Daeluin

Hi tyuo40, The saying goes, where sincerity is, the way is open. And that's mostly what matters. It can take some time to figure out how to maintain one's sincerity, and where one should place it, but if you are intent and patient, the answers will arrive, one way or another. Blessings to your way!

In qigong, we can work on dissolving blockages, which are found throughout the body, yet are often created by the mind and emotions though attachments. It is said that the organs, when they are not individually health, and when they are not in harmonious balance with each other, will send us signals. In inner alchemy it is recommended to place the tongue on the roof of the mouth, and to keep the mouth closed breathing through the nose so gently only the mind can perceive it (not the ears). It is believed that the spirit of the heart can leak out through the breath and speaking, and yet we wish for the heart to be operating in a refined balance with all the other organs, as a cycling process. This is related to the balancing of the five elements mentioned by Gerard. As the pressure of the internal emotions builds, we are often driven to do something about them. We talk about them to our friends to relieve the pressure. As they waft up into our minds we think about them, burning shen into thought-forms, which is another way of burning up our energy to relieve the pressure, even as any concept we attach to become the attachments we hold inside of us that create more potential blockages. Yet when we are able to return within, and to answer the pressures by dissolving the blockages with pure yet gentle intention, stillness, peace.... room is created for proper cycling and refining. The emotions settle into the stillness and no longer vacillate, having times when they are strong and "happy" even though something else is weak and "unhappy"... instead they are all calm and settled, peaceful, accepting and allowing the guidance of the other bodily systems to help them operate as a community of one rather than attempting to fixate upon themselves. Then the shen is able to be integrated and does not feel pushed up to escape out of the mouth, eyes, ears, etc. As it is not pushing up the mind is able to also find peace and calm, able to be open and receptive without constant cycles of thought. So the idea here is that the spirit, the shen of the organs, as they tell us things about our internal imbalances, are the source of the thinking mind that does not stop. There is a system called Non-Violent Communication, that attempts to help people connect to their needs, separating their needs from their wants, and separating their feelings from their interpretation of their feelings. It is fascinating to me how difficult it can be for us at first to step away from our tendency to intellectualize our feelings in some way. Why is it so hard to simply tune into our feeling of being sad, or happy, and leave it at that? When we do this, we find that just knowing the feeling is really enough. The feeling of being sad is enough to help us change our environment. We don't need to analyze it at all, we just need to accept it and change. The more NVC students are able to identify their needs and feelings without needing to intellectualize them, the simpler communicating and relating with others becomes, as there is no longer so much noise getting in the way. So this perhaps can show how easily the heart (emotions) and mind (thoughts) can be organized as one system. I wrote on a similar theme here. Gerard's recommendation of knowing one's BaZi chart is important, as this can allow one to see what energetic 5-phase energies were in operation at the Year, Month, Day, and Hour one was born. It is important to note that there are many many different interpretations of BaZi these days, and I've even found that the calculations need a little adjustment at times to take account for the shifting amount of yin and yang in each day, and for the weather. The energetic balances at the time of one's birth can show if one's environment might be assisting to bias one toward certain phases and neglecting other phases. These overly emphasized or overly neglected biases could indicate difficulty in balancing these types of transformations in one's work on refining cyclical balances.

And when we project our feelings on the world, eventually the world reflects them back to us. The more we project, the more tinted our lens can become. Recognizing our lens as tinted, we can work toward accepting the ripples the world sends to us and work on balancing and dissolving them rather than reacting and projecting parts of them back out. Then gradually the tinted lens becomes clearer and is not as much based on our surface level actions, since we've done work to ensure those actions are as harmonious and balanced as possible. The more we're able to balance and refine in our actions, the ripples our environment sends us will reach deeper layers within and begin to show us more about our deeper imbalances. The more we accept this and become responsible for doing our own work, the more the tints (our blind spots) dissolve and we settle into unity with all.

A humble spiritual teacher I know moved to a new city and at first established his own practice out where he lived in the wilderness. In time as he established foundation in this new place, he decided it was time to re-open his school. This was an area where many other spiritual teachers lived, and I believe he at some point announced himself to some of them as a friendly introduction. At first he simple place an add in the classified section of the newspaper, and taught private lessons at his residence, but in time rented a room in the city to teach in a school format. During the following years, the rumors I've heard indicate that some of the existing teachers felt threatened by this new school, as perhaps some of their students left to join the new school. Too, in the following years some rumors began to circulate regarding this teacher becoming romantically involved with a student, and so on. Well around the time I came to the school, I was exposed to these rumors. And yet over time spent at the school I came to realize this teacher deliberately did nothing to answer or defend himself from these rumors. He simply continued on as he was, and to me, his virtuous sincerity was able to shine through all the layers of rumor. In time I came to recognize that people like talking about what they don't understand as though they do, as though they have the right to judge things. And often there is no point in reacting to this, as people will believe what they will. Around the time I joined the school, several friends were joining as well. As the three of us were astrologers, we compared each other's charts, and compared our charts to that of the teachers. One of us had a history in studying martial arts, and had been in a previous relationship with an old teacher. I noticed a particular aspect between her chart and that of the teacher's, a Sun conjunct North Node of the Moon: I've been in relationships with this connection before, and they are very profound. There is the feeling that your main overall purpose in life is aligned with all that the other embodies in who they are, and a strong feeling that mutual growth and evolution can be nurtured while together. Seeing this connection I predicted that these two would be in a relationship, and sure enough it happened within the year. To me I could see the beauty and healing in this connection. The teacher was innocent, pure, natural, compassionate, and the relationship was not paternalistic or one sided in any way. However others seemed to have so much trouble getting past the age difference between the two, and felt compelled to judge the relationship based on this. In the vast spectrum of the dao, many relationships are possible, yet in our particular manifested realm of operation, we tend to attach to certain ways of being that are correct. We tend to fixate on the letter of what is correct and not correct, rather than allow the principles of right and wrong to be adapted to the context. Sometimes in city-nature, the balance of right and wrong is very strongly adhered to, and there is some restriction placed upon freedom. At one point in my life I had been working for over a year at the city courthouse, and would take lunch breaks somewhere outdoors in the city. One time I was wandering in the park next to the city hall building, which was composed of brick benches to sit on, brick walk-ways, some brick-work that was elevated through several tiers and clearly designed for people to climb up and sit on, and some brickwork that gradually rose to end against one of the walls of the city hall. I chose this as a place to sit, climbing up perhaps a little higher than most people would, and I began to eat my sandwich and read my book as people walked by the sidewalk nearby. Well after about 20 minutes three police officers came and asked me to come down. Two of the officers placed themselves on either side of me and gently yet firmly held one of my arms, and the third took my bag away and search it and my pockets. I was asked questions and written a trespass warning for climbing the building's fascia. They explained that I could have been a terrorist who might place a bomb on the city hall or pull out a gun and start shooting people walking by. But what caused them to think this? It seems to be simply acting outside of the accepted norms of that particular society at that given time. I liked climbing things but that was not considered normal. Too I was sporting a 6month beard in a city where almost no-one grew beards. My creative expressions were treated as a threat to maintaining the normalcy of that society. This is a common side-effect of rule by law. The structure provided by law is important when many people are living in one place, and the more people there are doing things somewhere, it is easy for more laws to come into existence. Unfortunately these laws are not very flexible or adaptable, and result in an environment that is too restricted for creative naturalness to have room. There is still room for this, if we look between the lines, and yet that is difficult for us to do when we are only cultivating within the city. Thus it can be vital to spend deliberate time in nature, just so one can re-discover the more natural balanced that is based on natural structures. These natural structures revolve around ecosystems, and ecosystems depend on a delicate balance being nurtured. Often natural places that are near the influences of humanity have had their naturalness poisoned or conditioned by that human influence, so it is best to find places that are a little deeper and more remote. It is also important to offer respect and nourishment to these places that still maintain their naturalness - as it is important to recognize how one's own city-energy might influence this place of naturalness. Last night I was having a spiritual discussion with a small group of friends. One of these friends is very well versed in certain spiritual systems, and it was mainly the two of us sharing our perspectives that revolve around common truths and answering questions from the others. At some point he started raising his voice and projecting his arguments directly at me, clearly trying to get a reaction or change my perspective using added forcefulness. The first time I simply absorbed it. The second time I commented on it and explained that I was simply absorbing it, but found it odd that he felt it necessary to be so forceful. The third time I reflected it back to him, and though I did this from an objective place, it probably did not contribute anything helpful to maintaining the harmony. The fourth time I decided to leave. Ironically this was right when we were discussing the idea of non-violence. My perspective was that of yielding to remain whole. If someone punches you, simply change so you aren't where they are punching. When we attach to defending our right to exist in a specific type of constancy, we are attaching to a loosing battle, for inevitably change will come. Thus if we are able to adapt flexibly, we do not need to fight off that change. If someone threatens our home, perhaps we stay and fight, or leave and maintain our peace. After all it is when we hold to things of value that others can take value from us. If others do not see value in what we possess they are not likely to attack us, and this applies to topaz's comment on muggers and opportunists. When something is raised up, it can only be brought down. When something maintains its lowly perspective, even when others attempt to cut it down, where can it fall? To help demonstrate this point I mentioned how non-violent activism has been used effectively all around the world. To this he vehemently replied that violence was the only way to deal with such situations, and that people like the Dalai Llama, Ghandi, MLKJ, should be killed as the spiritual message they send results in complaceny in the face of the imbalanced state of things. While I am not certain if he really meant this, it was not his words that pushed me away, but the violence in his expression of them. I explained that I felt attacked and felt like I was being pushed away, and that it was time for me to leave. He followed me out asking if I was being attached to the feeling of being attacked, and I explained that this was not how I felt, that I was simply feeling more invited to be elsewhere. In any case I never responded to his words, but I do have a response to them. This appears to be related to the Chinese concept of Wen and Wu, which is related to the proper time to take a cultured, scholarly action, verses the proper time to take a militant and forceful action. In some sense we can think of this as taking a water-like action or a fire-like action. Both are important, and yet the daodejing and other alchemical texts place the greatest emphasis on water, seeing it as closest to the dao. So first I would agree that a firelike expression can be important, can have its place. And yet who am I to presume that I know what is right for balancing the whole. I can only know myself from the inside-out, and can only know everything else from the outside-in. How then can I know what is right for anything else? Thus perhaps I can use the fire for my own path toward balance, but do not presume to take action to forcibly change others. Yet further, when that fire is used consciously to effect an internal balance, it remains contrived. It can be useful for clearing blockages that prevent the proper flow of water, but it is when the water is allowed to fill up that the real fire ignites on its own, without contrivances. Thus I trust my friend to do as he needs to, and I extend this trust to all others. If I am able to become whole and balanced within myself, and then preserve this wholeness through spontaneously flowing through my environment in whichever way allows to best maintain that wholeness, then I essentially step out of the way of thinking I know what actions are best for the balance of my environment, even as I step into the way of allowing the celestial mechanism to guide me in such a way that my wholeness is used to be of most benefit to the environment.

Being humble, like water, resting upon the lowest point - these are the keys to unraveling the layers of creation to return to the root of things. New layers are created through transformation of current resources into new shapings and expressions. These transformations follow the patterns of spirals and cycles, and their principles may be understood through the symbolism of the wuxing theory. Earth is like the center of things, the heart of all the layers, and the root of the dao is here. Water is like the low place that functions like stored energy and potential. Wood is the arousal into movement of this potential energy. Fire is like the expression and culmination of energy that has been repositioning. Fire creates Earth, creates a new layer. Metal is where all these expressions begin to return home, filtered through all the layers of our senses. Metal is where we discern objectively, seeing all as it is, accepting and allowing its return unconditionally, Or Metal is where we judge, separating this from that, accepting this but not that. The shapings of Metal - what it holds vs what is rejected - form a seed utilized by the next cycle of new growth. The shapings of Metal become encoded in the Water phase as stillness allows the settling and winding up of new potential. This is subtle and complex, but also simple. As we move forward with creation, we are regularly balancing and centering ourselves based on the ever changing environment around us and within us. The emotions we felt yesterday, the work we did yesterday, the mistakes and achievements from yesterday, are all forms of expression that create new layers of perspective, of Earth, for us to work with on integrating with. However, if we want to re-center into the Earth that represents the center of all, there is no need to create new layers of earth. We can place the sincerity of our intent on the Earth that already exists within the emptiness of WUJI. When we rest upon the root of dao as our foundation, we have no need to create new expressions that define new centers. We have no need for epiphanies or exclamations to guide our way back. So we do not emphasize the Fire phase, for fire that is created through intentional actions is based on the reason for those actions. On the other hand, when we place our intention low, we embrace all that has sunk low, and like water reaching the lowest point, it begins to fill up. Even as we focus on what is low, we open to receive what is high. As one fills up, if one is open and humble, one will naturally, over time, become full, and when one is full, the natural manifestation of Fire will occur without intention to ignite it, even as the intention placed within will allow ignition in the form of a fusion that accomplishes the re-integration of the five phase energies back into a unified form. The numerics of creation are: 1 - Water 2 - Fire 3 - Wood 4 - Metal 5 - Earth In internal alchemy is the concept of re-integration of these through the union of the three families of five. Water and Metal unite to become 1 + 4 = 5. Here one's senses are in the mode of full acceptance, accepting all the way it is, and so allowing one's senses of perception to return to and unify with one's potential energy without using the senses to create patterns of desire in one's potential energy. Wood and Fire unite to become 3 + 2 = 5. Here one's spirit is allowed to be still rather than expressing and creating. And in stillness one's spirit is able to become clear and illuminated, and reunites with one's innate spiritual nature, which simply desires peace. These two fives are then able to unite with the existing 5 of Earth, the Will, Intention, and Sincerity. Whole and clear and still, the three families are able to unite together. In this way one avoids the continuation of new cycles, simply settling into the center of things. Of course the above might not feel logical, and is merely from my perspective at this moment. For other perspectives, the daoist classics speak of these things. In general one is expected to figure out how to discover the answer to any questions through self-study until the answers arise spontaneously from within.

In my opinion, we are only truly responsible for ourselves, and when we begin to think in terms of what others should or shouldn't do, we are merely perpetuating the actions that carried us here in the first place: the idea that we can't stop pushing forward, that things must change, that things won't be OK unless we meddle. I don't think you should or shouldn't do anything. I accept what you do for what it is. For myself I hope to find a way for my actions to nurture balance as much as possible without creating any disharmony with my environment. What is weak can be nurtured in subtle ways; what is strong but imbalanced may be brought into harmony gently by simply holding space for it and not feeding its strength. There will be those who feel strongly that getting involved with government and influencing society through direct actions is important, and if that is what resonates most with them, then I trust them to follow where their heart leads, but I don't think they should or must take any particular action.

The jian is associated with the water phase. While using it I feel connected to a deep current, and must take care to nurture this connection. It swirls and cycles, ebbs and flows, connected to the very heart of one's root. When striking I feel all of this momentum thrusting forth to penetrate deeply, like an unstoppable crashing wave, but one with precision and focus, and then, remaining connected to that wave I allow the momentum to return within to the circles and cycles of the current. Perhaps these energetics are related to the value in ritual.

A warrior isn't necessarily one who fights in wars. In early times I imagine a warrior-like attitude would be developed from working hard to be as strong, healthy, and able to navigate and survive in one's environment as possible. In doing this, one must understand one's environment and one's self. Long ago there wouldn't have been as strong of a thinking emphasis as there is today, and it would be much easier to achieve a mind-body integration from the cultivation of alertness and physical health and ability. Nor would cultural elements need to be as binding, for as one gained in prowess as a warrior, one would also cultivate the ability to be more independent from the tribe, earning greater freedom from attachment and all the spiritual gains that come with this. The deeper one would integrate into one's body, the more likely it would be for one's meridians to open and begin to cycle, and it would be natural for one to discover how this enhanced one's ability to move more naturally and powerfully, leading one to develop more fluid, animal like movements, full of grace and art. These are just my speculations, but to me it seems that this idea of an early tribal warrior would lead handily into spiritual development. No doubt there were warriors who felt strongly tied to their tribes and identified with the protection of their tribes, and this could easily have been more prevalent. However I feel that the warrior path of health and survivability could also expose one to elements of spirituality. With great inner development comes deeper awareness of things that lead one away from violence, and there would have been those who listened.

in daoist readings I've come across the idea of the mind of dao, which can be read as the mind of god. The (loose) concept is that when the conceptual mind is not in control, and the mind is rooted in the dao, it is connected with and one with all. In this state it knows whatever it needs to, as it needs to. Nothing is blocking it from openness to the totality of heavenly knowledge. Similar concept to a window.... when the window is clear we can see whatever is outside of it. And if when we look out of it we see a park bench every day, we start expecting that park bench to be there, and we stop actively looking at it. This is similar to our drawing the park bench on the window pane with a marker. Over the course of our lives, many of us draw so much with that marker, and learn to live within the lines we draw... nothing so obvious as a park bench, but more the patterns that we depend upon to survive. We become so tied to these constructs and can't do without them - this is the conceptual heart-mind, the ego. When we try to look out that window we only see what we've trained ourselves to see - but if we wipe it clean, we open ourselves to all there is.

I get the feeling this belongs here. From Opening the Dragon Gate:

I imagine many people happily trade the standardized violence of governments and laws to the chaotic and unpredictable violence they imagine would exist without policies and policing. Desire, when mixed with intelligence, so easily influences. Desire usually unfolds through lack of acceptance. Accept where you are and there are no problems. Fear of boredom is merely the ego demanding the continuation of desire, to sustain itself. With acceptance comes opening to all we blind ourselves to. Boring? Hah! Wild desire, wild ego.... build it as fast as we can, hey put those people in chains to build it faster! All created imbalanced to the five phases. Is it any wonder we use the chain of laws to fake it? Is it any wonder we refuse to stop?

Hi leth, thank you for your reply. Just for clarification, as I interpret a ziran as a principle related to flow, I used "anti-flow" as an analogy to help explore "anti-ziran." Your description of anti-ziran gave me the sense of something working against the description of ziran you give: Ziran is about attaining constant wu wei wu in accord to De. It is not flow it is flow without flow, it is not following it is following without following, it is not resonating it is resonating without resonating. From this description I have trouble identifying how something could inhibit this, and this is what brought up the idea of reverse flow. Even though it is the direction of things that are opposing, that is enough for both momentums to negate each other. I wonder though, is it possible for one person to judge how centered in ziran another person is, without leaving one's own ziran? There are those who in their dying moments finally realize they've done nothing with their lives. And yet how could they have come so far without some form of constant flow without flowing, following without following, at some level? We arrive in many places just by letting the current take us there. What is there that flows? A stream of water flows but a rock stays still on the ground. A tiny pebble can flow down a mountains side while the mountain stays still. It is always a matter of perspective and context. We use this opposites to analyse reality and it is curcial to understand how dualisms works. You can't claim that a polarity in one aspect can be said to inherently have that polarity, it is only a polarity in the context of which that polarity is defined. Thus flow is opposite to stillness if we are talking about flow from an external perspective, but if we are talking about the qualities of flow then we can't talk about it as an opposite of stillness anymore, but rather must look at what the opposite of that quality is instead. The power of Yin-Yang theory is really this understanding of how dualisms work and how they are only applicable to the context of where the separation is made. And I interprete that part from Zhuangzi that you quoted in the post you refered to actually point this out. Hehehe.... please, do not be mistaken. I can claim anything at all, and it would be true from some perspective, because the heart of things is everywhere. What I was getting at here is that your mountain is not truly still. If you trace the path of it's momentum through space and time for a year, it will look like a circle from two perspectives, a line from some perspectives, and a spiral from many other perspectives. If you trace its momentum for many years you will have a coil, or spring-like momentum, that might look like a frequency wave from some perspectives. When tracing its momentum over the ages, I can imagine many changes. All things are like this. And, while the movement and stillness of all things may be compared relative to all perspectives, if we step back far enough we can see that all things share a common root. This heart of things is said to exist everywhere and nowhere all at once, and, by this principle, it is easy to sense the dao just behind the surface anywhere we look. I believe by treating things as relative to this root that we can become a little more free from the relative nature of changing perspectives. Yes, though i don't interprete it as to finding the changless within the change. To quiet down the heart to stay at a constant stillness, To settle down the heart to remain in infinite emptiness, All the myriad things are involved in constant motion, but I just gaze into emptiness to unintentionally wait for the coming of the Mysterious Pass. Yes, though all things flourish with myriad variations, each one will eventually return to the very root of birth and death. To return to the root needs constant stillness. Only by staying in constant stillness can Congenital Nature be recovered. To fully recover Congenital Nature is called Chang. To know Chang is called enlightenment. To not know Chang and to act blindly will result in disaster. Only knowing Chang, can one tolerate all, Only tolerating all, can on be impartial. By being impartial, can one be all-accommodating, By being all-accommodating, one can equal Heaven, By equaling Heaven, one can accomplish Tao, which lasts without death. Only by accomplishing Tao, can one be rid of death and birth, lasting eternally without any danger. tl: Hu Xuezhi The translator comments here: Chang is a term Lao Tzi uses to describe the principle and rule. And there is a thread about Chang here. Often I see it translated as "the constant", and I like to think of it as the changeless, or perhaps the heart of change. Well if we can agree that there is a heart of things, a root, a center, a unity, etc.... then perhaps we can agree, along with chapter 16, that there is an absolute stillness, a changeless at the heart of the changing: a constant. As far as an absolute flow, it would be marked by the moment when the source of momentum is insufficient to produce additional outward momentum. Without a source for expansion of the universe, the expansion would reach its peak. Yes. But I fail to see what this has to do with Yin-Yang theory. Oh, this was the last of four paragraphs in a section describing the nature of flow. But what doesn't relate to Yin-Yang theory? Connection and balance. A perfect circle is perfect because every part is informed and guided by every other part. The part that becomes bent or oblong isn't listening to the guidance of the other parts, and strays away from the greatest potential for balance. A circle is simply a circle, it has no other inherent qualities. If you call a circle perfect it is perfect if you call it imperfect it is imperfect. If there is such a thing as an perfect circle then there is such a thing as an imperfect circle. Well lets look back at the momentum of that mountain. Or just pick any point on the Earth, the earth itself, the moon, or any planetary body, etc, etc. Following them over time they make circles. These circles are not quite mathematically perfect, but they are ever mutually adjusting to the cycling of all the other planetary bodies orbiting our sun, and our sun is in a similar dance revolving around the galaxy. Neidan texts emphasize study of these cycles, and study of the nature of circles, because their principles expose the mechanism behind the changing momentum of our internal energy. Without merging with the present cycles, all layers of them, it may be possible to reach the emptiness, but if the energetic momentum lacks adequate timing, it might not want to unify inside the emptiness. It is said the numerics of creation are 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and the numerics of completion are 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. After this things repeat, and every repetition is merely a new layer of manifestation in some way. Creation to completion follows a cycle - a circle - and we can easily look at this in terms of yin and yang through the sovereign hexagrams. At the culmination of yin, the seed of yang arises from the bottom to fill up, and at the culmination of yang the seed of yin rises from the bottom to empty out. This is symbolism for the changes within a cycle, and we can see it in night and day, the waxing and waning of the moon and the seasons, and the breath, etc. A circle can be broken down into five parts - a beginning, a culmination, a settling, and a return. Again, the shape of this circle is defined by the center. We can study five-element theory to understand the delicate balance of creation and controlling factors. The medicinal aspect of this examines how the organ systems of the body are in cyclical balance with each other, and if one is too strong, it likely will weaken another part of the system, especially during months of the seasonal cycle when the monthly energy will strengthen that which is already strong and weaken that which is already weak. So we have our principles of a cycle, and we can see that cycles continue on and on. The more they cycle and interact, the more layers are created. Right now we're on the layer of earth, which has a layer of seasons, of day and night, etc, and within that we have our human layer with its organs and meridian layers, etc, etc. We know that the cycles of these layers indicate how to be balanced and centered within their changes, and we know that the more layers we become out of balance with the more severely our health can be effected. In terms of being more or less ziran, which is related to balance and centeredness, we might infer that the more we are able to achieve a refined balance within the cycles of all the layers we find ourselves being influenced by, the closer we might become to the change at the heart of the changeless, and truly flow with the ziran you describe. Sure, it is always about perspective and context, such is our logic. But the concept of natural and unaturall only exists in our logic and is inherently a matter of perspective. Yes. And this is why I feel sages are very careful to avoid describing rules, but instead describe principles. As long as one holds the heart of a principle, it can be adapted so that anyone can hear it, if the words reach them in the right way. Many daoist texts aren't simply speaking of philosophy, but of how specific principles may be used to affect change within a particular phase in a cycle. In particular, some internal alchemy texts speak of substances, and there are many names for these substances. However these substances are often the same substance called many different names depending on what phase and layer it is bound by. The same principles are used to unwind and integrate these substance back to true unity, and at each layer the same principles are utilized as needed. Thus wu wei is not something absolute, but a principle that is applied at many different layers - it has its place within the winding and unwinding of each cycle. We can feel it operating in every heart beat and every breath. The principle is understood by the layers it centers around. So, I feel the principle of ziran can be seen in operation at all layers The flow of ziran is be shaped by the heart of that layer and how aligned it is to the heart of all. Many believe there are some elite few masterminds at the heart of an extensive human empire, directing its every move. But I feel the reality is more that an empire is a very vast and complex system, with its own cycle-ings and momentum. Many people's lives revolve around the center of these systems, and by following the standard best practices (the nature of) that system, people are able to preserve their health and well-being. The momentum of many people's lives often get guided and shaped from beginning to end just by this one extensive layer (and all the layers it contains), and their life can flow without flowing, follow without following, their de matching and in harmony with the layer they are most attuned to. When a person places their sincere intention on flowing where guided within the parameters of a given layer, I still recogznize this as the operation of the principle of ziran, even if they don't appear to connect their operation of the principle of ziran to deeper layers. Even if the overall momentum of an empire is at odds with the balance of everything supporting it, and the direction of one ziran flows counter to another - even if this operation is clearly parasitic, cancerous, demonic - how can we know that it is not a balanced component in a larger paradigm? Even though things around us may appear deviant to naturalness, and even though we cannot judge them, for they may be part of some other balance, we may still achieve our own deeper balance by learning to see deeper into the heart of things. I agree. The same principle, with different operations at different phases. Perhaps this will help with understanding my present perspective better. In any case I appreciate your perspective too, and it has been enjoyable to share with you in this discussion.

Thank you for this timely poignancy. I've been feeling my posts here have been neglecting this perspective. We may root deeply to earth, but too we must be willing to open, surrender, and root to heaven, allowing the heavenly energy to fill the earthly receptivity held within our depths. Rooting to our center we allow the depths of heaven and earth to merge as one within our core. What we've drawn up cannot be filled if we don't open it in emptiness so that it may collect. Ever a fine line, and ever easy to sway to either extreme. Daoist symbology emphasizes water more than fire, as water represents potential, the dao, the source of things. While fire tends to represent expression and often leads to further creation (even though it plays other roles internally, related to the fusion of our soul). And yet the potential of water to return and store is pointless if we do not open it to receive the fire so the four (4 directions of the circle: wood,fire,metal,water) may unite in the center (earth). This is known as the three 5's returning home - in the numerics of creation, we have: 1-water, 2-fire, 3-wood, 4-metal, 5-earth. When fire attains clarity and does not need to express or create, in stillness it may return to unite with wood, 2 joining 3 = 5. When metal is able to accept fully and dissolve attachments, it may become the essence hidden within water, even as water yields its role of storing and allows the essence to circulate, and 4 joining 1 = 5. Similar in kind, the 3 fives return to join in the center. I've been flowing with my shadow lately, settling into its depths, not finding the courage to openly surrender in acceptance to heaven to fully dissolve and integrate. Sure enough another has been called to dance with my shadow, even as I am called to dance with hers. Delicate balances. Feels like settling into a deep vein of watery flowing that extends beyond just the two of us... perhaps now is the time to call some light into this vein rather than abandoning it. I'll do my best to follow the dao.

Nothing is ever finished, until we accept its return. In accepting, we allow the completion of all.

A little while back about all I did was work and taiji, and didn't have many social interactions. I started recognizing various changes occurring, like the deepening of my voice, a deeper sense of inner peace, mosquito immunity, and increased sensitivity. This increased sensitivity became somewhat challenging as I began interacting more with others, as suddenly I saw violence in people's communication that I had not noticed before, and I noticed myself becoming reactive to this. Also I was startled to hear myself saying things that my heart recoiled from. Funny how common it is for us to say "hey can you help me with this", or "hey do you mind doing this".... and often our expectation is for the person to jump right into helping us or do something, even though our request was posed more as a question to gauge interest. As we become more sensitive we begin to hear the duplicity in requests like these, and they can sting a little without our even knowing why, causing us to react or question the way our friend is communicating. Yet our friends are usually just doing as they always have, while it is we who have changed. As we begin to see this, we have the opportunity to adapt to the nature of those around us. We don't need to get our feathers ruffled because person X says one thing when they mean another. Since we are sensitive to what they mean, we can respond to what they really mean instead of to the surface of their words. This can evolve into a much more intentional, and compassionate communication, using our empathy for connection rather than reaction. As I recognized this and learned to deal with it, I became more tolerant of people's unintentional verbal abuse, and also worked on changing my own communication. Posting here helped a lot, as did studying Non-Violent Communication. On a further level of refinement and sensitivity, our awareness may begin to feel the tugs of others around us, perhaps related to their emotional or mental patterns. If we attach to these tugs, we may begin to feel off-balance, pushed around, controlled, and/or overwhelmed. Yet if we remain centered and simply allow with trust and surrender these changes, we are no longer tugged this way and that, but simply become more aware of this layer of vibration around us. At least I may have had a brief glimpse of this once, and that's what it felt like. Thirty spokes converge on a hub but it's the emptiness that makes a wheel work pots are fashioned from clay but it's the hollow that makes a pot work windows and doors are carved for a house but it's the spaces that make a house work existence makes something useful but nonexistence makes it work daodejing, ch 11, tl: Red Pine

And this is how we can cultivate in the moment, without immediately knowing what we are holding, yet placing our intention back at the root of dao. With our intention placed deep, everything between us and the root of dao comes out of hiding to be dissolved through our cultivation. As soon as we let go a little of that depth of sincerity, it may feel as though we are whole, light, full of energy and bliss, and yet that is when it becomes difficult to avoid dumping that bliss. This is why the sage flows with the depths, and even as the depths raise the sage up, intention remains placed low, and gradually all is integrated. Fifteen The ancient masters were subtle, mysterious, profound, responsive. The depth of their knowledge is unfathomable. Because it is unfathomable, All we can do is describe their appearance. Watchful, like men crossing a winter stream. Alert, like men aware of danger. Courteous, like visiting guests. Yielding, like ice about to melt. Simple, like uncarved blocks of wood. Hollow, like caves. Opaque, like muddy pools. Who can wait quietly while the mud settles? Who can remain still until the moment of action? Observers of the Tao do not seek fulfillment. Not seeking fulfillment, they are not swayed by desire for change. Feng / English

Ultimately yes. Many of us are still in the process of recognizing that we've been holding things since our childhood (and before). Some like to pretend they are letting things go whenever the moment passes, all while denying the things they are holding. They pretend like they are in a constant state of bliss, but because what they hold inside is not acknowledged, it is unable to integrate with that bliss and gets dumped externally.

Then maybe you'll have fun with this. OK I was thinking anti as reverse. Reverse flow is still flow. By same, I mean that drains may flow in reverse spirals in the northern and southern hemispheres, and yet this is only reverse from one perspective. From another they are matching each other and helping to contain the center from different positions. So I feel you are meaning the polarity of flow and not flow.... but what is there that doesn't flow, at least through space and time? Have you read chapter 16 of the daodejing? There it speaks of finding the changeless within the change. This changeless is not stagnation; some might call it home. Things may appear to stagnate from one perspective, but if you study a swamp, you begin to realize that it flows very slowly, and this slowness has a profound filtering and clarifying function. Even when things appear completely stagnant, are they really? Even black holes emit something out the other end. When yin culminates, yang is born, and this too is flow. Zhuangzi's cook doesn't waver when he comes to a cluster of knots - he surrenders to the flow, allows heavenly knowledge to adjust his pace, and before his eyes what appeared impassible has become spacious, easily maneuvered through without conflict. Connection and balance. A perfect circle is perfect because every part is informed and guided by every other part. The part that becomes bent or oblong isn't listening to the guidance of the other parts, and strays away from the greatest potential for balance. In taiji quan, one learns to feel the myriad circles spirialing through the body. They are everywhere, from every perspective. Vibration is simply a spiral that continues through time and space. Yes, I brought up circles because of how well they can be used to identify balance. Human-nature also works toward balance in so many ways. It just happens to be disconnected with other paradigms of balance. I am suggesting that everything is natural from some perspective and unnatural from some perspective. Further, I suggested that we can adapt to any of them by choosing to flow with the circularity one particular paradigm is revolving around. If one is running a business, what point is there if one goes against the nature of running a business. If one tries to sell nuts to squirrels that might not work so well. If one tries to give away nuts to humans, that might not work so well... but if one understands the nature of buying and selling that humans have come up with, then one can flow with that nature. This nature might not be completely circular or balanced, but it is still round in its own way. Further, if one cultivates and discovers dao, one can flow with dao and nurture deeply refined balance and circularity that does not go against anything else. The more refined one becomes, the more difficult it is for coarser energies to control the more refined energies. This is how we can see the essence dao manifested in all things unconditionally. Please refer to above, and to my earlier post: So there is only one context for ziran, and that is flowing with momentum. One spontaneously follows what resonates most, following the course that will lead one to what is similar to what one is following. One may place it in different contexts, but does its operation really change? Thus the course of ziran is different for different things. It seems to be used in the context of navigating one's way at higher levels of cultivation, as the means by which one knows where to go, even without acting. Yet, (and perhaps my read of this is off), I feel the principle described by this is already present everywhere, as all types of beings navigate by following the course that leads them to their desired goals. It is the stillness, cultivation, and application of wuwei where ziran allows one to remain whole and in connection to the dao without losing what one has cultivated, turned within even while appearing to act. I hope this helps.... this perspective feels good to me, but that doesn't mean it is for everyone.

I humbly recommend Ni Hua Ching's The Uncharted Voyage Toward the Subtle Light. Also, his Book of Changes and the Unchanging Truth contains a valuable introduction on daoist cosmology and spirituality. In general, the daodejing, yijing, and any classics you stumble upon are wonderful companions to one's cultivation work. The classics can become a little confusing, so tread with caution. If you really want to open that door, be sincere and take your time. Gradually they all begin to say the same things, confusion vanishes and clarity remains. Where sincerity is, the way is open.

The pure yang is contained within the mysterious gate. I believe this is something like the equivalent of pure yin. One yin and one yang = dao.

Everything is relative to something else, so all things have opposites from some perspective... unless.... we describe all things as relative to dao. When all ziran's relate to how close they are to the root of dao, we can try to distinguish them as such. Ziran is simply a type of flow.... anti flow is still flow, we're just shifting perspectives... how do we determine what perspective is appropriate? Perhaps the best perspective is from the root... but from there all things are flowing away towards some perspective of unnaturalness. If you have a circle of people... then some more people come and try to join in, perhaps the roundness of the circle becomes malformed. Are these people having an anti-natural effect on the circle? Only if we attach to the circle needing to be as it was before, yet why would we do this and not simply adapt to make the circle round again? Here we may be able to observe that human-nature is creating a malformed circle, and yet the naturalness we attach to is already behind us, and fighting the present malformity, we just maintain it through opposition.... so the answer is usually just to walk in the direction we can walk that makes it more round. When all zirans are focused on the root of things, then they all nurture the whole without struggling against each other's momentums. Death and life revolving in harmony without stagnation. When some zirans are revolving around economics, survival, creativity, etc.... perhaps some of them will conflict with others, yet that is only because their focal points are disconnected from the one-ness of things. Yet if we are connected to this one-ness we can still merge and adapt with and "make more round" any of them.

Then ziran is also anti-ziran, and anti-ziran is also ziran.

Sometimes we carry things without realizing it.... as soon as we do, we have the opportunity to let them go. At first perhaps we can look intently at them, tracing back their history and feeling how it has shaped us. Some will intently follow this path to the moment of inception to fight and burn away the encapsulation. Others might continuously cultivate their energy so as to drain all encapsulations until enough time passes for them to fully dissolve. Our shadow is part of our soul... but the heavy part that so easily takes on extra weights, and then becomes encumbered and brittle. In daoist symbolism this is related to the element of metal, and the po-soul that is related to emotions, attachments and discernments. The metal phase is the return after expression, and it can be difficult to be fully open and in acceptance of all that has been expressed sometimes.... so we find ourselves pushing away the insults or reacting to them with our own projections... though then they only come back to us from the outside. I believe the more we are able to hone in on when we are reacting to something, we can develop an awareness of what it is that triggers us, and work on accepting it. Why not treat the projections of others as gifts? These past influences may desire to continue evolving their patterns rather than refining. Yet the lower soul really wants to unite with the higher soul, related to the wood element and our true spiritual nature. The less accepting the lower soul, the more difficult for it to embrace and provide a home for the higher soul. Yet when we face these challenges a fire is ignited within. Though we may often use this fire to project the culmination of our feelings, instead, we may use this fire to control the metal - all the brittle and rigid hard shapings of our emotions that simply refuse to accept - and the fire melts this metal into liquid and allows it to settle without obstruction. Now more fluid, heated yet internally focused, the po-soul is positioned to accept and unite with it's lighter hun-soul counterpart. Know the white; keep to the black. Black is associated with water. White is associated with metal. Metal is also associated with yang energy. The trigram of water is one yang within two yins. This image shows the white within the black. Often in daoism cultivation begins with the lower dan t'ien, where one works with the dynamic of water - using what flows to cultivate the essence of life that is hidden within it. What is low is the foundation for what is high. Cut flowers don't last. When the unity of yin and yang separate, the true yang sinks to be hidden within the low, and the true yin floats up like helium escaping the atmosphere. The more we neglect our lower nature, the more it continues to hold our attachments and the larger the ego becomes.... and the larger it becomes, the more the spiritual is pushed out. So we cultivate the lower to be able to accept within and provide a home for the high, so they may both be reunited. And even as we discover the white within, we keep it within by keeping to the black, the flowing, adaptive ways of water. They say that weeds growing near you are the best medicine. We often get in the way of the beauty of nature when we presume to make it better. In accepting it all we nurture it all, and allow it to nurture us.

Are two roads in opposition to each other, simply because they travel different ways?

Another copy of the daodejing arrived. One of the pages had become slightly crumpled in the mail. I turned to it and read: Twenty-nine Do you think you can take over the universe and improve it? I do not believe it can be done. The universe is sacred. You cannot improve it. If you try to change it, you will ruin it. If you try to hold it, you will lose it. So sometimes things are ahead and sometimes they are behind; Sometimes breathing is hard, sometimes it comes easily; Sometimes there is strength and sometimes weakness; Sometimes one is up and sometimes down. Therefore the sage avoids extremes, excesses, and complacency. Gia-Fu Feng and Jane English