WHERE WE GO FROM HERE
We must be the change we wish to see in the world.
Often attributed to MAHATMA GANDHI
Coming full circle is the Taoist way, because everything is already here and now. So, the question then becomes, Why do we start the journey to begin with? Why do we do anything or go anywhere if there’s really nothing to do or nowhere to go? The answer is simple. As yin and yang represent the primal split of Tao, this perceived split created all movement in the universe. With polarity comes spin, and with spin comes the movement and the breath of life in its myriad forms and faces. Coming home is our opportunity to finally let go of our own created dramas and fortified shadow energy and to move with the flow of the Tao. This is where we encounter the paradox of inaction versus action. It’s like saying surfers do nothing once they catch a wave or that a sailboat does nothing when it is lined up behind a strong tail wind. The universe moves. The Great Tao moves. Being silent and still gives us a chance to harmonize with this movement and to literally “ride the wave.” With this, we become eternal players in an eternal game. The difference, however, is that there is no stress and no strife when we are in sync with the patterns of nature. When we stop putting in chaotic noise, we can peacefully listen to and dance with the orchestra of all Creation. It moves us, it drives our action, and it becomes the guiding force for all our motives in goodness and in grace. However, like the surfer who sees a wave coming, we have to paddle hard sometimes to catch it. Once we do, though, it is a great ride. We catch the tailwind, and it is smooth sailing from there.
So, where we go from here is obvious. We create the environment for our personal growth and healing, and we do so starting right now. There are a number of action steps that are important, and the follow-through of these is what makes or breaks an individual practice. Individual participation is where the rubber hits the road. With this in mind, we have covered a variety of topics in this book. In part II, we were introduced to highly effective practices to help us reconcile our energy losses and to correct the imbalances in our field. In our lives, we have spent a lot of time getting into a real mess, and it is going to take a number of steps to clean it up. Not to worry. We already know what we need to know for this stage, and we have the tools available to fix it. Now comes the practice.
I have found that after several years of dedicated training, the one thing that helps build the zhi, or the power of intention, better than anything is the practice of gongs. These gongs are personal agreements or rituals that we commit ourselves to in order to push our practice forward. We will learn about these at the end of this chapter, but it is first important to get a more global view of the action we need to take. This action involves looking at the world around us and our relationship to the notion of global citizenry. We need the Earth, and we need to create a healthy environment for cohabitation so that we have the necessary foundations for our practice.
Global Green Citizenry
In the Creation myth of the ancient Gnostic tradition, the planet Earth was formed when the Goddess Sophia “morphs into terrestrial form, becoming a planet herself, but an organic one, sentient and aware: the earth. . . . The terrestrial globe solidifies and life arises in rampant forms. . . . Sophia awakens to the world of her solitary dreaming, the template of the Anthropos and proceeds to live out a divine experiment: the unfolding of human novelty.”1 This becomes the basis of the Gnostic understanding of reality and the story of Creation, which, in this version, speaks of a sentient being from the center of the galaxy who comes out to the galactic arms in order to experiment with how life can emanate through her dream. Human beings, in the Gnostic understanding of reality, are the living acting agents of the “emanation” of Divinity, which comes to us through our connection with Sophia — the planet Earth. We are to co-create and evolve together because we are intimately tied to one another. This story is an important counterpoint to the Judeo-Christian version that places us in dominion over the Earth and that makes an important distinction that attributes Divinity as coming from above somewhere. This more Western version gives Divinity a characteristic male voice and, by deduction, places the feminine in an inferior position.
What we have learned about Taoism can come in and apply the magic of this rational way of looking at life to our Western notion of Divinity. A yang male god alone is a fundamental state of imbalance. There can be no yang without yin, and anything other than a perfect balance of the two cannot speak for the Ultimate Source (call it whatever you’d like). The fundamental split of yin and yang marks the birth of movement through separation, the birth of distinction and classification, duality as opposed to unity. Having a fundamentally male-oriented view of Divinity in the West, in my opinion, is a major contributor to the way we see ourselves, the way we see our surroundings, and, as a consequence, the way we relate to Mother Earth. Our imbalanced grasp of the Highest Aspect — or the Holiest of Holies, if you like — has created a cultural imbalance that has passively allowed for the raping of the Earth and the destruction of our ecosystem.
We measure progress not by how we cohabitate but by how well we can amass resources and pull “commodities” out of the natural environment. This way of thinking makes it perfectly okay to tear through a forest to pull out timber or to blast through a beautiful hillside to pull out coal. We draw fences and fight over terrain as if we own Her, as if She belongs to us, as opposed to the Native American view, which is the opposite: we belong to Her. We are in a symbiotic relationship with the planet. She needs us to evolve and wake up into fully sentient Light Bodies, and we need Her as a nurturing home. The magnetic field of the planet supports all life, and the myriad life-forms all around us create a web of interconnected energy fields that keep us connected to all life. They remind us of our birthright. To lose this connection by allowing mass extinctions to occur would be catastrophic for our species.
That being said, we do have certain needs, and coal is currently what keeps our houses warm. A balanced approach to development is the Taoist way. More innovation in technologies can allow us to harness the sun’s energy, along with wind and geothermal, and make coal and oil extraction a thing of the past. The use of hyperdimensional physics, toroidal fields, and tapping into zero-point energy are not even conversations on the table yet (for political reasons — if we only knew the truth!), but they certainly should be.
In the postmodern era in which we live, it becomes important for us to really put away the dividing lines of nation-states and act together as a species in defense of our natural habitat. Lack of fresh water, overproduction of sewage, strip mining, desertification due to global warming, pollution in the seas, overfishing, deforestation, and overpopulation are issues that affect all of us. The distinct parts make up the whole, and if we all carry on thinking that we are the “chosen people,” we will continue to draw our lines and fight over resources until it is too late. This idea takes us back to the notion of “enlightened citizenry.”
Being truly enlightened means waking up, dispelling the clouds of the shadow trances in our heads, and seeing the world for what it truly is. Before these dark ages, the tribal units of our ancestors would hold the shamans or the wise men and women in the highest regard and follow their lead, as they were the clearest and most enlightened in the group. They were the leaders because of their wisdom. The return to enlightened citizenry requires the obvious substrate: enlightened people. It is up to us to wake up and take an active role in the happenings of our global policies, and it is up to us to ensure a safe and healthy future for our generations to come.
Green Economy
The notion of “money is evil” has hindered the spiritual community for decades and has kept the power in the hands of the ruling elite, who created the monetary system. By being part of a system that plays by those rules, many spiritually inclined people have shied away from “worldly” pursuits and have “hermitted” away into smaller communities that don’t play on the main stage of global economics and politics. Just look where that has gotten us. Silence does not get you anywhere in a democratic system. Being duped into a two-party system run by the same corporate interests smells like an oligarchy, not a democracy. Actually, when corporate interests become the state interest, we move into fascism. Democracy is supposed to be a government for the people by the people, and we must exercise our rights as citizens. For too long now, the environment has been abused and damaged by the steady march of industry and the “advancement” of our species. But we now have the ability to do something about it; frankly, this is really our last chance before we forfeit our place as the “stewards” of the Garden. It is critically important for us to understand that we vote with our dollars. We are the consumers who drive the global economic system. We are the individual units who make up the whole. Each of us is a critical piece to the puzzle, and our direct and personal involvement in being part of the solution is absolutely necessary for the tide to turn in our race against humanmade global warming.
The more we sync up with the patterns of nature, the more we coevolve with Sophia, the more we make right the conditions of the “fall” and the closer we come to restoring the Garden for our children’s children. Here are some basic guidelines for being an active participant in the new green economy:
• Buy local organic produce from trusted sources.
• Get into a gas-efficient or electric car.
• Try to take public transportation, ride a bike, or carpool at least once a week.
• Check for leaks in the insulation of your house.
• No more bottled water! Buy a glass or stainless steel container and use a home filter.
• Change all your personal-care products to healthy ones that are made by reputable companies that don’t conduct animal testing (or poison you).
• Cut out fast food from your diet; eating fast food supports unhealthy grazing practices.
• Use bamboo and other fast-growing trees for wood.
• Invest in green funds and green companies that include transparency in their corporate models.
• Spend your money on ideas and concepts that enrich your life. Cut down on the things that you don’t need, and invest in experiences and growth-oriented endeavors.
These are just a few suggestions. Start today!
I feel that it is entirely appropriate to hold a vision for our future that performs major changes within one generation. So many policies lag in the United States because lawmakers can’t risk signing on to anything that will make their constituents lose jobs. This is why we have an enormous military budget to this day. The arms makers provide hundreds of thousands of jobs in America, and nobody wants to risk messing with these, so we let the ball keep rolling. The problem with this is that we need to always have some armed conflicts going on somewhere in the world to justify these budgets. This leads to a foreign policy that helps provoke these conflicts. We somehow always need an enemy. We either let them blast each other and supply them with arms, or we put in a puppet and then go in to depose him a few years later. Polarity consciousness loves the good guy–bad guy paradigm or, worse, cowboy and Indian. We are culturally under this powerful trance. It is up to us to literally create a new economy that is green, healthy, life-affirming, and prosperous. Waiting for someone else to do it will get us all killed. We are the people we have been waiting for! Together, we can create a new medium of exchange that supports healthy lifestyles and green policies. We can strive to regain our place of cohabitation with the Earth and pursue more important goals of self-cultivation, illumination, the development of our Light Bodies, and, in short, our continued evolution into Homo luminous. The dark dream ends here.
A Taoist Perspective on Politics
As mentioned before, an excellent example of the polarization of our mind is reflected in the U.S. political system. You are either red or blue, for taxes or against them, an imperialist or an isolationist, pro-life or pro-choice. This simplistic approach to political discourse reflects the insanity of our times and the state of our collective consciousness. First of all, enlightened citizenry begins with awareness. This means we need to be awake enough to participate in our political processes. The people running the show now are puppeteers with specific economic interests who are looking out for their own constituents. It seems that the planet and the environment have taken all the flak for this, and we have suffered the loss of many ecosystems accordingly. Cohabitation with the various life-forms on the planet should take an important role in the future of politics, as biodiversity is a key element in the health of our overall ecosystem. Let us take a quick look at the big picture of where this is all going.
The accumulation — or, better yet, the “creation” — of wealth is something we take for granted in a capitalistic system. It has to be this way or else it’s “communist,” and that’s evil. Again, polarity. This black-and-white classification of concepts is ingenious because it appeals to the primitive shadow-inspired trances in our consciousness, which invoke archetypal responses one way or another. It is the perfect tool of the puppeteer and has been used effectively for too long. At the end of the day, we all need to eat, we all want to enjoy our families, we all need water, and we’d all like to peacefully coexist in a beautiful natural environment, right? Okay, that means we need a medium of exchange to trade goods and services. Clams and beads were fine for hundreds of thousands of years, and then gold took over. The global bankers went out of their way to pull us off the gold standard in the early 1900s, so now all we’re left with is a made-up “currency” that is printed by the Federal Reserve System and that acts as legal tender. Actually, the Fed “lends” this money to our government, and we then pay it back with interest for years to come. (That’s an idea beyond the scope of this book, but many sources offer more about this.) We then have a more “stable” economy where a bunch of cocky, twenty-four-year-olds who just got recruited onto Wall Street can dream up creative investment vehicles that make amazing amounts of money (for them) and gain them worldly power because of this. One day, the whole mess starts to collapse, and now, we stand here looking at this whole thing, not realizing that it is all a joke. It is a made-up system of value that we have created so that we can all get along and have a medium of exchange.
So, who determines the value? We do. Again, we vote with our dollars, and we vote our elected officials into office. The onus is on us to effectively steer the economy where we want it to go and to create healthy vehicles that make the world a better place. Invest your money with people and companies that are doing good things. Your money is nothing more than stored-up energy or credit that we use for trade. Society or markets establish this value, and we spend it accordingly. Do you value your energy and your life force? Do you value your time and your hard work? Do you care about the future of the planet and our species? Well, then, be more selective about where you put your energy! It is time to wake up and take ownership of our citizenry. We can only be leveraged and manipulated when we are asleep. It is time to wake up.
Let’s Lay Out a Plan
We’ve covered a lot in this book, and now it is time to zip it all up together. A practice is only as good as its implementation, and there is only one person who can sit in that saddle: you. At this point, we know what the problem is and how we got into this mess.
I’ve outlined a number of practices here, all of which are helpful and all of which should be practiced regularly by you. I realize that you are not living in a monastery right now and that you have duties and obligations in your world. In the Taoist tradition, there are two main branches: Mountain Taoists and Fire Taoists.
The Mountain variety live up in the secluded enclaves of distant, nearly inaccessible ranges and lead lives of rigorous regimented practice and ritual observation. This is a very dedicated lifestyle that is a fast track to clearing obstructions in our fields; it gives us plenty of time each day to work on our Light Body. Less than 1 percent of the people I know have the luxury of living this lifestyle right now.
The Fire Taoists are the ones who live among the people. They are the ones who hold worldly professions but are committed to their practice and their energetic cultivation. They make their daily life and their interactions the basis of their qi gong. The world is their practice, and they diligently work on turning the daily “lead” of experience into the “gold” of realization and illumination both inside themselves and in the world around them as a reflection of their inner realization. These are the people the world needs right now. For every monk holding the light up in the mountains, we need ten thousand of us performing the Great Work right here in the society where we reside. There is no Garden apart from where we live; it’s all One. This leaves us with the empowering knowledge that we are in a unique position to evolve and practice right here in our current lives, without shaving our heads or getting into a funny wardrobe. In fact, we needn’t cling to any image. Let’s just do the work.
This does not, however, preclude us from spending some time in nature, especially at first. Resonant tuning with the pure vibrations of nature is critical for us to calibrate to the energy curve of the Great Tao. Once we do so, we can continue to practice and cultivate that energy, maintaining our natural state and taking that into our daily lives. I personally take a minimum of a couple hikes per week. I call it “gathering the nectar,” and I feel that it is an extremely rejuvenating practice. This is all part of the life of a Fire Taoist.
How to Begin Your Own Practice
Let’s now summarize the whole battery of practices we have learned in this book and, more important, create a definitive personal plan to begin your own practice and start the Great Work. To keep it simple and digestible, I have outlined the major points under each category from this chapter. For further information, please refer to part II. It is important to remember that much of the information shared with you here was kept secret and was extremely coveted for thousands of years. It took me decades of diligent study and practice to reach the higher levels of these practices, many of which I have shared with you in this book. I’m not saying this because I’m fishing for applause; what I am interested in is imparting the tremendous value of what you’ve learned. I believe that times have changed. Know this: there is an entire brotherhood and sisterhood of people who are dedicated to your growth and your enlightenment. They are all committed to helping you achieve liberation and the fulfillment of your potential.
PHYSICAL PRACTICE
As mentioned earlier, the health of the physical vehicle is the underlying basis of this entire practice. Negligence of the body will deter your ultimate growth and keep you from developing the correct awareness of the Tao within you. The four major aspects of this practice are
• Diet
• Exercise
• Sleep
• Mindset
Review chapter 5 for a discussion about each of these.
QI GONG
The practices outlined in chapter 7 are designed to build a strong foundation in your energy field and help enhance the flow of your wei (defensive) qi and your ying (nutritive) qi. Altogether, to do all three would take just under forty-five minutes per day. If this is too much to start with, try doing one or two a day and cycling between them on different days. This will allow you to grow and develop the different skills and to fortify different aspects of your energy field as you go.
Daily practice of qi gong is essential, as it is the fastest way to clear your energy field and to dispel shadow energy charge. It frees up the underlying power you need to really delve into the Great Work. Again, the first exercise is available to view at SoundsTrue.com/inner-alchemy/bonus. I feel that in this modern age, there is no point in trying to learn moving exercises from a book. Watch the video and learn the exercise. The other two are in the book because they are static postures that can be captured in pictures.
The first hundred days of your practice are incredibly important. This is what is going to burn in a good habit and start the awakening process. I highly advise you to commit to a schedule you can uphold and to practice this daily.
MENTAL PRACTICE
The mental practice will function as the central “operating system” for your mind for years to come. Constantly asking yourself, “What am I doing right now?” is a conscious act of injecting self-awareness into the dreamy sleep of your unconscious days. With continued practice, you will begin to feel the freedom and liberation of simply being, instead of constantly doing and reacting. You can’t feed your shadows when you do nothing; better yet, you can finally hear the undertones of your superconsciousness through your DNA when you finally stop “jumping in” with your incessant mental activities.
EMOTIONAL PRACTICE
The cleansing of emotional attachments is an incredibly liberating practice that frees up enormous reserves of energy. Emotions are very powerful and, when repressed, can compound into an explosive force. Learning to harmonize your emotional currents is critical. It is important to note that emotions are perfectly natural expressions that we all have to events. It is the imbalanced state of these emotions that creates suffering. If you allow them to naturally come and go, they are raw and real, and they are the very flavors of life. It is important to remember this, because there is nothing wrong with passion. Naturally emerging desires are a huge catalyst for growth, evolution, and change. The imbalanced reflection of your aversions and cravings is what causes the trouble and brings on your suffering.
The emotional cleansing practices in chapter 9 are very helpful and liberating. You will want to take some time at first to sit with these practices and get the hang of them. As with the mental practice, these tools should simply get burned into your subconscious mind and be running all day, almost like a virus scanner in a computer. You should program your subconscious mind to smooth out and heal imbalanced emotional charge as it comes up.
As you practice the mental awareness techniques, it will become obvious when you are getting carried away with an emotional charge. When you find this, you can, first of all, stop engaging in it any further (mental practice). Having illuminated it with your conscious mind, you can then proceed to heal it with the emotional practices you have learned. You can then return to your mental scanning and relaxation. As things pop up, forgive, heal, and clean the energies. Don’t get frustrated — you have years’ worth of stuff that you will start becoming aware of, and it’ll take some time to heal and clear it all. You will eventually feel a thousand pounds lighter on the other side and will wonder how you ever lived carrying all of that “lead” around!
SPIRITUAL PRACTICE
We went over a number of very helpful techniques in chapter 10, many of which take some time to perform. I have shared these techniques to serve as a battery of tools at your disposal to continually clean and purify your energy field. Once you gain a visceral understanding of what it is you are truly doing, you’ll be so enthused and excited to do this work that TV will be a thing of the past for you. There is nothing more amazing than the feeling of being totally clear of “gunk” and being able to simply be, see, and hear the love of the universe coursing through you. There is nothing left to do at this point. You are fully complete and have no wants. You are in ecstasy, just elated to be alive. This feeling is your birthright, and getting there is not an addition process. The more you subtract, the closer you come to Source. The more you cleanse and heal, the more whole you become. There is less of “you” and yet all of you.
Take your time and cycle through all of these practices, and you will find a rhythm that makes sense for you in your lifestyle. Do a minimum of one of these per week. Especially at first, be sure to take a number of dedicated acts of self-love to break out of your trance and wake up to the alchemical process. The task at hand is waiting for you, but you have to see the benefits before you fall back asleep.
MANIFESTATION PRACTICE
The manifestation practice becomes an important part of our work in that it allows us to understand the mechanism through which we can create the exact surroundings and circumstances we need in order to perform the Great Work. When we get a sense of how to silence our reactive mind and how to stop feeding energy into our shadows, we will have a clear channel for superconsciousness to fuse with our subconsciousness and guide us effortlessly in life. We can also learn to plant mental seeds via our self-consciousness directly into our subconsciousness to optimize our life and help quicken the healing process. We can learn to use this manifestation process to gain a profound understanding of our critically important role in the universe. It empowers us to shine the light of awareness on the shadows that house our mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual afflictions. A critical piece of the puzzle is learning the rules by which the universe operates and becoming a master of this knowledge.
The manifestation practice is based on an understanding of reality. Once we get a sense of how it is that things operate in our universe, we are empowered to play a more active role in the embedding of our own subconscious mind. More important, we then learn to “get out of the way” and let the currents of the Great Tao (or the Voice of God or whatever you want to call it) speak directly to us and guide our actions in life. We learn to move naturally with the waves of Creation and become co-creators.
To build this understanding into your daily life, it is important to pick a certain set of suggestions or goals that you would like to program into your subconsciousness and then do so on a daily basis in a “gong” (described below). You can learn to simultaneously listen to superconsciousness and program subconsciousness. Work on creating a set of reasonable goals and beliefs you would like to adopt. You can also set thirty-, sixty-, and hundred-day goals for your gong and reinforce them daily. I highly recommend using these tools, as they will help solidify your intention and focus your attention on your personal goals.
The Hundred-Day Gong
A gong in Chinese is a designated amount of time that you allot to perform a specific task daily. For example, knowing that it takes at least ninety days for a particular good habit to “burn into” your nervous system, I have found that the hundred-day gong is the most appropriate length to practice. This means that you pick a particular practice (or set of practices) and designate them as your gong, and you diligently practice them every day for one hundred days, without fail. This means that if you miss a day, even if it’s day ninety-nine, you start over. Not only does this build resolve, it also forces you to wake up and pay attention to your day-to-day routines. It is incredibly painful when you miss day forty-six, for instance (I did!), and have to start over. At first you try to make excuses to yourself about how it was okay and how you’ll just keep going, but then, a deal is a deal . . . you start over. Next round, you pay attention! It is a wonderful way of not only building focus and determination but also ensuring that you train regularly. It is a dedicated act of self-love that snaps you out of your daily trance and brings the light of awareness to your consciousness. The more you practice, the more you wake up and the better off you are.
I do these gongs all the time in my personal life and development. I set goals for myself for the next hundred days (physical, mental, spiritual), I look at them daily, and I reinforce my subconscious mind every day for those hundred days. When it is over, I assess where I am, and I take a few days of introspection and meditation before I set my next gong. In essence, I allow my superconscious mind to guide me into the next series of programs for the subconscious mind. This is a wonderful method for bringing the self-conscious mind into the equation and tying all aspects together, harmonizing yin and yang.
Depending on how dedicated you are and where you think you’d like to start, you can begin with something simple, like one qi gong set for starters, and do that for a hundred days. Or you can get far more involved. I usually have eight exercises or meditations per day in a given gong, but that’s me; I’ve been a monk. Start where you feel like you can realistically manage it with your current time allowances and get the first hundred days under your belt. I assure you that afterward, you will do more of them and add more goals and practices as you go along.
This practice really helps get you on track and creates an environment for growth and personal development that is self-inspired and easy to follow. I’ve led thousands of people through gongs over the years and have seen people reverse diabetes, lose fifty pounds, increase their income tenfold, and find happiness. It’s all about developing new micro habits and changing for the better every day. It’s important to get a “win” early on with a reasonable gong that you can follow through with. Over time, you’ll get better and be able to take bigger “bites.”
Let’s look at a couple of sample gongs for you to consider for your first hundred days.
SAMPLE GONG 1 Practice all of these daily
• Silk Weaver’s Exercise
• Shaolin Standing Form
• Triple Burner Exercise
• 10 minutes of emotional clearing daily
• 15 minutes of mental practice daily
• Minimum 30 minutes of exercise 5 days per week, with 2 recovery days
• Focus on manifestation
SAMPLE GONG 2 Practice all of these daily
• Alternate between one of the following daily:
› Silk Weaver’s Exercise
› Shaolin Standing Form
› Triple Burner Exercise
• 30 minutes (in one sitting) of emotional clearing once per week
• 10 minutes of mental practice daily
• Minimum 30 minutes of exercise 5 days per week, with 2 recovery days
• Focus on manifestation
Now that you have read this book, you are equipped with the tools to start your practice and work toward full liberation and the ignition of the Light Body. This is all abstract knowledge, however, unless you actually engage in the daily practice and work toward this end. I have been commissioned to share this information with you, and, more important, I am here to support you. You, yes, you, are a central piece to the growth and evolution of our species, and you play a critically vital role in this process. I am committed to your evolution and enlightenment and will support you along the way. The more people who wake up, the faster and easier this process will be, and the faster the world will become a better and better place.