Emotional Alchemy: Original Feeling of Self-Love + Year of Pig 35% off!

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Emotional Alchemy: Three Primary Modes of Feeling

Let’s distill this down to its essence. I identify three primary kinds of feeling.

1. Our soul holds our Original  feeling of Self-Love that nourishes our mission, our purpose in life, driving us to keep going regardless of the good, bad, and ugly things that happen to us. Recovering these feelings requires deep spiritual work to dig into mostly un-conscious feelings buried in our pre-natal memories.

When we realize our soul seed is the neutral container for all those polarized feelings, it is an intense moment of liberation. Taoists call this soul seed our “de” (or “te”, as in Tao Te Ching). This “de’ is every human’s gift from the Great Mother of All Things, tai yi. (lit. Great Oneness). It is “neutral” because it existed before the birth of Yin-Yang Qi. Its human quality is a feeling of Self-love because it mirrors taiyi’s Cosmic Self-love for Nature (Creation) which she continuously births.

2. and 3. Our personality (ego; body-mind; what Taoists call the 12 organ spirits of the heart-mind) has two other kinds of feelings surfacing on the level of our everyday personality: Reactive and Responsive feelings. This is the domain of psychology.

In any given moment, our ego is generating feelings that are either REACTIVE  (= NEGATIVE EGO) or RESPONSIVE. (= POSITIVE EGO). Our soul’s ORIGINAL feeling of Self-love (= NEUTRAL EGO) sits beneath both of these, patiently waiting for us to find a useful outcome from our life dramas, a Way to achieve our highest worldly and spiritual destiny.

Neutral Ego is wise. It lets the personality learn by making mistakes and by slowly feeling its way to deeper truth. It is totally detached, and won’t stop us from repeating endless and stupid negative reactive loops. The ego has to WANT to wake up and change. Suffering is thus positive in that it mobilizes our inner will.

Negative Ego, the Way of Reactivity

Everyone knows about REACTIVE: it feels like someone pushed our EGO-buttons, and we react instantly and play out some unconscious feeling before we’ve had a chance to reflect on it. Reactive self is a stuck self, stuck in the past. Stuck in defending old beliefs. Reactive often projects itself as victim of outside forces. It’s in constant struggle to defend against an enemy or the evils of the world.

Reactive self is also the path of Aging Quickly. Reactivity = Rigidity, both biologically and psychologically. We don’t allow the Life Force to flow through us like a child, fluid and flexible in our feelings, playfully changing in the moment. We are living a fossilized version of our self from the past. As Lao Tzu puts it in the Tao Te Ching, an old tree blows over in a storm – even though it is large and looks strong, it is rigid. The young willow sapling yields to the wind, and springs back to life.

Awareness of the pitfalls of Reactivity is not new or particularly Taoist. Lots of us have been TRYING to clear out old resistant patterns. We do tai chi or yoga or qigong, we meditate, read self-help books, attend relationship workshops, join a religion, or hire a therapist and healers to help us change. It’s all good and noble – but what if there was a quicker, more effective energy science?

There’s another way to heal reactivity, the Way of Parenting. I’m exploring that with my 5-year old son Emerald. He’s a very playful but tough teacher, unfortunately smarter than me (but not yet wiser). Who teaches kids phrases like “dumb daddy” at such a young age?

My parents had seven kids. so all their reactive buttons got pushed continuously. That is how kids claim their power; the play the game of testing mommy and daddy. It’s difficult to stay rigid with a bunch of kids pushing you to change every moment. Our reactive patterns are gradually worn away or exhausted; we relax into a more neutral state. Eventually my parents achieved a kind of stable Parental Equanimity. I

It’s a special kind of enlightenment where parents play the Mini-Creator and have to deal with the consequences in real life, in the local present moment. Everyone is really doing this, in their own mini-Creator Way. Some play out this model with their employees or friends instead of kids. In the Tao, your life IS your path. You unfold your own essence, not follow someone else’s “one-size-fits-all” doctrine of salvation. But can you connect a moment of mini-enlightenment in the local present moment with the Cosmic Present Moment? That is the key to immortality.

Multi-dimensional  Layers of Reactivity Embedded in Humans

I’ve been counseling students for 40 years. It’s basically simple. Everyone is seeking deeper love, but can’t get it because of a variety of obstacles. We start by looking for love outside. With a little spiritual guidance, we figure out the only stable source of love is arising inside us. That’s why it’s called Self-love. If we track it back, our “de”/soul mission leads to what Taoists call taiyi, Great Oneness. Modern esoteric schools might call it the Central Sun, invisibly radiating Pure Love Qi from a deeper dimension within everything.

It’s sounds simple, but in real life it’s very challenging to cultivate this Self-love stored within our soul seed.  Lots of people discover that despite year of work and great spiritual progress, there are still MORE REACTIVE LAYERS, new dark clouds buried within our psyche, more darkness than one could possibly imagine. That is why the Wandering Taoist One Cloud (and the Taoist tradition of inner alchemy) had so many formulas. Each formula helps us peel off another layer of reactive patterns embedded in humankind’s collective psyche. Here’s an abbreviated list:

1. personal reactivity ACQUIRED this lifetime, embedded in our vital organs from culture, school, family, media.

2. bloodline ANCESTRAL reactive patterns trapped in time cycles of Sun-Moon-Earth,

3. resistant issues from the COLLECTIVE of humanity (planetary-archetypal), Racism, nationalism, greed, power struggles, victim-victimizer patterns, etc.

4. SPIRITUAL challenges downloaded from the Star- being or Oversoul level. Our collective spiritual homework, painful issues designed to speed up humankind’s rather slow evolution. This is where we get the very deep stuff. The split between spirit and matter that creates a feeling of separation, the split into separate male and female bodies that confuses every relationship on planet earth. That sexual split is called the Fall of Humanity. Inner sexual alchemy is the most direct way of healing it I’ve found.

(for full description of all One Cloud alchemy formulas: https://healingtaousa.com/tao-articles/one-clouds-9-stages-of-alchemy)

No matter how “high” you climb up the spiritual ladder, there is more “reactive stuff” to be processed, from personal to cosmic levels. This can be a bit dis-heartening.

Creative Shaping  of Reality: Taoist Depth Psychology

So what does it mean to be RESPONSIVE? It means we are FEELING and LOVING the PROCESS of solving the seemingly endless layers of Reactivity. To actually Respond, you have to first be PRESENT in the moment to the person, situation, event or feeling arising within your own body. It will eventually wire us into our ORIGINAL feeling of why we chose to incarnate.

We have to actually feel what is happening in THIS moment, and separate it out from all our un-conscious or sub-conscious reactive stuff. That is easier said than done. But that is just the half of it. After feeling what is happening – a kind of instantaneous assessment that can only be made from a strong and clear neutral space – we have to GET CREATIVE.

Responsive = using our Free Will to change or influence what is happening. It’s not enough to just passively notice our “stuff”, we have to re-shape our feelings, which is a creative act.

While integrating Taoist meditation methods with my Western psychological process, I realized I needed to modify the Taoist process called Fusion of the Five Elements. It’s a fabulous energetic map of the human psyche, but the Chinese have different cultural patterns stored in their body than we do. Using myself and my students as guinea pigs, I created a hybrid I called Taoist Depth Psychology. There exist a plethora of Western psychological maps, therapies and theories about fixing the dysfunctional human personality.

But the Taoist approach is fundamentally different, because it is Qi-based. Qi, Chi, Ki, all the same thing: Qi is the Chinese term for living subtle breath. I discovered the Taoist Qi model is multi-layered, with 12 organ meridians of the personality, 8 Extraordinary Vessels of the soul, and deeper core channels linking us to the cosmic Energy Body (over soul).  This offered a practical structure that gave me access to the very MEDIUM of consciousness itself, rather than struggling to manage the endless patterns of reactive CONTENT – the verbal and thought content that most Western psychology is focused on.

Every psychological method has its benefits and seems to work to some degree. But psychological “maps of the mind” are akin to building castles in the air.

Psychology doesn’t have a firm ground in the BELOW, our biology, our body, and the Earth’s Energy body, which co-create our field of physical reality. Psychology leaves biology to the “hard” sciences. Psychiatrists over-compensate in their realm by giving folks too many drugs to change the biology affecting the psyche. Alas, the second leading cause of death in the USA is now side effects from multiple drugs. I’m not anti-drugs, I just believe they must be used sparingly until healthier energetic processes can be cultivated that actually reach to the core of our emotions. Most chronic illness begins with emotional disturbances in my experience.

Nor does psychology have a solid ground in the ABOVE, in the ethereal spiritual realms. This they leave to religion. Some compensate by recommending meditation or yoga for stress relief, which is very positive. But sitting quietly and relaxing and stretching the body doesn’t penetrate deep enough to really clean out the core reactive patterns.

I recall the story about a well-known New York zen “master” who, after suffering for 15 years while constantly emptying the contents of his mind,, finally went into therapy for problems that were buried deeper in his body. Meditative passive self-awareness is great, but often not enough to shift very deep reactive stuff. That is where inner alchemy meditation + qigong excels. It’s a dynamic process designed to get to the very core of body, mind, and soul.

Taoist Qi Model of Reality (Cosmology)

In the Taoist Qi model, the three realms –  below, above, and the human middle – are all governed by the same patterns of Qi. Once you understand the operating system, basically comprised of three patterns of Qi, you can manage all three levels of your reality. The three patterns of Qi are:

1) neutral state of oneness (Yuan Qi), Original Breath of this cosmos

2) polar states (Yin-Yang Qi),

3) seasonal cycles (5 Elements/5 Phases Qi).

              

The five phases of Qi map can be applied to both spiritual-causal and biological systems.

Fusion and the inner alchemy process gives us a map that links human personal nature with impersonal outer Nature, operating as one system. We have a universal medium (Qi). With Taoist Fusion of the Five Elements we have a METHOD. Together these give us a GROUND to operate on each of the three levels – below, above, within. The alchemy secret to dissolving reactivity is to grow the amount of neutral force (Yuan Qi, Original Breath) in our body. The more neutral Qi our core energy channel can consciously hold, the harder it is for polarized patterns of reactivity to get embedded and control us.

This is HUGE. It allows INTEGRITY of our horizontal (relational self) and our vertical (spiritual Self).  Most important, it is practical – IT WORKS. It just needs to be explained in psychological terms that allow us to RESPOND CREATIVELY to the feelings that arise within us. It’s Taoist principles, applied to Western body-minds.

How the Fusion Process Got Changed Over the Last 40 Years

I edited the original Fusion of 5 Elements book for Mantak Chia in the 1980’s. Chia added a lot of stuff (the last four formulas in the book) that was not part of the original Fusion. This shifted the Fusion 1 practice from a psychological-energetic method to a cosmic process with planets, heraldic animals,  stars, etc.  taken from higher One Cloud alchemy formulas. I strongly urged Chia to remove that cosmic material, to keep it simple and focused on human emotion. He didn’t take my advice. Over the decades, Chia has added even more cosmic layers to Fusion that were NOT part of the original process, and put out a new book that has even more complicated visualizations.

Why I Strongly Advise “Do NOT Shoot Your Pearl Out the Crown”

My feeling is one cannot manage the cosmic Qi flow from planets and stars until one can manage the basic flow of emotional Qi and reactive feelings inside one’s body. If you visualize and prematurely download a lot of planet and star energy, it becomes impossible to discern your own personal reactive emotional patterns. Your shadow side patterns get lost, or go into hiding beneath the storm of mental busy-ness. This is called a “spiritual bypass”, a form of self-sabotage. It explains why so many of Chia’s students cannot move beyond Fusion into the higher Kan & Li (Water & Fire) formulas of One Cloud. They feel they have not yet “mastered” Fusion. I teach in Europe, and have found many students waiting years before they progress to Lesser Kan & Li because they feel inadequate in their Fusion practice. This is a big mistake. Fusion is only foundation work, the Kan & Li process is the true heart of inner alchemy.

The problem of staying emotionally grounded is further complicated by Chia’s borrowing a Tibetan method called powa. I was present when Chia learned it from a tantric Buddhist teacher, John Mann. The Tibetans use powa as an emergency-exit method when you are dying, a way to shoot into the astral plane (so the lamas can download their knowledge into an embryo or young child in the hope of perpetuating Tibetan spiritual culture).

Chia pretends  that shooting the pearl out is an ancient Taoist method, but as a very thorough Tao scholar I know that it does not exist in any Taoist text and was not part of One Cloud’s original transmission. In Taoist texts, only after years of practice and completion of all the alchemy formulas might one’s mature Inner Sage spontaneously exit the crown to explore other realms. Nowhere will you find neophyte adepts using post-natal visualization to forcibly shoot (powa-style) an immature pearl out the crown of the head into the far and totally unknown reaches of space.

Tibetan Safety Precautions Ignored by Taoist Borrowers of Powa

The Tibetans rarely practice powa because they know it shortens your life – you are shooting your jing (body essence) out of the body, which weakens it. Even if you visualize it coming back, not all of it does. Jing (part of the pearl) is “sticky”, it has sexual energy embedded withini it, that bonds with unidentified entities and essences in the low astral plane. These may get glued into one’s shadow side – these beginners have no clue as to what is happening to their pearl out in astral space.

The main danger is that students get spiritually stuck in the low astral, and stuck trying to “master” the impossibly complex visualizations of Fusion. They never get past visualizing post-natal Qi. The most important thing in Tao internal alchemy is to penetrate into the formless realms of pre-natal Qi within the core channel of one’s own body. You don’t need to ever leave one’s Energy Body. It will naturally and gradually expand over time to embrace the entirely of the cosmos, as taught in One Cloud’s higher alchemy formulas.

I appreciate Mantak Chia’s willingness to innovate (he is born in the Year of the Monkey). But he has impatient false yang Qi that is not an ideal model for Western students. I know back in 1997 that Chia himself shot his pearl out into space and went “missing”. His wife thought he had a heart attack. He was out of body and did not return to consciousness for several days. He woke up in a hospital surrounded by doctors scratching their heads.

Nor did Mantak Chia recall where he went to – so what’s the point of unconscious astral travel? It is not the Way of inner alchemy. This is lower level dream travel work, but not always done skillfully. I have seen too much evidence that these particular “innovations” are not spiritually safe nor advancing students on the lifelong journey back to Origin (taiyi Great Oneness and wuji Stillness and Pure Openness). This is a case where students must not give up sovereignty over their personal Energy Body, even if someone claiming to be “their master” tells them to do it.

It’s yet one more example of why I avoid any kind of “master” title – it robs the student of focusing on Self-Mastery. This is a case where students must not give up sovereignty over their personal Energy Body, even if someone claiming to be “their master” tells them to do it. Alchemy is an experimental spiritual science, not a social or religious organization. It’s not a martial arts club with a hierarchy of masters and grand masters. If you buy into that, you are stuck at the outer level of post-natal Qi.. All of the mastering process, the self-discipline, is happening internally.

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Below are details on my annual spring Fusion of the Five Elements: Emotional Alchemy seminar.  If you cannot make the live seminar, learn it from audio download. But you’ll want the skill set from Medical and Spiritual Qigong Fundamentals 1 & 2 (Red Dragon Spinning Pearl Orbit, Inner Smile, 6 Healing Sounds). To order online Fusion 1 course: https://healingtaousa.com/product/fusion-of-five-elements-1-emotional-alchemyaudio-cds/.

Usually I recommend students buying the entire Fusion 1-2-3 package with the DVD. It’s cheaper and after finishing Fusion ! will soon be ordering Fusion 2/3. FYI, it is possible to do the Fusion 2/3 course offered in April without doing Fusion 1, which you can pick up later.

Remember to embrace the feelings rising up like sap within your body this spring from the Year of the Yin Earth Pig.. Please use that gift from the Qi field to dissolve old reactive patterns and birth a long-lived and well integrated li

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March 9 & 10, 2019.  Sat 9-6; Sun 9:30 am – 6 pm.