Daeluin

It appears I already did!

I gather an MK-ultra shill is one who advocates for the benefits of mind control and brainwashing. In this context perhaps the use of non-judgmentalism as a means for population pacification. I would simply say that spirit likes stillness. If we are to promote our population's increasing connection to spirit, and therefore truth, then they must be able to develop an ability to cultivate inner peace: to prevent the noise, stress, fighting, and over-thinking that leave no home for the spirit to return to. So when I emphasize a button that makes a connection to the heart and doesn't require thinking, judging, it is to help allow the spirit to return. Otherwise I am perfectly content with flowing with our emotions and their expression as we feel them. I believe it should be encouraged: they are our guides. And I feel it is when we attach to them that they develop into patterns of loving and hating. I feel that love should be unbiased, unconditional, and that what could come to develop into hate is merely a signal warning us from feeding it with our energy - this is why we close up, not to fight, but to learn to go another way, to where we may be open. If we feed it, even in opposition, we help to maintain it. Easier to dissolve it from the inside out in a non-oppositional way that removes its power. Oddly enough this follows the principles of weiqi.

I like the picture you paint. I'll just say I prefer to remain unattached to any particular outcome, and remain attached to following my flow in the present moment, so that I am available to flick the right marbles at the right time.

And now I begin to see the home for immortals who walk the earth as oceans of power able to maintain balance despite all threats to balance.

OK, so in light of that, we might be able to say that to help the dao is in direct proportion to the creation of homes for life - homes with the potential for more spirit-material integration. I was speaking with someone earlier about the concept of HunDun, primordial chaos. If felt to me as though the unfolding of primordial chaos from the dao was akin to nebulae (or perhaps the ISM), and I pondered on what shape the return to primordial chaos would take. Well perhaps we're living it. So I stand by everything I've said in regards to power and abuse of power. Trusting to the dao and allowing our momentum to unfold without letting ego and desire get in the way is likely our best chance to help the dao continue to create these havens of circumstantial balance where ever more sophisticated and nuanced life forms emerge to create the primordial chaos that ultimately returns to dao.

Yes, this thread is titled Power and tagged "de." It would have been tagged 德 if the forum software allowed. The ocean simply allows its water to become clouds, rain, and to provide us with life giving water, and in the end we return what we took back to it. Meanwhile it allows without saying yes or no. This is like dao being used as superior de. This has long life. When the power of dao is used by choice, it becomes inferior de. When we use power by choice, it doesn't return on its own like that. This has short life. All this talk of what is natural.... lacks understanding of circumstantial balance. When Kudzu grows, this is by choice, this is inferior de. If left unchecked it would grow over everything. If some form of rock transformed everything into rock, if left unchecked our planet would just be rock. There are many like that. We don't know, but I can imagine planets where a spark of life is born, only to die off as soon as that life dies without finding a way to be reborn, replenished. And so it rests in stillness until such a time comes. We happen to live in a zone where conditions were just right for great diversity to cause many challenges to unlimited growth, resulting in balanced, yet ever changing ecosystems that never allow that spark of life to be snuffed out completely. Then humanity comes along and charts a course to unlimited growth, and the balance wanes. This too is natural. What is of material form, has counterpart in spirit form. Alone, they have limits of how close they can come to dao. Life is the sign of their mating. The life this mating produces is in deep connection with dao - and so life becomes power, as we use it to travel through time. Life gives the potential for return to dao, even as the precedent has been set to use this connection to dao as power, mixing and rearranging the material and spiritual shapes until the life winks out and the material and spiritual separate from dao again. There are many types of life - the motion of the planets is a type of life, the living plants and animals are a type of life, the demons and angels are a type of life. All of these are controlled by their existing momentum. Human life is rather curious, as even as it is controlled by its momentum, it has achieved such inner balance that it has the ability to choose. Often it chooses to increase its momentum, but it has potential to unwind its momentum, and to return. Often it chooses to blaze it's own trail through time, but it has the choice to rest upon time as though falling back toward dao. This is the distinction between using and allowing use. Controlling power and creating with power is all abuse of power, if we choose to do so while hiding from our connection to dao.

I feel a thank you button would be less emotionally personal than a like button, and therefore more utilized. At the same time I worry we would lose a level of intimacy by making this change. If is is not always easy to like something, then it means more. That said, I also feel naming the button "Gratitude" would be more personal than "Thank You," and more similar to "Like" in terms of the emotional connection. These days I feel we use thank you all the time, and it doesn't always mean a whole lot, doesn't always connect to the heart. But I hope that gratitude does mean a little more, and does connect a little more to the heart. At least it seems to for me.

So... in light of that exploration, I find myself in appreciation of the primal and emotional connection to "liking" something that comes from the heart, instantaneously. I don't need to examine my mind to know if I like something, though I can if I want to. But I do need to ask my mind if something is noteworthy, as my heart isn't so certain...

Sure, when someone says something simple, it is easier to "like." The more complicated the sharing, the higher the chance something will rub our sensitivities the wrong way. However, I don't find myself not clicking the like button when something is controversial, but when it is projecting. When someone is sharing their feelings and expressing completely internal concepts, I feel them looking inward and doing their best to make sense of the world without placing blame on something external. But all too often I find that as I begin to express something that is not simple, it becomes that much easier to make declarations and projections, and these things mask the truth in my words. Declarations and projections, to me, feel like they are freezing and stagnating what had been flowing, and I find that they feel like attacks, and I do not tend to like them. All too often, as I become more lazy and cultivate less, allowing my ego to gain a foothold, I will rest upon declarations to make my points. Usually I find this happening only because I don't take as much care in my expression. I find my mind seems to enjoy the finality and explicitness of declarations - seems to find it easier when there is something to attach to, and more difficult to surrender the need to attach to something. But as I do take more care, as I am now, I find my heart opening, and a feeling of freedom.

One of the principles in taoism is to adapt to the change around us. If we alway do things the same way, we are attached, and non-adaptive.

We can use the I Ching to show us where the balance lies in a given situation. But often we desire to ignore balance and do whatever we want, without restraint, simply because we can, following our momentum. The current model of owner-moderated-threads allows the owner to enforce their own interpretation of balance, in regards to the topic they chose to explore. In the same sense that if we go to listen to a public speaker, like the Dalai Lama, we must be somewhat quite in order to listen to what the speaker has to share - but if we open our mouths to voice whatever comes to mind, we are quite unlikely to hear what might otherwise have been shared. The same is true when in a classroom setting. If we say we want to take a class, then we are agreeing to follow the guidance of how the teacher wishes to teach. If we constantly step in, saying what we think of how the teacher is teaching, or how we'd do things differently, then we are not allowing the teacher to share the material that we signed up to learn. Learning from a teacher goes hand in hand with surrendering one's personal flow enough to sync up (a little or a lot) with the personal flow of the teacher. This new model is interesting, as rather than everyone being equal members of a discussion, one or more people become facilitators of the discussion, helping to guide it in the direction they wish. Yes, it means the conversation's flow is now more controlled rather than being organic, but also allows the potential for a more teacher-student relationship to emerge, where-as now that is not possible, and anyone who wishes to share a teaching that might require a sharing from multiple perspectives over time to fully comprehend will too easily become obscured by the noise created by people who post whatever they think, uninterested in allowing space for the teachers incomplete ideas. So perhaps it would help us to think of OP's following the new model as descriptions for a class. If we like the idea of the class, we agree to cater to the author's unique way of communicating and leading us in exploring the material. If we don't like the direction the OP is pointing things, then we totally have the option of creating our own OP to guide the material in a different direction.

Yeah, the idea isn't really to change anything - what we have works very well. But the linear, non-circular, end-of-the-road nature of the pit was brought to light. By simply pointing out the potential for what is dense and stagnant to become re-integrated, we bring circularity back into the picture, even as we show just how difficult it can be to successfully accomplish such a task (the same difficulties with landfills). And perhaps after one unsuccessfully attempts to recover a thread, it might become more clear how important it is to work towards balance in the moment. There was a thread raised about people who drastically edit posts, and how this can be frustrating, as it obscures the original flow of the thread. But in a forest, this is always what happens as transformation unfolds over the course of time. When we expect to understand exactly how something unfolds, we are focusing on the human mind more than the mind of dao. When we allow our intuition to guide us, it helps us fill in the gaps, helping us to feel the truths beneath the surface. People change. When we attach to who we knew them as yesterday, and treat them as this person today, we hinder their right to change. Have you ever done something silly that you regret, then proceed to learn your lesson and transform inside... only to have a friend who always brings up that thing you did and treats you as the person you were, even though you have faced those mistakes and used them to transform into someone new? Attachments can be frustrating. It certainly helps us to realize we must pay for our actions, that's for sure. But should we be forever treated as only the person who made a mistake? Often, very traumatic situations will continue to rule our lives, as they represent the largest extremes we have ever experienced, which are the most difficult to overcome, due to their immensity. But it just takes time, patience, persistance - even if someone visited extreme violence upon us, if we only attach to the mistake they made as validation for our own pain, we only prohibit both them and ourselves from changing. Really we must look at the impact caused by that trauma and placing our sincerity on healing, over time we will gradually build up the power to reshape that impact so that it no longer obstructs our ability to flow freely. This is something we must do on our own, to heal the impact's effect upon our own being. Meanwhile the other person responsible for the trauma, AND the location where the trauma took place, will continue to exhibit evidence of the trauma, until they find ways to also resolve the trauma. But meanwhile we have healed ourselves and are no longer attached to our role as part of that event. For example, say I get into a fight with someone close to me, and this becomes a pattern of fighting between us, mostly in our home, until we both split and go our separate ways. Well, I can recapitulate those events and work out why exactly I found myself unable to maintain peace and harmony in that situation, coming up with solutions and trying them out in real world situations until I break through whatever that challenge required for healing some deep karmic pattern. If done completely, that can heal the internal trauma inside of me. Then I can go back to that home where the pattern manifested and remains evident, and do some healing work on the remnants of that energy, atoning for my actions and showing how I have changed, offering apologies for my part in the energy created in that place. This will not completely cleanse the encapsulation there, but it will reshape my own contribution to how the energy manifests now, after the fact, and further help to disconnect my own participation from this historical moment. Meanwhile the truth of the event itself remains buried in time, even as the motion of the stars can be traced back to a particular configuration at that moment - we can't change the past, but we can use the present to re-weave the disconnected threads of the past, leading what is stagnant more towards the direction of unity.

As we aren't closing threads, it'd be fantastic if we could encourage a culture where if a thread is pitted and the members refine their pit-able posts into something worthy of the main boards, then the thread could be un-pitted. Yes, all of this is unlikely, and would require most parties in the chain of reactive posting to all refine their posts and dissolve whatever polarity they came to stagnantly revolve around. But it'd be cool if the idea of this could be pinned at at top post in a pit, so that threads in the pit are not necessarily permanent residents, and always have the - however unlikely - potential for redemption, following the model of dao. This does bring the focus to the member, changing nothing else. The ancestor's lower soul may stick around the grave for us to visit, and we may also visit their higher soul in the heavens. But someday they may return to unite the two back into one, so that grave is not a place of permanent residence.

Hexagram 56, Fire over Mountain, represents temporary phases one might encounter when traveling. Each new situation we find ourselves in as we travel requires different, temporary conduct of ourselves as guests. Reading the Wilhelm/Baynes Image: However, our "Pit" is very much a place of permanent residence, and this is a difficult obstacle to overcome in our situation, and does indicate a lack of circular flow. But what can be done? All in all I greatly appreciate the subtle, ever moving nature of these forums. While maintaining consistency and stability, there are gradual changes according to the times. Nothing should ever become fixed, and I have a lot of respect for dawei flowing with the invitation to explore the situation and being open to make changes.

In the second part of The Inner Teachings of Taoism, Solving Symbolic Language, Thomas Cleary translates Liu Yiming's thorough explanation of the symbolism used in just about every neidan text. He basically tracks the primordial as it unfolds in a new life, as parts divide and separate and conditioning leads to separation and stagnation and ultimately death... and then he shows how the process of the return works, how to unite what is separated back into a harmonious flow that is refined and gradually the parts of that were separated become indistinguishable from each other and return back into a primordial state. Those who know, don't speak; those who speak, don't know. Because speaking is leaking - to be whole, one cannot leak. To learn the whole one needs to find the answers within - if I draw the answers all about your person, you'll only be focused on looking at yourself from the outside-in, not the inside-out. So often teachers do not cater to direct questions - their answer however is very direct, as it leads to emptiness, and emptiness lies in the heart of things. Emptiness comes when Jing, Qi and Shen are united back into oneness. As the student attempts to understand this mysterious answer, the student begins to focus their intention on guarding unity. Further, a master and student are connected by a lineage - a transfer of energy. The work we do in dissolving patterns and healing our imbalances is said to influence our blood-based lineage 7 generations forward and back. Too, the choices we make in applying what we have been taught by a particular teacher will influence their own karmic patterns. Then there are ways of sharing that produce a different strength in connection between the student and teacher, and then ways of sharing that are very open and public, or very hidden. As one gets to deeper layers within the return, the subtle influences created by ties to the world become more important, and so those who's cultivation has gone to the deeper reaches are more likely to be more hidden - they might walk right by you in plain sight, but you would only see what they show you. The secret of the golden flower emphasizes the technique of turning around the light of the mind. And chapter 5 of the daode jing shares the method of the bellows - the bellows breathes in one way only, brining oxygen to stoke the flames. This principle is also used by neidan - which does use the external, at least until one has reached a stage where we no longer need to breathe. The daode jing may not always use the terminology of neidan, but much of the neidan symbolism may have originated after the daode jing was written, as an elaboration of the root concepts into more specialized language. However, by deeply understanding the concepts of this specialized language, it becomes much easier to uncover these layers of the daode jing.

Songtsan, one daoist principle that may be helpful for you is that of understanding extremes. Your recently pitted thread Fuck the Gods was posted while you were high, and being high tends to shift our energy to a strong extreme, one that ignites xing even as it lacks the proper balance of cultivated ming required to contain it - and so this ignited xing flies away even as we feel "high." It takes us time to replenish that energy, and so immediately afterward we experience a low, usually one that leads us to getting high again and again so we can escape the low, even as we further deplete any xing we have cultivated. There's nothing wrong with any of that - except the patten of extreme imbalance it causes us. By leading extreme ebbs and flows in our lives we imprint this extreme-followed-by-extreme pattern upon the momentum of our life, and that momentum is going to keep going up and down even after we eliminate the chemical elements that might make us high or low. Here you are finding cause to leave the forums, but perhaps you are just seeing what you want to see, based on the trend your momentum is leading your towards. Thus one of the main aspects of cultivation is that of smoothing out the extremes of our life, through practice of gradual progress. When we are on the brink of a change in our momentum that historically wants to jump off a cliff, often we don't really want to follow, but find we don't have much of a choice. The most difficult thing for us to do is resist the tidal tug of that momentum by maintaining equanimity - the strength of our equanimity much match the strength of the extreme. But if we are able to accomplish this, then when that historical momentum calms back down again, we will feel much more connected to who we really are and in control of our lives. Not saying any of this applies to you at all, as I don't really know you at all. Just a couple things you mentioned led me to post this, following my intuition. Perhaps it will help someone, perhaps no one, and that is fine with me. Peace.

Yes, and let us remember that our moderators tend to remind people when a thread is headed to a pit, encouraging the discussion to refine its stagnant elements and recover balance and harmony. Sometimes the opening of a new thread is instantly deemed as something that will only create a type of energy that will only stagnate and conflict, and thus, regardless of it's true nature it might head directly for the pit. The very fact that we keep our stagnant threads in a home instead of simply deleting them indicates our acceptance of these issues. The idea of a pit is very linked to taoist understanding as well. K'an, the trigam known as water, actually translates to "pit," and represents the dynamic by which we allow our primordial energy to get sucked into and wrapped about to create a new layer, even as light is created by the emptiness which is replaced by the exchange within the heart of that primordial energy, creating the trigam known as fire, Li, which actually means separation, representing the heart of the primordial energy that has been separated from it. If you find yourself fallen into a pit in life, yes by all means please realize this is where much sacred energy exists in a sadly separated stagnation, pushed away by the world - but please remember, the way to cleanse this energy is to bring it back into the light - this is something we cannot force others to do with threads that end up in the pit, as controlling others only creates more postcelestial layers, but something that each of us CAN do when we find ourselves dwelling in the pit of life. With balance, all things may cleansed of the layers of conditioning they have acquired and return to a balanced, primordial state.

Integrity helps us to achieve balance, and within that balance we might return to the heart of things. Wu and Ji are the Celestial Stems of Yang Earth and Yin Earth. In taiji the 'wuji' is where the 'taiji' originates from. The quotes above say that inferior power and 'doing' are related, while superior power and 'non-doing' are related. The way this principle applies to inner alchemy is that doing is used to replenish the whole, and then non-doing is used to incubate the whole, after which the operation changes again, perhaps toward use of ziran to preserve the unified whole.

Sure, Stosh, power is power. Nothing wrong with inferior power, or abuse of power. As power leaks out of one entity and into another it just maintains the ebb and flow of life and death. Thing about cancer like use of power is that eventually the cancer dies off. It may take much of life on earth with it, but there's decent reason to believe life could again flourish here before earth meets its end or the sun winks out. The point about making a distinction is not to attempt to control those who abuse power - that is just another way of abusing power. But by making a distinction, and seeing the pattern, we have the option of walking a course that leads to balance and a replenishing of and reconnecting to power. As for the rainforests, sure - again, we have the option of how to apply the power to help the rainforests. If we attempt to control the people who find value in cutting down the rainforests, by directly opposing what they are doing, that is just another abuse of power - controlling a force that is already in motion. Opposition usually only maintains a situation anyway, unless one side is much bigger. On the other hand, when those rainforests die off that will control the shape of life on earth - so we can find ways to transform the situation, perhaps through coming up with a better alternative to cutting down trees to make a living, educating people who live near the rainforests how to integrate with those existing ecosystems, and encouraging alternatives for those who like building out of rainforest materials. Any of this might be "inferior power," but it is still power applied in the direction towards overall balance, as far as we know. But that's the thing - we never really know. So the Sage sits back and hands the reigns over to the dao, and the dao carries the Sage along and change unfolds with each breath. This change might appear to be invisible to the average person, or this change might appear as visible as lightning, but with no apparent connection to the Sage. I enjoy Waysun Liao's story of Laozi, who simply radiates trust in all directions never lifting a finger to defend himself, even as all who intend him harm mysteriously have that harm reflected back upon themselves. We don't need to decide oh this person needs my healing, this person does not. We can simply cultivate superior power within ourselves and if we happen to wander by a person who needs healing and is open to being healed, suddenly they find themselves healed.

德 daode jing 38 translation: John C. H. Wu daode jing 38 translation: Hua-Ching Ni daode jing 38 translation: Hu Xuezhi daode jing 38 (partial) translation: Fabrizio Pregadio cantong qi translation: Fabrizio Pregadio huanghe fu translation: Fabrizio Pregadio Liu Yiming quotes these last two here, translation: Fabrizio Pregadio OK, so that's speaking about internal alchemy. But more than that, it is describing the principles of Power in a specialized language. When Yang culminates, Yin is born within Yang. But for Power to be true, whole, complete, that fullness of Yang must simply flow purely within the Yin that already surrounds it. Using the Yin instead of being used by the Yin. Here we have something that can be accomplished, and this is none other than transforming the post-celestial (houtian 后天) back into the pre-celestial (xiantian 先天). But how do we do that? Liu Yiming says in Cultivating the Tao (translation: Fabrizio Pregadio): Conquest within generation is the postcelestial Way of following the course. Generation within conquest is the precelestial Way of inverting the course. And here is a principle that can be used not just in alchemical application of power, but in every day life as we interact with the world. Yiming is speaking about the Five Phases, commonly known as the Five Elements, and their cycles of creation and control. It is easy to see that water puts out fire, or that fire requires a fuel to burn. But when someone takes that fuel over there and forces it to burn, this is controlling what has been created - this is conquest within generation - this is a postcelestial manifestation - this is abuse of power. Why? Because it upsets balance. Why? Because every time we manipulate our environment by choice, the ebb and flow of nature requires extra work to re-balance what was changed, extra noise is created, and chaos unfolds. See, in the natural world there is a fine balance of post-celestial creation and acceptance of balance. Extreme changes certainly occur, but often there is time in between for living winds of change to emerge that connect everything together. But these days those rivers of life are all closed up because the roads of man create artificial rivers that drain away the natural flow that had been created. Worse, the energy that is siphoned off has trouble finding a way to flow naturally. Whereas before it would flow between regions, ever replenishing and purifying, now it gets manipulated, manufactured, processed, mentalized, systematized, and when we no longer have use for it we cut away the cancerous result and dump it in our wastelands to stagnate for the decades upon decades (or centuries upon centuries) necessary for it to decompose into something that might welcome a new flow of life into it. All sources have limits. Correct application of power trusts the flow of balance, rather than controlling the flow of balance. The flow of balance is a dance of transformation. When something transforms, the existing phase dies and is reborn as something new. The idea here is that when we attach to the phase we are in and refuse to change, refuse to transform, we begin to stagnate the natural flow of balance. If we only attach to life, and deny death, where is the balance? Surely all that fuels our life comes from the death of other lives. Usually when something dies it returns to nourish the living things around it. But these days by the time we allow ourselves to die we are all poisonous inside, and even then we don't allow our body to return to the flow of balance, but seal our dead flesh inside of boxes. How presumptuous! When we rest upon what controls our flow, when we trust upon where we are led, and allow ourselves to adapt to the situations we find ourselves in, harmony is created. Often this requires surrendering one form of attachment or another. If someone knocks on our front door and we are busy, we transform ourselves by surrendering what we were doing and flowing into something new. Unfortunately, often what we are doing is entirely related to controlling creation, so, even when we transform, the situation we leave behind begins to stagnate, causing us extra mental expenditure / stress. How many projects do we leave in stagnant states? Even more unfortunately, many people these days simply refuse to answer the door, remaining attached to whatever phase they currently occupy - these days often in front of some glowing screen. But perhaps the importance of this principle is becoming more clear. When we allow ourselves to transform, not based on our own choices and desires, but based on where the flow of life is leading us (including taking care of our true internal needs), then this is creation within control - this is generation within conquest - this is precelestial manifestation - this is balanced application of power. Even better, Liu Yiming has laid out a whole framework to assist in this generation within conquest. Using the five confucian virtues in the operation of the five phases and beginning with integrity, he rests one upon the guidance of that which controls it, linking them all together in a chain that refines the postcelestial into the precelestial so that the five agents gather together and the four images join in harmony. In Thomas Cleary's translation of Liu Yiming's Taoist I Ching, there is an Arcana section at the back. (Full excerpt here.) The Five Phases are simply the phases of the growth of a cycle, and they manifest much as one might draw a circle from beginning to end. But that circle wouldn't be very round, balanced, if not for the guidance of the different parts of the circle that say open a little this way, adjust a little that way, ever refining, purifying. Without this guidance toward balance - one part of the circle begins to deviate. Earth is intention - truthfulness, sincerity, integrity | or lack thereof. Water is related to stillness, potential - wisdom | greed. Fire is expression, manifestation - courtesy | impatience. Metal is settling, accepting, returning, killing, dying, sensing, discerning - justice | anger. Wood is energy, fuel, growth - kindness | duplicity. It makes sense. When we are sincere, it is like Earth that is held together, giving a good foundation from which to shape the flow of water when it moves. If we are not sincere, the water becomes muddy. A fun experiment is simply to put some dirt into some water, shake it up. All cloudy, no clarity. Wait. In time (stillness, which for us requires sincerity) the earth settles and the water becomes clear. By resting upon where the flow of balance leads us, never adjusting our trajectory due to our own desires, it is like constantly maintaining sincerity, which helps to make the water more and more clear, the fire more and more courteous, the metal more and more accepting, the wood more and more kind, and the earth more integral, until they all are in such fine balance they return to oneness and Superior Power emerges. Back to Using the Yin instead of being used by the Yin... when we control our environment, this is like allowing a little yin to enter within us as we spend a little yang. When we allow ourselves to flow where our environment leads, we don't need to control anything, and can simply relax upon the flow of dao. This is a distinction made between the internal and external Zhuangzi refers to as walking two roads - adapting to the external environment while preserving the internal environment. Rather than sucking energy out of the source and transforming it into the 10,000 things as the galaxies push and shove each other apart in chaos, ever expanding the universe, the center lost.... imagine the return as galactic momentum begins to harmonize, balanced and ablaze with refined transformation as everything begins to return ever closer to the heart, the mysterious center. Internal, External, Local, Global, Microcosm, Macrocosm - these principles apply to all levels.

When we fill the energy centers with qi, this can also have the effect of attachment, leading to hoarding, separating, and closing off to others. We become stagnant in our connection to our environment and this is mirrored internally. Hence the importance of emptiness. Though surrendering our attachments, desires, all that the ego holds dear, we come to empty ourselves of everything, even as we turn the light around and receive everything, thus attaining equilibrium and refining into purity. On our path in the world, we rest upon what we encounter, dissolving our fate, yielding to remain whole, nurturing through emptiness, radiating trust, dao, in all directions. As we shine dao through all that shades it, we become of service to dao.

Interesting. I was born in winter, with extra water in bazi, bald... though now I have thick wavy-to-curly hair that does whatever it pleases. The extra water in bazi indicates extra kidney/jing related dynamics... which mean extra jing is created, perhaps instead of shen, but also can lead to extra jing imbalances. I wasn't born where water freezes though. One of my friends was born on spring equinox (during an aries stellium, not sure bazi, but perhaps that indicates extra wood), and had a full head of auburn hair... which fell out and he quickly regrew blonde hair.

Dao is the only teacher. At times following it further requires leaps of faith. Sometimes hiking along a trail, we are faced with what appears to be an insurmountable obstacle to our mind, but is simply a natural part of dao. To overcome it we may try to go around, and spend much time exploring a horizontal path, only to emerge in front of the same chasm further along. At some point we must summon the courage to surrender what we think we know of ourselves and change. Zhuangzi's butcher advises how we may face the seemingly impossible knots in our path by slowing down and surrendering to our flow - trusting the voice of dao. A shaman once told me how the mountain required a leap of faith - quite literally off a cliff into the embrace of the forest branches far below - before he could develop the ability to receive deeper teachings the mountain was waiting to share. I'm not suggesting we blindly jump off cliffs. But at some point in our evolution we will face such obstacles. Usually there is a voice gently guiding us, if we are able to let go enough to hear and trust it. The more we are able to trust the guidance of this subtle voice of dao during times of harmony, the more it will serve us in times that require leaps of faith. During these leaps, proper momentum and timing within the celestial mechanism is very important - the human mind can help us step into this current, but the mind of dao is what will lead us through transformation unscathed. The student I spoke of did not injure his knee from following his teacher, but due to too-strenuous practice that began to wear him out, which he kept from his teacher, not wanting to let him down.

I would answer that the great heavenly circuit depends on the qi being able to flow unimpeded through the vessels and meridians of the legs. Zhang Boduan says the yin qiao vessel must be cleared before the other vessels will open. The Eight Vessels are the roots of the Great Dao prior to Heaven, and the ancestors of the One Breath (yiqi). Among them, one should begin with the Yin Heel vessel, for as soon as this vessel is in movement, all other vessels are cleared. Then one works on the Function [ren], the Control [du], and the Thoroughfare [chong] vessels, because they are the sources of the transformations of all other channels and vessels. Wang Mu's Foundations of Internal Alchemy excerpt from Zhang Boduan's Wuzhen Pian, tl Fabrizio Pregadio. Respectfully, my experience and training have created in me a very different perspective. Without proper rooting, yes. With rooting, you must take into account the practitioner’s ability to work with gravity. Physical power and internal power are very different, especially when the internal develops into spiraling power. In horse stance, one can shift weight to the left foot while rooting with the right foot and striking forward with either hand, with great power, stability, and forward-backward torque. This is not a static posture, and the forward backward torque comes from the depth of the root AND the spiraling, circular momentum in the legs - the shifting from left to right is not simply a left-to-right motion, but includes a circular transfer of energy through the vessels and meridians. The depth of the root helps to increase the power of this flowing river. This foundation is then extended into the upper body for the strike. Again, this can't be thought of as a static stance, but rather that the issuance of power from the strike is only one part of an entire cycle, and the return of this power after issuing is just as important. Haha, I find myself filled with thoughts as to what a teacher worth their money might be, but that is likely best saved for a different thread. Ultimately it comes down to what Zhuangzi writes on the impossibility of truly knowing any other from the inside out.