Hi, I'm zoe, posting from the pacific northwest. I got my first introduction to Daoism about 5 years ago when I was graduating from high school, I was incredibly spiritually and mentally distraught at the time and engaged with a lot of circles tangential to 4Chan's /x/ due to a string of extremely unfortunate circumstances. Around a year after that I started MTF medical transition, due myriad circumstances at that time this kind of brought me up to a limit where I didn't feel like I could proceed with any form of spiritual cultivation, although I feel like I'm back from that now.

Most of my experience with the Dao was through The Secret of The Golden Flower, although I never was able to progress too far with it it definitely provided instruction on meditation and spirituality that I've had more success with than anything prior. That being said, I paused at multiple points while reading it in finding myself unable to get past the earlier steps to cultivation in the book and stalled out with it. I've returned to it many times over the years but continually had little success, I might return to it eventually, but for now I think I just want to move onto something else, as this feels like beating a dead horse at this point. So, I'm mostly looking for literature recommendations.