Taoist mandala (sewn fabric) commissioned for our child Emerald’s upcoming 1st birthday. We want to have Taoist color and pattern vibrations in his room as he grows up. Taoists cultivate Qi according to its cycle in Nature, here expressed as 5 Phases and 8 Trigram cosmic forces. Winter Solstice is the yin peak in the solar cycle, evoking the dark mystery of a watery abyss whose bottom depth cannot be known.
Mandala artist Lily Swan is a longtime cultivator of Tao inner alchemy. For custom art, contact: lilyswan@hotmail.com
1. ALL MICHAEL WINN audios or DVDs – up to 30% savings, 40% off Mantak Chia books until midnight Friday Jan. 9. 2015. See URL lilnks below. We just got in 6-color Dragon T Shirts in new colors, in bambo & hemp. Great gift – Call Jan at 888 999 0555 for more details.
2. Sat. Dec. 20 Winter Solstice free event in Asheville: Black Dragon Ceremony. a few space left, RSVP required.
3. Need inspiration? Read below about a blind and crippled 90 year old woman who lives and breathes gratitude.
FEEL FREE TO HIT REPLY and RESPOND. I love hearing from you!
Dear Lovers of Winter’s Deep, Dark, Watery Solstice Abyss,
You definitely want to play in the Dark Qi field that is happening this weekend. It’s a double whammy Winter Solstice, coming near the end of a 36 year cycle of planetary awakening. by “dark” I don’t mean evil, but rather the True Yin Qi that supports and nourishes Yang Qi.
To capture this True Yin (often pesonified as the Dark Goddess), the most powerful time for ceremony or deep meditation is the full or new moon BEFORE or ON the Winter Solstice. That captures the lMoon power at its peak, joins it to the peak yin power of the Sun in its annual cycle. This Sunday December 21 (in the northern hemisphere) we have a new or dark moon ON the very day of Winter Solstice, so we have both the sun and moon merged into One at their maximum Yin moment. That cosmic moment can alchemically boost your mind into a totally new and undefined space. It can unleash creative bursts that might appear crazy.
But don’t worry. This delights us daringly esoteric dabblers in human December development and demands we deign to descend like dervishes into an ocean deep with a doubly dark dose of deliciously divine Lunar Yin Water. Into this lunar cauldron, on Solstice at the hour of Tzu (midnight), this first delicate yang spout of dawn, is alchemically dunked a pure drop of Solar Yang Fire – thereby detonating a dandy six month cycle of expansion up to Summer Solstice. Wow! The drunken delirium of death defying Qi this Solstice delivers is a dangerous decoction, but don’t be fooled by Descartes’ dangling dictum (I think, ergo I am).
This process may dement or cause to die the ordinary “thinking” Monkey Mind. It may damage, ding up, drug, deviously do in, or otherwise destroy your previous dangerous philosophical doubts defining or describing dragons as unreal. May you be deemed worthy to enter the dank wintry depths and cross to the distant Solstice shore of your desire. May the divine seed of creative love you plant flourish. May a dastardly dumbfoundment descend upon all non-dabbling doodled dunderhead demons from the deranged dark side who dare to interfere with your virtuous intent (Taoist “de”) !!!
This is an example of a very mild case of delusion that may infect those who delve too deeply into these dark winter events. Now you understand where the phrase “the Devil is in the details” comes from. The first word-Devil to correctly count and email to me the most common consonant used as the first letter of a word in the previous two paragraphs and list the number of times it is used in the paragraphs as first letter (no repeat words allowed) will get to choose one of my DVDs mailed to them for free. That’s a done deal. But I digress.
Naturally, this sun-moon coupling at this solar cycle Yin inflection point excites the Black Dragon that rules the water element on planet earth. This is no Loch Ness serpent lounging around on a surface lake. This Black Dragon is the ruler of all earth dragons. It stirs it from its secret lair, likely at the bottom of the ocean, where it is coiled around the “dark sun” hidden deep within the planet’s ming men (gate of destiny).
The winter solstice dark light within the earth awakens the Black Dragon. It rides this inner Earth Light in spirals up to the purple nner heart of the sun in the sky (some Tao alchemy texts call it the black crow in the sun).
Naturally, the sun doesn’t sit by idly, it feels the powerful cyclical alignment. It jumps into high gear, and beams back a generous dollop of super-charged soul food for Mother Earth to feed its human children. Such is the fantastic cosmic dance between Mother Earth and Father Sun , especially intense during a double dark Winter Solstice.
The question for us bystanders is “how do we humans get in on this cosmic fun?”. We are, after all, the Child of Heaven and Earth. We are entitled to play, since play is the main driver of human evolution. So really, human evolution is Child’s Play. And we haven’t even talked about the icing on the cake. As the six month cycle shifts gear from Yin to Yang at Winter Solstice, it pauses for three days in neutral gear, also known as Yuan Qi (lit. Original Breath).
You cannot change the direction of Qi flow for such a large planetary being without pausing for a rest stop, a turnaround point. That’s when the Energy Body of Mother Earth is suffused with this Yuan Qi. It’s a kind of super-lubricant generating and flowing between Yin and Yang Qi, The increase in neutral force kicks everything into a much higher orbit of cosmic harmony.
For humans, this influx of Yuan Qi creates a wonderful moment where the feeling of separation from Source is greatly lessened. Good will, love, gifts and good cheer flow in greater abundance. Even rigid governments offer vacation days and stodgy big religions pile up their holiest holy-days atop or nearby the Winter Solstice.
BUT the smartest monkey minds have figured out that this is the lazy man’s Way to hitch a ride to Enlightenment. If you can just capture some of that overflowing Yuan Qi inside your body’s center of gravity, aka to Taoists as your lower dantian, then it’s like hitchhiking part way to Nirvana. You’ll have to wait for the next solstice or equinox to continue the hitchhike, but who is in a rush?
Double dragons guard my living room in North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains,. These mountains, at 400 million years old, are the oldest on Earth. So they have powerful and wise dragon ley lines flowing through them. The pearl that the dragons are always depicted chasing after or playing with is the Pearl of Immortality. It’s made from an alchemically cooked mixture of True Yin, Yang, and Yuan Qi, a dash of sexual energy, and a whole lot of love from Tao/Source.
IF you can, it’s best to make a deal with the Black Dragon to deliver your heart-felt and sincere soul desire to the purple inner heart of the Sun. It, will re-broadcast iyour intent, your Solstice wish list, to all the Star Beings and Great Beyond . Aided by an earth and a solar dragon, it’s likely that your petition will actually be heard by somebody with CAUSAL power. You certainly have a much better chance than waiting for Jan. 1 when there’s no door-to-door dragon delivery and the post-New Year’s party cacaphony is a bit noisy and easily dismissed as fuzzy and insincere. But it’s your choice.
So now you understand why I do a dragon ceremony (facing a different direction each season) without fail at every solstice and equinox. I’m a bit lazy and want to hitch a ride on Nature’s super-highway of Yuan Qi. If you cannot attend the ceremony at our Asheville home, please do one in your own home and invite friends and family to join you.
Winter Solstice – the origin of Christmas and many other holy-days — is my favorite time of the year for going into deep, still meditation. I hope everyone takes time to escape the busy-ness of cultural and family pressures to enjoy the dark, deep yin stillness.
I encourage all who wish to tap into the alchemical (transmutational) power of this natural Holy-Day to do a Winter Solstice ceremony. The event is so big it last a few days, so Saturday-Sunday-Monday anytime will work this year. I feel the strongest resonance is near midnight. Here’s an previous newsletter with suggestions for designing a ceremony: https://healingtaousa.com/cgi-bin/articles.pl?rm=mode2&articleid=114
I met Garth Gilchrist when he joined the 2014 China Dream Trip. He wowed the group one evening atop Mt. Hua with a dramatic story-telling portrayal of John Muir, who I consider to be an “early American Taoist”. Muir seemed close to being a breatharian, surviving on a few breadcrumbs for weeks as he literally breathed in the fresh pure Qi of America’s mountains and forests and wrote about it in a poetic delirium.
Garth is a writer, naturalist, poet, storyteller and landscape designer who has devoted decades to helping people grow close to the heart of Life by connecting with nature. For more info: http://www.wordsoftheland.com/bio/
I found Garth’s reflections about his blind mother recovering from a stroke to be very profound and inspiring. Many people are afraid of growing old and losing their freedom. Taoists consider fear ito be a contraction of the water element. So many fear the “permanent winter” of old age. Their fear itself speeds up the manifestation of whatever they most fear.
The Winter Solstice message from Garth’s story is that we don’t have to fear losing our inner power of gratitude. Gratitude for the smallest blessing can nourish our soul and propel us past life’s most difficult hardships.
——————————– It’s clear to me that the ability to feel gratitude is true wealth. Many possessions and little gratitude make for an ironic poverty, a dull heart. The open, enlivened heart, on the other hand, reflects even small beauties, amplifying them, finds wonder in common things, and is wealthy with day-to-day gratitude and with a quick delight. The eye become keen pouring beauty into the heart, and bright with the awakened enthusiasm pouring out.
Bonnie Ann Gilchrist, as gratefully blind senior and as young girl contemplating the life ahead of her.
I’m sharing the holidays with my mom. She is a master of gratitude. Ninety in May, Mom is blind and unable to walk now after her stroke — though she could barely walk before it. She spends her days largely in bed, helped in and out on the way to table or toilet. I would expect her to be at least mildly melancholic, bored, nostalgic, or restless.
But no — contentment pours out of her like water. Each meal she raves, each phone conversation is a blessing, each piece of music a gift. In quiet moments she is quietly happy. To all those who come within her purview she offers her lovely smile, words of encouragement and lively appreciation. Her memories are rich and alive within her. She’s learned the secret well.
As I grew up, holidays with Mom were wondrous affairs, brimming with food, friends, music, stories, laughter, crackling fires and inclement weather outside, but much warmth inside. I’m grateful for those great celebrations and for the rich spoken words of thanks around the circle that always were the core of the festivities. Mom was and is a good teacher of thankfulness.
I’ve had very lean years and big challenges as most of us have. A life is a long, winding, remarkable journey. Looking for blessings, keeping a keen eye open for goodness hidden in troubles, even disasters, has saved me on many a day. The heart feeds on what it believes. Dispair is poison. Hope is nourishing. Thankfulness is based in the knowledge that Life supports us, helps and builds us through thick and thin. It is an elixir that can wholly transform our experience.
I saw a warbler flitting about the garden the other day. Recently arrived from the northern forests, it was on its way south to Central America for the winter. 2000 miles down, 2000 to go. I don’t know if it was thankful about having made it this far, or hopeful for the success of its journey — but I was.
To subscribe to Garth’s blog, visit http://www.wordsoftheland.com/He
This is a beautifully shot visual montage of people and landscapes in India, Vietnam, Senegal, and Morocco. It’s a narrative poem that evokes deep gratitude for our life on earth as it weaves through the stunning scenes to create a deeply felt “work of heart”.
RSVP: Winter Solstice Ceremony Sat. Dec. 20
Sat. December 20, 2015: Winter Solstice Taoist Black Dragon Ceremony
Free event. At our home in Asheville, N.C. Emerald will be leading wu wei practice.
This is the time of Re-birthing of the Light, of planting new seeds deep within the dark womb of Mother Earth and your own deep subconscious psyche. Please come prepared with a clear intent of what seed you want to plant in your life to give it a powerfuly supported birth.
Intensified by New Moon happening same day as Wiinter Solstice: double yin Qi. Join us for a powerful Black Dragon Ceremony, live musical fun and deep meditation on the cosmic harmonic richness of Winter Solstice. Two meditation sittings, must stay for at least one.
Schedule:
7:15 pm: arrive BEFORE concert starts.
7:30 pm – 8 pm: Spontaneous Music Concert by all of US- bring your own music-maker or use one of my large collection from around the world. Anything goes. The last 5 minutes will be in silence, listening to the sound current we’ve generated. Water element of Winter is about LISTENING from deep within.
8 – 8:30 pm: Black Dragon Empowerment Ceremony, led by Michael Winn. Deep Water Qigong. Release your intent to the Black Dragon to be delivered to the highest level of causality.
Break.
8:45 – 10 pm 1st Sitting, silent meditation.
10:15 – 11:30 pm 2nd Sitting, silent meditation.
Light Refreshments. Welcome to bring food or drink to share as we celebrate the return of light.
RSVP required, must stay for at least 1st Sitting Meditation. Driving directions will be sent to those accepted by RSVP.
It is good fengshui to wear some dark blue or black clothing to attract and appease the Black Dragon of the North.
Mantak Chia books – 40% savings!
See this list of Mantak Chia books at wholesale pricing at:
Discounts available through midnight Jan. 9, 2015.
Workshop & Retreat Schedule: 2015 Year of Wood Female Sheep
Year of Female Wood Sheep workshops: mark your calendar!
in Asheville, NC:
a. Fusion 5 Elements/Emotional Alchemy: March 6 – 7, 2015
b. Open Your Soul Channels: Fusion of 5 Elements 2 & 3:April 18-19, 2015
c. Taoist Dream Practice – Lucid Living & Dreaming Qigong: May 16-17, 2015
In New York:
d. April 12, 2015: Primordial Qigong/Tai Chi for Enlightened Love (NY Open Center)
e. May 22-25, 2015: Omega Super Qi Summit, Rhinebeck, N.Y.
2015 Tao Summer Retreat Schedule near Asheville, NC
Demonstration of rooting power of Iron Shirt Qigong, Mars Hill summer retreat.
Retreat tuition is still only $495. for an entire week! These are the spiritual bargain of a lifetime. Price is subsidized – not raised in 9 years! Any amount you do pay is a Tax deductible contribution to 501c3.
1a. Medical & Spiritual Qigong Fundamentals 1-4 – Michael Winn
1b. Chinese Yoga Tao-Yin + Inner Smile & Chi Self Massage –Andrew McCart
Week 2 June 26 – July 1, 2015 (Fri-Wed)
2a. Healing Love: Taoist Sexual Secrets – Michael Winn & Minke de Vos
2b. Fusion 1 Emotional Alchemy + Iron Shirt 1 Rooting
– Andrew McCart & Steven Sy
2c. Acces Your Natural Super-Creativity with Leonardo Da Vince Qigong
– Michael Gelb (course is still tentative)
Week 3 July 3- 8, 2015 (Fri-Wed)
3a. Medical Qigong for Energy Healers – Minke de Vos
3b. Fusion 2 & 3 Orbit + Primordial Qigong, Intro to Feng Shui
– David Twicken
3c. Inner Sexual Alchemy (Lesser Kan & Li) – Michael Winn
3d. Tai Chi Qigong #1 Rooting + #2 Fast Fighting Form – Steven Sy
Week 4 July 10- 15, 2015 (Fri-Wed)
4a. Chi Nei Tsang 1: Deep Organ Massage – Jampa Stewart
4b. Planetary Alchemy Greatest Kan & Li: Living Astrology
– Michael Winn
4c. Deep Healing Medical Qigong – Steven Sy
4d. Iron Shirt Qigong 2 & 3: Tendon/Bone Marrow Washing
+ Meditate with Our Ancestors – Andrew McCart
Week 5 July 17- 22, 2015 (Fri-Wed)
5a. Chi Nei Tsang 2: Open Wind Gates – Jampa Stewart
5b. Bagua Zhang as Moving I Ching – Frank Allen
5c. Northern Wu Taiji Quan: Final Refinement of Classical Taiji Quan
– Tina Zhang
5d. Heaven & Earth Alchemy: The Great Oneness – Michael Winn
For more info, email info@healingtaoretreats.com
or call registrar Julia Considine at 828-575-3825
Lao Tzu’s Miraculous Appearance in Our Garden (photo)
My wife Jem and Emerald (collectively: Jemerald) were surprised when Lao Tzu miraculously appeared in our garden. At the moment of conscious conception of Emerald, we had invoked Lao Tzu and invited him to be a guardian for Emerald. So perhaps it was only natural for him to show up in physical form….but what a sense of humor! He appeared wearing a 300 pound cement suit….. 🙂
Loving Winter’s Watery Abyss of True Yin,
Michael Winn
“Who takes Heaven as his ancestor, Virtue as his home,
the Tao as his door, and who becomes change — is a
Sage.” — Chuang Tzu, Inner Chapters
“The Tao is very close, but everyone looks far away.
Life is very simple, but everyone seeks difficulty.”
— Taoist Sage, 200 B.C
Register online for on Healing Tao University, the largest Tao (Dao) Arts & Sciences program in the
West with 20 week long summer retreats featuring qigong (“chi kung”) and inner alchemy (neidangong) training. For more info, see http://www.HealingTaoRetreats.com
Or visit http://www.HealingTaoUSA.com, to order books/videos/tapes from the Tao Home
Study program. Call the Healing Tao USA Fullfillment center at the Mystical Number 1-888-999-0555 or more ordinary numbers: 828-505-1444, or email info@HealingTaoUSA.com
Visit http://www.Taichi-Enlightenment.com for a glimpse into the world’s most magical spiritual tai chi form.
To get Michael Winn’s FREE 130 page ebook Way of the Inner Smile, with 25 fabulous photos of the world’s most spiritual smiles, go to homepage http://www.HealingTaoUSA.com and subscribe to “Tao News”. You will receive his “Chi Flows Naturally” newsletter and be on his most updated elist. You will immediately receive download info.
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Healing Tao USA • 4 Bostic Place • Asheville, NC 28803 • Tel. 888.999.0555 • www.healingdaousa.com
