deci belle

haha!!❤❤ Vous are good sport and observant too, mon ami~ Doont's forget to bean-dip fear's rear on your way out!!

Ideas are the dregs. Progress is delusion. Reversion to one's incipience of enlightened being is a matter of remembering that ideas of self are essentially indicative of mental illness. The idea of progress only engenders hope and its incestuous sibling fear. Their errant parent ego, the prodigal of inherent living aware energy and unborn spirit, makes its living creating entitlement issues in order to appear indispensable and embarrass its homeless spouse, objective knowledge, who won't stand up to her manipulative power-play ways. I say bitch-slap that hussy hope and bean-dip fear's rear as you retro-progress yo' bad self through the well-greased revolving door of conflicting emotions and steal that long-robed baggage-handlin' demiurge's under-handed wad of liquid assets and make for the southwest with a balance of fire and water. Wait it out 'til the heat subsides and as you re-enter society— remember to hide yer bling, or you will surely have to sing. heehee!!❤ ed note: add the heavy heart; re-cast fear's role, give emotions a twirl and change demigod to demiurge

+1 for Old Green. I don't know of any alchemic texts as well preserved with concise commentary in English as the Complete Reality teachings translated by Thomas Cleary. Anything from the west written recently (in the last millennia) would have been originally written in Latin …yuck! All the ancient shamanic traditions traveling across the globe in the earliest and subsequent human migrations carrying this knowledge were unwritten, but this is our legacy. We haven't advanced in 10,000 years~ heehee!! ed note: add comment for Old Green's post

I know it doesn't matter. Enlightening being adapts to conditions and sees through phenomena without denying characteristics. Bodhidharma said, "A buddha doesn't keep precepts, and a buddha doesn't break them either." I don't want to drink coffee. But whenever I've ordered a tea at a certain espresso bar in my town, it's as if the sun won't come up if I don't let the barista make me a single breve ristretto …so it's kinda like that sometimes. They just can't see myself with a vapid tea— it's just not right! So being free from life and death means being free with life and death. Some people gotta have their abstracted meditation states while for others it's appropriate to be fifty feet past their last anchor on a winter ice-climb at altitude in the dark while timing the certitude of the next spindrift avalanche. It just gets sso old when it becomes obvious that people simply can't imagine themselves (or others) just as they are now, only awake. Only strangenesses qualify for conceivable scenarios and personages in terms of enlightening being. It is so limiting …❤

Chapter 16 for taoist adepts by deci belle Emptiness is the limit of the limitless The Center has never moved As things act up Witness Return As Creation returns See Return rooted in stillness Stillness is the ultimate of survival Survival is living long Knowledge of long life is wise Suffering Causelessness is ignorant Knowledge of beginninglessness is seeing nonbeing Selfless Nonbeing has no partiality Impersonal awareness has no equal The unsurpassed is Celestial Nature Celestial means the Way The Way living long Serene and unperturbable Now when the Sage speaks of Return, it is not that the ten thousand things and creation itself is outside of your own existence. You yourself are comprised of billions of living organisms right now. This is no mystery nor is it philosophy— it's you. Can you be still in the extreme and know Return? So when you personally witness the extreme of stillness, you can then know Return. The result of the extreme of stillness is Return, symbolized by the 24th hexagram: one yang line under five yin lines. Return is the first emergence of pure yang from within the extreme of stillness, Earth, symbolized by six yin lines. This is not a matter of activity, but of experiential knowledge of the stirring of the Real from within observation of the extreme of nonpsychological stillness. The symbols of the I Ching are too ancient to know in terms of scholastic generalities. The knowledge imbedded in the symbols are older than Chinese culture. Even thought the current order of the hexegrams attributed to Fu Hsi, 3000 BC; were arranged by King Wen and the lines elucidated by his son, Duke of the Chou Dynasty, 1100 BC; and various early commentaries attributed to the humanist, educator and philosopher Confucious, 5th~6th centuries BC, the source of this ancient sourcebook clearly has survived by virtue of its utilitarian cloak as a book of prognostication. Adepts take the 24th hexagram's commentary expressed by Confucious as evidence of the knowledge imbedded in the ancient symbols and signs predating Fu Hsi's creation of the doubling of the trigrams and their arrangement by King Wen. It reads: THUNDER IS IN THE EARTH; RETURN. THUS DID THE KINGS OF YORE SHUT THE GATES ON THE WINTER SOLSTICE; CARAVANS DID NOT TRAVEL, THE RULER DID NOT INSPECT THE REGIONS. Was this included in the I Ching and Mentioned by Lao Tzu, just in case some future absent-minded emperor might forget what to do on the winter solstice? Just more evidence of philosophical drivel accidentally making it into a world-honored spiritual classic so as to be confused as philosophy by literalists and recreational philosophers? Let us ponder evidences of the Real. Not using discriminatory consciousness (did not inspect the regions); stilling arbitrary opportunistic activities (caravans); shutting sensual perception and employing impersonal awareness in the extreme of stillness (the king shutting the gates on the winter solstice); the limit of the limitless spontaneously reverting to Celestial movement (thunder is in the earth, return). This is no different than my version of the 16th chapter above, which is no different than the Real described by Lao Tzu, who did not refer to words and meanings to describe the Celestial design, but rather employed poetic wisdom. There is just no excuse to habitually ponder the meanings of dead words attributed to the TTC in terms of translated philosophy other than pure intellectualism, and clinging to the literal rather than discovering the Real for oneself outside of words. The true value of the classics is in looking back on them from the vantage point of enlightened realization. Sorry, it's a fact— so don't blame me that pondering the classics before fathoming the mind is a case of the blind feeling for truth in words without the ability to see in the dark. Only spiritual adepts and buddhas comprehend this, otherwise, how would you know? In order to recognize the wellspring of this first emergence of pure yang within oneself, one must be able to find emptiness in the extreme of stillness in one's own mind. "But for the return not to be difficult, it is necessary to know clearly where the source of the river is, movement coming from the extreme of stillness. Lao Tzu said, 'Effect emptiness to the extreme, guard stillness carefully; as myriad things act in concert, I thereby watch the return.' The I Ching says, 'Repeating the path, coming back in seven days.' Both of these point to this river source where the mind of Tao and its real knowledge arise." (From Chang Po-tuan's Understanding Reality, written in 1000CE) Hmmmmm, doesn't sound like a whole lotta belief going on around here, does there? Where does the literalist translation/philosophy crowd get its arbitrary ideas to idly pass the time entertaining and clinging to personalistic beliefs and dead interpretations? The Classics are the result of enlightening activity by enlightening beings. You'd think that was the secret of enlightenment itself, but it's not. The classics have been left behind to guide those with the will to enlightenment, not recreationalists smugly abusing the work of ages as a mere pastime, suggesting that Lao Tzu's immortal classic is at core, a philosophical work. To be sure, the 16th chapter has at its core, a profound depth of transcendent awareness, and even a simple elucidation of the Celestial design in ordinary terms. It is just that worldlings cannot recognize what is not less in ignoramuses and not more in buddhas. That is, recognizing the real in the midst of the false with the knowledge that if not for the false, there would be no real to recognize. Few people know the I Ching as a glossary of types of time and that recognizing the real in the midst of the false is a matter of times. Movement and stillness is the alternation of changes. One yin and one yang is Change. This is why enlightening beings watch for Return. Endless transformations take place therein. The alternations of yin and yang are irrefutable. Nothing can exist that does not follow the inexorable alternations of its breath. Yogis watch their breath; wizards watch the rhythm of Creation to observe Return in order to transcend Change; thereby to live long, serene and unperturbable. Only enlightening beings who witness the Unchanging can transcend the cycles of Created changes while in the midst of ordinary situations unbeknownst to anyone. The movement from the extreme of stillness is precisely when the great medicine appears. This movement is the movement of mind itself from within the extreme of one's own empty stillness. This is not meditation practice. This is the awareness of enlightened mind, no different than your own everyday mind— but you must first see this mind in order to bring it to consciousness. It is not a matter of arbitrarily stilling the mind and body's movement, but rather observing the rhythm of one's own activity and stillness with subtle concentration over a long period of time. Subtle concentration is the extreme inner stillness of nonpsychological observation. This is the meaning of "refine the self and await the time". The time refers to the spontaneous arising of the Celestial from the extreme of stillness: Return. One rests securely in this. Being insecure means producing feelings in regard to objects. Resting is truly knowing where real knowledge arises. "THE PRECIOUS WORDS OF THE YIN CONVERGENCE EXCEED THREE HUNDRED, THE SPIRITUAL WORDS OF THE POWER OF TAO ARE FULLY FIVE THOUSAND. THE SUPERIOR IMMORTALS OF PAST AND PRESENT HAVE ALL ARRIVED AT THE TRUE EXPLANATION HEREIN." It said spiritual, not philosophical. It said explanation, not meaning. Literalist translators and dabblers in recreational philosophy ought to take particular note here. Since the classic on the Yin Convergence is mentioned in the same breath as the Power of Tao, I ask you: how many of you have even heard of the Yin Convergence Classic, much less studied it with the will to enlightenment? "From ancient times to the present, the adepts have all investigated the true principles in these two classics and arrived at the real explanation, whereby they have comprehended essence and life." ed note: Change "1000AD" to "1000CE", remove dbl-spaces on Chapter 16; quotes from Chang Po-tuan's Understanding Reality translated by Thomas Cleary. University of Hawaii Press, 1987.

Cultural differences is my guess, and as you infer, light is more of an external (separate) orientation and chi doesn't imply distance, in terms of the real body, being whole. Just deciphering terms being used to describe the quality of potential, relative to its context is so frustrating— and not just due to cultural and developmental differences. Some are finding states to fit the names and some are finding names to fit the situations. Hanging out in blissful meditation states is one thing and endeavoring to rectify names to perceived function, yet another— but I would like to take this to where exorcist may have left off …and that is beyond states of recognition inasmuch as enlightening being entails (once this is alive outside our bodies), a real working relationship with pre-heavenly chi. I would like to make the suggestion that once this is the basis of practice, one is no longer working with the created, and hence, no longer going along with creation in terms of adapting to karmic evolution— which to me would be the working definition of enlightening being itself, whereby the essence of the void (not a meditation, mind, no-mind or no-self state) is itself the means of functioning in the world, perceiving reality and adapting to conditions; that is, acting in terms of selfless response by matching creation itself freely using the void's storehouse of unborn potential at one's disposal. That's not a pet-theory— I'm just describing my day-job in those terms. So it is just my experience of seeing "subtle light" by not-seeing phenomena in terms of cloying gratification without denying characteristics— which is very un-sexy, in those terms. But I must admit that seeing situations beyond objects, as such, constitutes creation as void, as it is a really everlasting, independently alive environment where nothing ever eventually happens.

OK!

Hi 3bob, Just think of all the animate and inanimate objects just on this planet. There aren't too many human beings in terms of the percentage of all created "things". Karma is just the evolutionary mechanics of the created. The point of the teachings (aside from the existence of extremely abstracted knowledge I'm sure is under someone's turban), is that it is there to "trick" you into not taking any chances with this chance …know what I mean? There are no guarantees anyway, and with my luck …and even beings in people form live as animals, gods, etc. Eeeee!!

Because dzogchen is a stageless teaching, my view of the subtle dimension of light is that one naturally sees the subtle aspect (not that it is "light") in everyday ordinary situations because the light itself is undifferentiated. Otherwise, subtle, in terms of non-ordinary states, would not be so subtle— or so useful, non? I posted earlier, and yes, the thread has very much veered from its original point. I know Dzogchen is a very culturally grounded teaching and xenophobic in its own characteristically voluptuous guru/transmission tradition, but the transmission is to give the student a taste of the real aspect, so the light is thenceforth recognizable and practice is stronger, surer and quicker and the student is able to then exercise the Dharma eye in actual situations (of course always depends on the student). I hope no one would mind if I would like to make the point that the light is naturally undifferentiated from the temporal manifestation and that references to it are only in terms of one's adapting to the real aspect of any given situation~ hence, the subtlety of the light. Otherwise, what would be the point of seeing "light" with one's physical eyes? What wouldn't be light?!! ed note: add the word "it" in the second sentence

When I discuss alchemy, the operations apply to inner and outer all at once. Like Heaven, ultimately private yet manifesting spontaneously in public. Alchemy is not separate from ordinary situations; Reality is itself the blending of absolute and temporal without distinction; Enlightening being employs the pristine from within the polluted, not meditation states. The four basic elements described in the first section of the I Ching are Heaven, Earth, Water, Fire. In terms of alchemy, Heaven and Earth are the vessel of transformation. Fire and Water are the medicines to be cooked and blended. Firmness and flexibility is the substance of production of the elixir: this is Heaven and Earth as the crucible and furnace. Real knowledge and conscious knowledge is the function of production of the elixir: this is Water and Fire as the medicines. Water represents the real human body producing metal, which is the refinement of sense awareness; stilling the body is forgetting feelings toward objects. When emotional consciousness is forgotten, real, firm, unconfused knowledge returns in balance. Fire represents the human mind producing conscious knowledge, which is the refinement of mental energy; stilling the mind is forgetting discriminating consciousness. When views of self and other are forgotten, open, flexible, unobscured conscious awareness returns in balance. When the medicines refined in the crucible constitute correct balance, flexible conscious awareness submits to firm knowledge of reality and the two things join entering the yellow path; the center, earth. This is the go-between, the yellow woman; the true intent of the human body which has no location. When one's substance and function is correctly balanced in the central path, the middle way, one is then able to practice the middle way and enter the highest vehicle. If you want to realize the elixir, you must hasten to practice the substance and function of the elixir without delay. What this means is that the manifestation of enlightened qualities is not a matter of seeking teachers, approaching stages of realization, toiling at formal practice and courting mystical experience or wordless transmission outside of doctrine. If you can single-mindedly take up the vehicle of buddhas by getting rid of emotional and intellectual consciousness relative to self and other— the two things, the yin and yang within your own body will unify to form the elixir of innate knowledge of real potential. When this is accomplished, the real will ignite within one's being and the firing process, advance and withdrawl, the operations involving intensity or ease, and mixing with ordinary society and harmonizing illumination proceed naturally as you sensitively and effectively observe creation arising and returning in concert. Then you will know the celestial design, gain the advantage of the pivot of awareness and become a partner of evolution outside the influence of its changes. The course of the alchemic firing process pairing fire and water in the pot of heaven and earth is carried out within the context of everyday ordinary situations— it is not accomplished in passive, solitary retreat or meditative states under controlled conditions. ed note: add the word "furnace" in the fourth, fiddle with the first sentence in the sixth, and add a line to the eighth paragraph

So nice!! Enjoy the scenery during your dropping off.❤

As for your pure being/awareness goes, evidently you feel you can be the judge as deluded as you are. Until you experience pure nonbeing, you have no basis for objectivity to judge your own everyday mind— much less your enthusiastic contentious notions of what could possibly constitute "pure being". As for your nonsensical spray about buddhas not having to experience enlightenment even once… even a buddha has nothing over anyone who knows their original face. Spend less time pimping your imaginary buddha and become an awakened human being yourself. It's not easy before and it's not easy afterwards either. Dogen said, "Buddhas become people and people become buddhas." In other words, become a buddha first, then learn how to be a realized human being. Only an ignoramus would endeavor to employ reason to express the inconceivable. Anyone can understand understanding, only an enlightening being can understand not-understanding. How do you thing the classics came to be? Having fathomed my mind, I would not dream (as you do) to use logic to express the unspeakable. Furthermore, sudden realization is not a matter where one exists to experience anything. Among other things, it is the event of one's inherent selfless potential returning to its source. YOU DON'T GET TO GO. Where potential is the same as living awareness, no different than the seat of your current replaying states of ignorance— it's just that you do not see it is why you take imaginary causes reflective of an habitual self-propping ego-driven psychological apparatus, as proof that you do, in fact, exist. Since you completely misunderstood my expression (and liked it too, if I recall correctly), I fail to corroborate your multiple versions of what you have taken to be your idea of pure being. Those must have been lovely experiences, mon ami~ but even though realization only happens once, one must still go further and shatter the absolute, which is no mean concept, before one steps over eternity. Only then is one an equal of prior illuminates, able to follow in their footsteps as you place yours as theirs, and proceed up the gradual incline. The gradual path leading to the sudden is finite. The path beyond eternity has no words. This is entering the tao in reality, planting lotuses in fire, taking over creation in order to steal potential, able to match creative evolution with the virtue of receptivity, effecting creative evolution without ever again entering the matrix of karmic cycles of yin and yang. You know, seeing through phenomena without negating appearances. You know, the middle way, suchness …enlightening being. Surely old-hat for someone such as you, hmmmmmm? Obviously you have no knowledge of the absolute, much less the sense to realize that one must already be in harmony with nonoriginated selfless awareness in the first place. Enlightenment is just an indication of harmony with the way. It has no intrinsic meaning. Its like being sick, and you know it; but then finally actually being temporarily bedridden~ then finally returning to health, delicately aware of your weakness, eventually to simply just forget you were ever sick at all as you resume ordinary activities. Enlightenment is like reversing your process of growing up and being born, only to be born again in the unborn. The source of inconceivability doesn't owe you a logical cause, yet you insist that something beyond even the mysteries of creation should be as logically comprehensible as a democratic entitlement—as if. You must be able to be done with your worldly ignorance (your intellectual entitlement issues) to enter into the entry-level experience of simple awakening— which is none other than realizing self is a wonderful and effective, functional illusion. BUT MISTAKING ONE'S THIEVING PSYCHOLOGICAL SPIRIT AS ENLIGHTENED MIND IS THE NUMBER ONE ERROR OF STUDENTS OF SELF-REFINEMENT OF ALL TIME. Your mistake is so common this saying has been the hallmark of buddhist study since before bodhidharma's coming from the west. As I said before, call it what you like, but you have a loooooooong way to go~ isn't that good to know?❤ ed note: typo four paragraphs from the end

Mr Wolf said: I have never experienced states of "no-self". If "I" experience, then this is not nonbeing. If it was you who experienced, then I am afraid this is not Reality. If this itself is selfless awareness, then why entertain idle thoughts of self when you know self has never been other than illusion? If you know self and creation has never really fallen into the creative and that nonbeing is awareness itself, then I'm not so sure about your reference to "(plural) states of no-self". Buddhas don't experience enlightenment twice. If it's not nonoriginated, you are very mistaken in your assessment of "no-self" Yours is a nice sentiment, and I don't mean to rain on your reverie, But I won't mislead you… Just sayin'❤

anamatva said: Yet being awake oneself is not it~ just this. This is not beyond concepts because one's dharma eye sees Suchness as is, dealing with delusion on its own terms without regard to conventions of good or bad. It is not up to anyone but yourself— inherent human nature must be penetrated and activated in the world. It is not that people are born with human nature; entitled to it. People's inherent human nature is unborn and this must be realized oneself.

Only if this weren't an idle thought, who would set about immediately to find out? The beautiful thing is, the mind that asks is the central issue. This very mind that asks is itself void of self and identity, without origination. If you were to experience sudden realization on the spot Just this mind is still, complete, miraculously aware, perpetually on the brink Yet has never itself fallen into the created, known, knowing. Selfless, unknowing, simply aware, the spark of living aware potential. If you stumbled onto this and found such a wonder as this void of self Knowing only this has truly without beginning ever existed, no mind of nonbeing And returned to conscious awareness seamlessly, like opening your own eyes again Without doubt that selfless awareness is itself your own everyday mind Would you care that there is no purpose beyond itself Other than seeing creation in terms of the uncreated itself And having seen the Changless, endeavor to go along with situations Yet never again stooping to follow Circumstantial evolution for others Because others are the same as you?

Certain drugs with the correct mindset is practice for some people at some times.

Human nature is awake. If it's not awake, it's learned.

Absolutely, Steve. Since everyone is already using enlightened mind (what other mind is there?) to follow illusion, seeing your original face is anti-climactic. But unless you know that fact yourself there is no power in understanding the concept intellectually. But there is more to it than just realizing you didn't need to experience enlightenment. When one finds out for oneself that self, creation and death are nonexistent, the kinetic power of karmic evolution is literally vaporized, and the compulsion to act is destroyed forever …that is, if the impulse to follow one's life-long habits is left behind forever. That is why the period of maturation (referred to as incubation in taoist technical terminology) is always mentioned. One needs to follow up sudden realization with a period of solidification of the achievement (when lead is removed from the cauldron and furnace). Nothing is gained by enlightenment, yet in its wake, in light of the power of freed potential at enlightening beings' disposal to meet and match the power of creation's momentum— one is able to see the pivot of creation and function adaptively from this center. Endless transformation is herein, whereby one's knowledge of the Changeless is used to adapt selflessly to ordinary situations unbeknownst to anyone, in order to transcend Change. In taoist terms this is called using the Virtue of Receptivity to take over creation and steal potential in order to operate freely in worldly situations without being subject to creative cycles of yin and yang, or, effecting enlightening activity without being subject to karmic evolution. Creation itself is none other than karmic evolution. Karma, good or bad, isn't in the lexicon of enlightening being. Karma is the matrix of creative evolution which is precisely what alchemy is practiced and accomplished in order to transcend. The will to enlightenment is the will to freedom. Who knew that? It's like forgetting not only yourself, but everything you ever desired to enjoy or avoid and enjoying that too. It is truly a matter of "Cool!! …whatever." This is why it is called Complete Reality. Reality, complete in and of itself; since one needs nothing to be complete, one is completely free wherever one finds oneself. The advantage to this is inconceivable energy is freed up and one's spiritual evolution is the natural storehouse of this freed potential. Empty the mind and fill the belly isn't cheap talk. It is wizardry 101.

Sorry it seems complicated. Not only is what seems to be complicated actually a device of the ancient tradition, if it were easy to understand, why wouldn't it be easy? Is birth easy? Reversing the order of one's relationship with creation, transcending it to enter the tao ain't no walk in the park. Do you have the will to enlightenment? It is not a matter of understanding because ego itself is transcended. Intellect is the seat of ego identity. That's why I say don't try to understand it. Not only is alchemy a real process that works at counter-purpose to ego's tyrannical need to understand (claim as one's own), it is the means at arriving at the inconceivable, which is exclusive of ego-identity and being. Seeing essence is knowing unborn nonoriginated selfless nonbeing. If you have concrete concerns, you may PM me, otherwise…

Yes Steve, it seems that is true~ but I only mention it so others will seek the true in themselves without necessarily feeling the need to seek self-refinement through external systems of cultivation and concentration. Whether or not striving leading to nonstriving employs periods of formal practice from time to time is not to be discouraged. It is up to the individual, as always.

oh rainbows~ I did watch the breathing from time to time …but only on my back— heehee!!❤ Over and over the taoist classics and records of the buddhist patriarchs stress that setting to work with potential without first having a firm grasp of nonspychological awareness is a huge waste of time and effort. Ponder the words nonpsychological awareness. Without the real as the basis of alchemy; without potential as the basis of observing mind— without the real as the basis of transformation, there can be no elixir of immortality, no seed of buddhahood. Real knowledge is originally one's own, but due to the effects of conditioning it goes to a neighbors house. To get it back, one uses conscious knowledge to call it back into one's own home. Real knowledge is other. It is impersonal firm awareness symbolized by the water trigram. In everyday ordinary situations, you become the "guest" and consider other the "host". This means you respond, letting others take the initiative. After a long time, the real descends and you naturally ignite the alchemic fire of the elixir paring fire and water. In other words, when lead returns to conscious awareness, you invert fire and water so Fire is below and Water is above. Fire heats Water; Water steams and cools Fire. Watch over this attentively. In simplest terms, alchemy is a matter of using the power of nonpsychological awareness to neutralize the power of conditioned psychological awareness; using lead to stabilize mercury. Or, using the quality of the absolute to eliminate the aberrations of delusion, once the process is complete and conscious awareness and real knowledge have been purified in the primordial mind, there is no further need of lead, so one gets rid of this as well. The reason for this is that going along with creation is clinging to delusion. If you don't get rid of lead and cling to the absolute instead, this is the same as delusion. This is the meaning of the statements "the stupid cat trapped in the dark cave" and "The thief locked in the house". After the elixir is ingested and one sees essence, there is a period of "incubation" in order to stabilize enlightenment. This is a very shallow treatment of one description of alchemic process.

Hi Practitioner, there are no two minds~ all alchemy the world over must work with the same elements. I have been familiar with Hermetic and very similar (to me) to what I call the school of Horus. But my vocabulary is from the Complete Reality teachings. Mercury is conscious knowledge, the human mentality; represented by the trigram fire. Lead is real knowledge, the mind of tao; represented by the water trigram. Whether or not one is ready for the operations, wide-ranging and deep study of the world-honored authentic teachings for many years is very important. I never practiced formal meditation, whether quiet sitting nor the various induction (psycho-somatic energy work) disciplines. If one wants to fathom one's primal mind, one must observe its energy. Reality is neither mind nor energy, but rather lightness of being arriving at immediate acquiescence. The unborn has no such causation, following the way to learn the Virtue of the Receptive is how the way itself can enter the clarified awareness of enlightening beings. Having studied for over three decades, only for the last fifteen years or so have I begun to be able to see what is happening. In terms of water and fire, these are the two things, yin and yang. There must be thousands of ways to describe the joining of the two things to arrive at Complete Reality. In one such description, once one recognizes and grasps the true lead, one uses lead to stabilize mercury. To do this, one uses the Go-Between, earth; the center. "The reality whereby origin and completion are effected is the true intent of the human body, which has no location. Because it contains the impulse of life within it, it is called the center." True lead, the mind of tao, is true knowledge; this is objective awareness. When one truly recognizes the true lead, one uses conscious knowledge to keep it from sinking. True lead stabilizing mercury, conscious knowledge nurturing real knowledge, what was vague returns and what was flighty doesn't run off. It is not a matter of understanding the terms and the operations. If one is working with the real, the evolutionary process is natural. One can never consider time an issue— and it's not what you think… The tao is an extraordinary vessel, operating outside of time. This is what alchemists align themselves with in order to enter the inconceivable and enter the tao in reality.

Oh thank you, manitou❤ Yes, observing events deliberately with the time aspect removed somehow helps one to impersonalize the circumstantial elements and lessen our self-consciousness in terms of assessing situations objectively. Wonderful insight, mon amie!!

I'm not one, but I hope there are more that a few here, chi!!❤

Me no techie, mon ami!!❤❤❤ Mmwwaaas pour Moddy-vous!!❤