell in
the human body. This metal spray is what keeps the cell healthy and allows the
life force to circulate at that level. But enough digression into the mystery of
metallurgy, biology, and alchemy.

The bottom line is that we put a copper roof on our home, primarily as an
alchemical exploration. It was not cheap. I saved my copper pennies for quite a
few years. We took advantage of copper’s close relationship with the sun, and
installed beneath the copper on the south side of the roof 2000 feet of tubing
filled with water and anti-freeze. The sun heats the copper, the copper (with a
radiant foil to intensify the process) cooks the water in the tubing, which
flows into my home radiant flooring system. Its essentially a copper rooftop
cooking unit. The rooftop coiled tubing system is a system that I designed from
scratch, not on the market, so its effectiveness remains to be proven.

But meanwhile, I feel I am deeper into experiencing the Sun-Copper-Human
energetic loop of transmutation. The copper roof has added a lovely spice to our
home’s meditative field. To me, it feels like the heavens have been grounded
just above my crown, and the Gods of Alchemy are pleased. Its like sitting in a
divine “chi sandwich”, with both heaven and earth snuggled a little bit closer
together with me.

I spent a long time welcoming the copper elementals with a big inner smile from
my human solar-heart fire, and those shiny copper sprites seem very responsive.
The other elementals on our property are playing with them, showering a new
subtle bliss upon on our humble log cabin in addition to its dazzling
appearance. The metal element also helps to keep the excessive wood element of
the house and forest in balance. In the Chinese “control cycle” of 5 element
theory, metal controls wood.

I will let you know when our log home achieves full enlightenment, or ascends
like a dragon’s chariot into the heavens. I hope we are still living in it when
it takes off. Meanwhile, you’re all invited to stop by a meditate at the regular
meditations we hold here. Or tune in with your Energy Body, recognizing that
without its metal/gold element, you wouldn’t be able to transport yourself
across time/space.

I am enclosing a link to a few photos, in case you are curious to see the
different stages of transformation. Joyce accuses me of showing the roof photos
as if they were “baby pictures”, and assures me no one else is interested….I
reply: no one except other alchemists.

http://www.healingdao.com/copper_roof,_sun,_the_alchemist.html

(note: photos are a bit slow loading, to preserve rich copper-saturated color).

Smiling with a golden-copper heart glow,

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

Inside Chi Flows Naturally:

Essay on the spiritual nature of tsunamis and a Tao perspective on
how to relate to the new octave of earth Changes. The surprising
usefulness of alchemical Taoist Kan and Li spiritual technology in
embracing deep change gracefully.

Heaven and Earth are impartial;

they treat all of creation as straw dogs.

Sages are also impartial;

they also treat the common people like straw dogs.

The space between Heaven and Earth is like a bellows

? pump it and more comes out.

Better to safeguard what arises within

than seek outer knowledge that fails to nourish.

– Lao Tzu?s Tao Te Ching, verse 5

Dear Seekers of Smooth and Comfortable Change,

What do you do when the Change is shocking and global in its impact?

When the earth starts spinning faster on its axis and 150,000 people
living in peaceful Pacific villages are wiped out in minutes,
leaving millions homeless and billions in shock?

The Indonesian tsunami was perhaps a bit less shocking to me, as I
have considered tsunami risks to my personal health for the last
decade. I am writing to you from a beachfront on one of the
Grenadine islands in the south Caribbean sea. I?ve been coming here
for years to meditate, develop chi kung forms, write and immerse
myself in the water element during winter. Yet only 10 miles away
sits an underwater volcano that is active, called Kick?em Jenny. Its
peak is smoldering and bubbling only a few hundred feet below the
ocean surface.

When Jenny blows, I know there will be a major tsunami washing over
my idyllic fishing village. There are periodic ?orange? alerts, as
the volcano is closely watched. Occasionally a boat wanders too
close to it and suddenly sinks like a rock, as the sulfur content in
the sea makes the boat too heavy. Another active volcano in the
area, on Monserrat, has already forced evacuation of most of the
island. So volcanic eruption and a tsunami is a real threat. Yet
every year I continue to take the chance, knowing it is unlikely I
will receive any warning given my low level of media contact and the
very few minutes it would take a tsunami to travel from Kickem Jenny
to my beach. So why do I take the risk?

It has to do with destiny, with being attuned to destiny through the
earth?s chi field, and accepting my destiny as flowing natural
process of Tao. If I die in a tsunami, it is my destiny. If I get an
inner voice warning me to stay away from the islands, and I listen
and act on it, then it will not be my destiny. The 150,000. who died
in Asia had a date with destiny. I am sure there are another
150,000. miraculous stories of those unconsciously guided away from
the death zone. And its the destiny of the rest of humanity to deal
with the after shockwave.

I believe the reason this giant tsunami has provoked such a shock
wave is not because of the scale of suffering. Its because the
primordial and thus uncontrollable nature of water itself has
aroused an internal shockwave within each of us. More people die of
AIDS every year in Africa, and more died in the Rwanda genocide.
Four times as many people die every year in the U.S. from the side
effects of prescribed drugs. But you can control your personal
exposure to those risks. They are not primordial like the sea.

Here?s the overview on death on planet earth: about 148,000. people
die every day, calculated from an 8.7% annual global death rate. So
for one day the global death rate doubled due to the tsunami. But
statistically this is insignificant. The death rate is soon going to
rise far above 150,000 per day, due to an aging global population
and declining birth rates. The tsunami?s effect on the global
economy will be nil, so this is not cause for deep concern.

The real significance of the tsunami is its impact on the global
psyche. As I?ve written about 9-11, when there is a mass death it
opens a portal between the formless and the physical realms. Its a
mass migration of soul essence, and for a brief time everyone feels
their soul essence more tangibly. That causes our hearts to open,
and we are reminded that humanity is really a single global entity
with 6.2 billion interdependent human cells.

Hence the outpouring of relief aid for flood ?victims?. Who are they
victims of? Its not the first time this flood has happened ? the
collective human memory has recorded it through myths of the Great
Flood, whether you take it from Noah and his ark or from thousands
of recorded memories from Atlantis and Lemuria (Pacific continent)
sinking beneath the waves (each for different reasons). On the sides
of Hawaii?s volcanoes evidence has been found of tsunamis flooding
up as high as 1500 feet above sea level.

The relief aid and money we give is partly genuine kindness, but
also an unconscious hope that others will help us should the same
happen to us. When Kickem Jenny blows, a tsunami will flood the
east coast of the U.S. as well as my beach shack. Likewise for the
Azores volcano, sitting dead in the center of what was once
Atlantis. When it blows, the east coast of the US will need
re-mapping. If the 1500 foot wall of water predicted by scientists
happens, it will make the tsunami in Asia look like a small splash
in a kiddie pool.

The ?soul portal? that opens at time of mass death is not
metaphysical speculation, but my personal experience. On Dec. 26,
2005 I was sitting in meditation and was feeling quite amazed at the
density and volume of the jing (Taoist term for soul substance that
is refined by inner alchemy meditation) that was present. This was
before I had heard the news reports on the tsunami, or knew of the
shift in the earth?s speeded up spin.

Even though it is ony by a
fraction of a second, it represents an enormous shift in the global
energy body. In subsequent days it felt as if my ?kan & li?
meditations had effortlessly moved several octaves deeper. Later I
began to get unsolicited emails from some of my kan and li students
reporting the same amplified effects. I would be interested in
hearing from others of their direct experience.

Kan & Li Alchemy as Portal to Body/Earth Changes

Taoist/Daoist Kan & Li, or water & fire alchemy turns out to be
the perfect pattern for attuning to earth changes in the form of
volcanos and tsunamis. Why? Because human energy bodies are modeled
on the same pattern as the earth?s energy body. The physical earth
has a neutral core – its mysterious inner heart is thought to be
crystalline according to some recent scientific tests.

This solid
crystal core, which may also house a star-like nuclear reactor, is
surrounded by a warm viscous interior of molten lava, further
surrounded by a cooler outer crust of tectonic plates on which our
cold oceans sit. When the fiery lava layer explodes volcanically, it
displaces the cold ocean layer on top, producing tsunamis and
flooding.

So earth changes are not a surface effect, but rather
something that originates very deep within the planet?s core.
Something has to shift or awaken deep within the Earth?s core
crystal to cause these changes on the liquid surface that affect us
humans.

In Taoist water & fire alchemy practice, the model is similar: we
have a neutral inner observer/core self with crystalline bone
structure, a hot pulsing middle layer of blood and vital organs,
with a cooler outer layer of skin and blood cooling as it rises to
the fleshy surface. The goal of body-centered alchemical meditation
is to activate the deep spiritual fire within (Yang hidden within
the body?s Yin) in order to refine the conditioned patterns of
water/blood and our jing, the substance of our genetic-ancestral
consciousness.

When you activate this alchemical fire within your dantian (belly
cauldron), it begins a long internal process of refining or
?steaming? blood into chi into spirit (jing to chi to shen). Where
and how this happens in the body is significant. Yogic view of
kundalini is of a spiritually fired shakti rising up the spine. In
the Taoist view this is the initial phase of development; the
microcosmic orbit is used to guide this fire down the front
yin/water channel), to produce a continuous and balanced yin-yang
refining cycle.

Kan and Li alchemical meditation is like a second phase kundalini.
The spiritual fire rises not up the spine, but up the neutral core
channel in the center of the body. I remember vividly the first time
I activated it over twenty years ago ? I wasn?t very skilled, and
the rising force felt like a column of hot volcanic lava coming up
and threatening to blow my head off. I was terrified, and prayed for
it to go back down before my delicate brain (read here as ?ego?) was
fried. It was my first lesson in dealing with rapid body shifts as a
kind of internal earth change.

It was only much later that I actually connected my inner alchemical
process to outer earth changes. Alchemy, I discovered, is very
attuned to the current global cycle of what is popularly described
as a feminine/goddess energy, arising from within the body and the
earth.

The old sky God religions (which includes vedic Hinduism,
most forms of Buddhism as well as Christianity and Islam) are mostly
focused on the Divine fire above coming down to purify the corrupted
human and demonic worlds hidden within the body and earth. Neither
the fire/sky centered or water/body centered cycle (of Taoists and
Tantrics) is better than the other – it’s just that we?re in a cycle
of water being heated from within right now. And its just beginning
to really cook.

I don’t believe earth events, from daily weather changes to huge
tsunamis, are mechanical chance events that are unknowable. They are
moments in the bodily life of the large organism we call planet
Earth. She is called by other names, like Gaia, or Pangu by the
ancient Chinese. The Egyptians identified it as a male spirit called
Tellur. I believe that this global intelligence is shifting,
regardless of whether humans listen or not. Was a mass death of
150,000 people needed to mobilize human global consciousness moving
into 2005?

That?s probably beyond current human judgment, as a clear answer
would require a more intimate relationship between humanity and
Gaia/Pangu/Tellur. But we can make educated speculations. Maybe that
is what Lao Tzu is referring to in verse 5 of the Tao Te Ching
(daodejing) when he refers to Heaven and Earth impartially treating
humans as straw dogs.

This doesn’t necessarily mean that Heaven and Earth are cruel to
humans, giving them life and them mercilessly taking it away ?
indifferent to whether we are morally good or evil. It could be
describing how all humans are treated equal, and no higher than the
other non-human elements of nature that are undergoing
transformation. There also the interpretation that ?straw dogs?
could refer to us humans being sacred ritual objects burned in
sacrifice to a higher cause.

I?ve personally been attempting for over a decade to cultivate a
relationship with deep Earth consciousness using body-centered
Taoist internal alchemy technologies. Its one reason I have
frequently travelled to China?s Taoist mountain sanctuaries ? I
found them more alive, like open portals into the earth. These
portals have been opened by millennia of Taoist adepts meditating
upon earth cycles, its numerous spirits and its axial consciousness.

This axis is the core energy (chong chi) that links the earth?s
subtle bodies to both the physical heavens (planets, sun, stars) and
the formless Heavens where the Celestial Immortals (very highly
achieved humans) hang out. My next China trip is not until May 2006,
and there are no guarantees that you will return a Celestial…but
many people have had major openings in these sacred mountain Taoist
power spots.

Becoming an Earth Immortal is the developmental stage before you
achieve Heaven or Celestial Immortal. Of course, none of this
happens until you achieve ordinary Human immortality, which has
nothing to do with living physically forever. Human immortality is
simply completing your soul?s destiny and a tangible sense of
spiritual integrity with the larger flow of nature.

Earth
Immortality requires attuning your personal human energy body to the
earth?s impersonal energy body, mediated by the time cycles of the
sun and moon. This is what the Greater Water & Fire (kan & li)
Alchemy formula is about. This requires resolving a lot of ancestral
issues trapped within the earth?s energy body.

One interesting thing I?ve found through my China connections is
that many Chinese psychics, very attuned to ancestral issues, have
been predicting big earth changes.

We have had numerous psychics in the West telling us the same thing
for decades, starting with Edgar Cayce giving detailed dates of huge
land/ocean shifts. But Cayce?s changes did not occur on schedule.
Nor have other predictions manifested on schedule.

Ramtha (the channelled spirit behind J. Z. Knight and inspiration
for the recent ?What the Bleep? film) urged followers to store food
and guns in the pacific northwest back in the mid-80?s due to
impending earth changes. There were numerous other false alarms by
other end-of-the-milllenia prophets (ala Gordon Michael Scallion),
so many that one necessarily became very leery of any channeled
predictions. Yet at the same time it intuitively felt right, that
some major changes HAD to happen if a real paradigm shift was to
occur.

Now that Earth has been confronted by increasingly stronger signs of
global warming, changes in deep ocean currents, bigger hurricanes,
near-miss meteors and now a kick-ass tsunami, should we begin to
take these earth change predictions more seriously? Maybe the failed
predictions were intentionally made early, to allow us resistant
humans time to absorb the possibilities of unimaginable changes to
earthly life.

Become the Change Before Change is Forced

What to do about all these predictions and the disturbing changes in
weather? My decision has been to live in the flow of the present
moment, without allowing myself to be paralyzed by other?s
predictions of apocalyptic destruction. At the same time, I keep an
alert ear to my inner voices, so that I may BECOME THE CHANGE
BEFORE CHANGE IS FORCED upon me.

In late 2004 these voices began to speak to me. When I asked on my
birthday (last September 5th) what the new year would bring, the I
Ching gave me – twice in a row, to two different questions – its
answer; the double hexagram Wind over Wind. That is equivalent to
? Change squared to a higher power of itself. I went into deep
meditation to clarify that image, and received information about a
long cycle of dramatic changes that could last for 20 years, but
with especially strong kickers in 2005, and 2007-9. More mass
deaths, perhaps up to a third of humanity, may occur during this 20
year shift to a higher vibrational frequency in our planetary
pattern of functioning.

This information, if accurate, is hardly new; its significance to me
is about timing. The Timing of this cycle should not be seen as the
end of Time, as Creation cannot stop without the free-will agreement
of all beings (unlikely). Nor is it vindication of Mathusian
theories of self-correcting population cycles ? if humanity were in
deep harmony, earth could support a vast population with clean
free-energy technologies. But most importantly, these Changes
should NOT be cause for panic.

If you go into Fear reaction, that the Changes are trying to kill
you, you can no longer hear your deepest inner soul voice directing
you to grasp the enormous opportunities for growth possible during
this cycle of change. This is the function of the Taoist Fusion of
the Five Elements practice ? to speed the integration of your five
inner ?body spirits? (jing shen, correlated with the 5 major vital
organ functions) so they speak in one clear, spontaneous,
body-centered authentic voice (ziran).

The simplest and truest response to these Changes is to celebrate a
new phase in the rebirthing of Gaia/Pangu?s deep spiritual
consciousness. This in turn will initiate a change in the unfolding
patterns of human destiny. Our old dysfunctional patterns of
pollution, war, and struggle need to die to give birth to a stronger
foundation for humanity?s collective spiritual development.

Some of us will choose to ?die? in support of that global rebirthing
process. The reality is that nobody is ever truly forced to die; we
mostly leave our bodies as the result of millions of moment to
moment unconscious choices. The true general cause of unconscious
death choices will not be physical calamities, but an underlying
resistance to the new vibrational frequency radiating from the
earth?s core as it undergoes its rebirth.

This will cause many to go mad and commit violent acts to relieve
the tension arising from their own resistance/madness. But what
looks horrible on the outside will be beautiful on the inside. The
core of the earth will no longer be experienced as a place of fiery
Hell and trapped beings, but as the open, luminous sacred center of
an embodied Heaven Within Earth. Death-ing is just the initial stage
of rebirth-ing and liberation into new dimensions of life. So all
destiny choices of when and how to leave this body and this earth
are ultimately expressions of human free will.

My Humble Predictions (or Projections?)

Paradoxically, it is the evolution of human INDIVIDUATION that will
be empowered by this collective process of Change. Individuation is
the integration of our spiritual will within our physical body. The
old governmental and religious institutions with pyramidal authority
structures and from-the-top-down dogmas will gradually break down.
We?ll be forced to invent new ways to regulate our lives, and it may
take us a while to get it right. The
corporate-miliitary-intelligence ?black government? that currently
rules our elected government without our consent will not go gently
into the night.

Western astrology will have to shift to acknowledge the voice of
planet earth as the single most important heavenly body for humans.
We will no longer have to chase after calendars to figure out who
and where we are. In the long cycle, Earth as entity will take on
multiple incarnations that we can choose to live on.

The one I plan
to choose (meet you there?) will ultimately be freed to realize its
inner nature as a ?dark star? manifesting its true destiny as a
place for enlightened spiritual embodiment (rather than
imprisonment). Earth as a planet, and the body for each of us will
become for humans the conscious clearing house and point of
integration for all planetary, solar, and stellar voices.

The end of this individuation process is for humans to finally
arrive in their bodies. This is another way of saying that our
bodies will be recognized as the immediate and true transmutation of
spirit, eliminating all dualistic struggle. Light and Dark will
still exist, but their relationship will be more one of divine dance
and play, less intense polarities of war, disease, and struggle.

This body-centered self-realization is why Earth is the center
element in Taoist astrology and the center of inner alchemy
practice. Earth in Chinese systems is the equivalent of an embodied
Ether (hidden fifth element) found in the western esoteric systems
inherited from Atlantis and used in Greece, Egypt, Middle East,
India, and the West.

This is not to claim that Taoist cosmology or astrology is better;
it simply has different, clearer body-centered information. It has
what is needed at this point in the cycle of changes to achieve
completion. In the new cycle of change there will be the opportunity
to integrate the wisdom of the ancient Lemurian and Atlantean
civilizations. (and yes, now is finally the time for me to get off
my ass and release my book giving the historical details of this
subject…as soon as I find a reasonable source for print-on-demand
technology!).

What are the most important practical steps to take to prepare for
this cycle of earth changes? To find a way to get grounded on every
level of the process of one?s Becoming. I am teaching chi kung and
inner alchemy because I find that combination of movement and
meditation to be the most effective and effortless path to deep
embodied change.

Its why in particular I have been urging Healing Tao students to
move ahead to the three Kan & Li levels of practice, Lesser (Inner
Sexual Alchemy), Greater (Sun-Moon-Earth Alchemy), and Greatest
(Planetary & Soul Alchemy). I teach the entire cycle every summer at
Dao Mountain, and the rest of the year at selected retreats abroad.
The next Greater Kan & Li, which is the most focused on earth
changes, is in central Italy May 3-8 (contact Cristiano Palazzini
.

I feel we need to make these alchemical technologies accessible as
the basic and essential tools of a modern spiritual science. Not a
secret practice people will get to someday when they are perfect
masters. They are tools for imperfect, evolving human beings seeking
to become the force of natural change – before Nature forces change
upon us.

But everyone will find their own path. Inexorably and invisibly.
That is Tao/Dao ? the pathless path. Enjoy your journey!

May the Five Inner Tones of the Dao Sing in our Heart,
Michael Winn

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

? Chuang Tzu, Inner Chapters

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

? Daoist Sage, 200 B.C

Inside Chi iFlows naturally:

essay on how we need to tap into the hidden intelligence of viruses to survive coming changes.

If you previously “unsubscribed” to TaoNews, you may have to unsubscribe again due to a virus. See new unsubscribe link at end of letter. To subscribe, go to home page of www.healingdao.com, and you?ll get a free Inner Smile ebook, a download function recently restored.

2005 Summer Retreat schedule will be coming soon, as well as details of May 2006 China trip. Plus Winter Solstice specials on dvd?s and new cd releases of the Chi Kung Fundamentals.

Dear Cultivators of the Natural Way,

I?ve been meditating on the inner nature of viruses recently. All kinds of viruses. Computer viruses, because one disabled most of my website on Nov. 2 , Election Day. Should I be paranoid? My webmaster thinks it was not maliciously targeting the site, but rather a trojan horse virus that rode on an unsuspecting ex-employee?s pass word to get past our hefty defenses.

The site is 90% back to normal but it cost me thousands of dollars and a lot of aggravation. Yet it forced me and my webmaster to make improvements that long needed doing ? so I am ultimately happy about being dragged forcibly into the maws of Change.

I?m also contemplating Asian bird flu viruses, because World Health experts are saying it could cost up to a billion human lives in the next massive cyclical outbreak. That sounds pretty apocalyptic, and makes my suffering seem rather puny in the scale of viral pain. A billion lives: these are cold scientific statistical possibilities. They?re talking about this winter or next.

It?s not born again fundamentalists (or New Agers) waiting for the End of Time to happen in a vague future that constantly is moving away from us. This outburst of Asian viral influence is well recorded in history, killing millions in the past. The next cycle may kill more because we are so globally connected. Viruses doing a house-cleaning on humanity, or acting as the catalyst for new operating paradigms to emerge?

Why are viruses so powerful? Is it because they are closer to the secret of immortality than humans? They are more intelligent than humans in their ability to self-replicate. They can mutate in the moment, and seem to know exactly where to find the chi to support their life, even if it is parasitic.

Viruses rewrite the DNA and RNA code of other entities for its own survival ? whether its the common cold or HIV or herpes or the zillion other unnamed viruses. Viral ability to read genetic code effortlessly is what scientists have wet dreams about doing themselves. A virus could win the Nobel Prize for genetics if somebody would nominate one.

So I ask myself, what?s the spiritual function of the virus? Are viruses the most advanced type of entity that is evolving on earth, and are humans merely a lesser creature or host to serve their needs? Given the high genius-like IQ of viruses, we have to consider this possibility, humbling as it is. There are countless viruses living in our bodies, and they may be essential to maintaining our biological equilibrium ? or is it THEIR biological equilibrium?

A Textbook Definition of a Virus

?Viruses are parasites which use almost every kind of living system as host. On the human body, there is virtually no part that cannot be colonized by viruses – brain, CNS, heart, GI tract, blood vessels and blood cells, skeletal muscles, reproductive system, skin, trachea, lungs, lymphatic system.? Bacteria too are susceptible to viral attack; E.coli is host to at least 4 different types of viruses.?

From the viewpoint of Daoist (Taoist) cosmology, we humans are smaller wholes that are part of the process of larger wholes. Each sub-whole ? whether its a cell or a human being or a planet – as well as the meta-wholes (galaxies, universes and higher dimensions) are operating from the same chi field. Each entity embodies the same yin-yang pulsation and the same five phase cycles.

If we apply this energetic thinking to viruses, we can understand viruses as ?rogue strands? of the collective five phase operating system. They create a certain amount of chaos in the existing order, and that may be a valuable function in helping us mutate to our next level. Mostly, the viruses succeed because of their utter and total openness to embracing any and all life operating systems. Can we learn from that?

Find the Secrets of our Operating System

The key, I believe, is tap into the viral ability to transmute our operating system. Its an un-winable war to battle and kill all viruses. This trans-mutation of our operating system is essentially what daoist alchemy is focused on. It gives us a practical way to capture rogue elementals in the form of dysfunctional energetic patterns or ego fragments, and puts them to work to speed the evolution of the whole.

We constantly exploit the intelligence of other people, and we frequently copy their energetic patterns. Viruses do the same thing, but they lack their own body. They have no earth element. Viruses are the chaotic but powerful aspects of ourselves and the world that seek to ground themselves by chasing after other?s bodies. So they appear perpetually destructive instead of stable and peace loving. They have no way to internalize their reproductive process. But we could internalize the genius of viruses ? IF we cultivate our alchemical cauldron, our dantian. The dantian at our personal center of gravity exists by the grace of our having an individual body.

Viruses generally lack their own cell wall, but are happy to borrow the cell walls from other creatures. This notion of viruses as rogues matches scientific speculation on their origins. A popular theory is that viruses are clusters of genes that originally broke off from some primordial cell. They now act as pirates, boarding all descendants of that original cell to plunder their genetic treasures at will.

It sounds like a pop sci-fiction plot. And it resembles one popular theory as to why aliens keep abducting humans ? to study and steal our DNA code, considered to be one of the most royal designs in the cosmos. All of this Cosmic Viral drama seems to be about a desire to find our own center of reproductive creativity.

Trans-Mutation at Winter Solstice

Let?s shift from tiny viruses to Big Picture process. As we head into Winter Solstice on Dec. 21, we do well to prepare ourselves for the alchemical transformation that is possible at this time in the annual cycle of rebirth. The scattered parts of ourselves, operating as fragments, and always seeking opportunities to survive out in the world ? suddenly are drawn back into a mysterious hole of dark night. Out of that wintry darkness is rebirthed the light of our renewed soul.

Astrologers have pointed out that leading up to the Solstice the planets are flowing into a new pattern of five phase integration, where all five of the visible planets can be seen in the morning sky, in order of their appearance from the sun: Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn. This happens every morning from Dec. 16 to Dec. 22, and won?t happen again for another 12 years. This symbolizes the strengthening of our elemental alignment within as the planets
reflect their natural alignment without.

Can you be utterly open to this process, and capture the cosmic operating system, and use it to reproduce yourself?

I?m getting a strong signal that change is going to happen more dramatically and powerfully in 2005. That we need to learn from our viral guides ? our hidden ancient unconscious powers of trans-mutation and flexibility.

May the Inner Sound of the Dao Sing in Us,

Michael Winn

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

? Chuang Tzu, Inner Chapters

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

Life is very simple, but everyone seeks difficulty.”

— Daoist Sage, 200 B.C

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