Healing Tao USA LogoCenter Star = your True Self Tao of Balance and Harmony
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Tao of Balance and Harmony
Song of a New Heaven on Earth
By Michael Winn
Tao births the One.
One births the Two.
Two births the Three.
Three births the 10,000. things.
– Verse 42, Tao Te Ching
This Healing Tao USA logo is a map of Higher Consciousness based on Taoist cosmology. I designed it based on decades of exploring the secrets of Taoist internal alchemy meditation, deep experience of qigong (chi kung), and study of the ancient classic – I Ching: Book of Unchanging Changes.
The I Ching is the foundational text of Chinese culture. Several modern books have been written about its 64-hexagram structure having parallels to the 64 codons of DNA’s spiraling double helix.
Are you ready for a quick journey deep into Taoist cosmology?
The logo maps an image-symbol of a vibrational experience: flowing cosmic consciousness is being ‘sung’ into individual physical forms through a pattern of subtle tones. A subtle tone is just a vibration (usually inaudible) moving in a particular pattern. It can be known by the shape of what is created.
Just as Nature sings itself into existence, we each sing our human body-mind into existence. But humans are generally not aware of how we ‘sing-vibrate’ the shape of our body-mind and co-sing our whole reality.
This is known in the West as “Music of the Spheres”. But only adepts of inner alchemy understand the practical process of stepping those celestial tones down into physical reality, or vice versa. When you sing-vibrate your Personal Energy Body back up the scale to Origin, you attain spiritual immortality. This can be achieved while remaining in your physical body.
The Healing Tao USA logo image expresses the principle of balance in the yin-yang pulsations of the universal Qi field. Qi, a.k.a ‘chi’ (both pronounced “chee”) is the subtle breathing of Nature as a living entity. Yin-Yang is any polarity – male-female, positive-negative, sun-moon, suffering – joy, etc.
The opposing polarities breath life into each other, stimulating a dynamic, creative flow that is always in in equilibrium. But what generates this Yin-Yang dance?
At the center of the cosmic matrix is a third force, non-polar or neutral, called Original Breath (Yuan Qi). It stabilizes the Yin-Yang dance in a pulsing spiral of expanding and condensing harmonics. It sings an eternal song, going up and down the cosmic musical scale from Source to Creation and back. Amazingly, it never repeats itself, is always exploring and individuating new realms of harmony.
Tao as Musical Cosmology
Each of the eight trigram tone-symbols has three lines or notes that form a musical chord. The eight trigrams are from the Early Heaven (formless) arrangement, in which each trigram-tone is the mirror opposite of the trigram-tone facing it. So three solid (yang) lines will oppose three broken (yin) lines.
This creates four pairs of musical chords that represent the primordial Tao or Nature ‘singing itself into creation’ as the four sacred directions/ cardinal vibrations.
Note that the pairs of trigrams opposing each other form a hexagram, with six lines total. If you count the number of “strokes” (yang solid line – 1 stroke, yin broken lines = 2 strokes), you will see that every hexagram has 9 strokes in it.
Why Nine?
In Tao numerology, 9 is the Number of Completion. It takes 9 spirals (or musical chords) to Return to Origin, to the Fundamental Tone. This is symbolized by “9-Dragon Walls” built all over China, depicting a sculpted motif with 9 spiraling dragons. (Read my essay Are Dragons Real Beings? Yes!)
These spirals symbolize our human evolution through the 3 major heavens (Later, Early, and Primordial Heaven). We must transform the 3 Human Treasures of Inner Alchemy – Jing (substance), Qi (subtle breath), and Shen (spirit) in each heaven. 3 Treasures x 3 Heavens = total journey of 9 spiral-tones back to Source. ————————–
In the Early Heaven bagua, every opposite coupled trigram-tone pair has 9 strokes, which symbolizes a Completion. The next number after 9 is 10, or 1+0, which begins a new cycle of creation, but at a higher octave. Number 1 = Fundamental Tone, Return to Origin, the main theme of Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching classic.
Thus 1 (first octave), 10 (second octave), 100 (third octave) suggest an infinite process of “new cycles” or “new beginnings” within the complexity of Creation that are all nested and resonate with each other. In Tao Numerology, all these number cycles reduce down to “1” (e.g. 1 + 0 + 0 = 1), the Fundamental Tone radiating from the Cosmic Heart. This is how Simplicity and Complexity always stay in harmony through the heart.
The fifth direction ‘ the Center ‘ is symbolized by the five-pointed star emerging from the ‘vesica piscis’ or sexually coupled large red (fire) and blue (water) spheres. Three forces are coiled inside this geometric vesica piscis: the black and white spirals of primal yin-yang, the 5-pointed star of 5-phases of Creation, and the golden glowing sphere of Original Breath, or yuan Qi, radiating from the center..
In the center of the star is a tiny circle, representing the Original Breath emerging from the Supreme Mystery, or wuji. This center can never be fully known, it is the Mystery beyond all other mysteries, the Source of our cosmic Source. Yet this Mystery lives inside each of us. It divides itself out three times into:
- The Fundamental Tone of Oneness (yuan or Original Qi field).
- The Qi field of Two-ness (Yin-Yang polarity).
- The Five Phase cycle (five-ness called Fire, Earth, Gold, Water, and Wood).
These three core layers of tonal patterns are vibrating simultaneously in everything in nature, creating the seasons, the flow of Qi inside our body meridians and organs, the spin of galaxies and atoms.
But there is yet another, deeper level of this Tao Numerology.
The four pairs of trigrams x 9 strokes each pair = 36 strokes or tones in the total I Ching bagua.
This is where the notion of “36 Levels of Tao Heaven” originates.
1. Later Heaven has 12 levels, arising from 12 vital organ spirits in our body. If we harmonize all 12 of our organ spirit, we are in the 12th heaven while still living in a physical body.
2. Early Heaven has 16 levels, symbolizing the 12 Over Souls (aspect of collective Great Spirit, da shen), who create all forms in the 4 Cardinal Directions. In I Ching these are symbolized by 12 “special gua” that go from six solid Yang lines to six broken Yin lines and back.
3. Primordial Heaven has 8 levels, reserved for spiritual immortals who have mastered some level of Individuation, and are thus able to continue creating in their Afterlife.
Total: 12 + 16 + 8 = 36 Tao Heavens.The rate of your soul vibration determines which heaven you will go to when you “graduate” from Earth School, aka “death”.
No matter which heaven you end up in after death, the souls in that heaven will collectively continue evolving and learning to individuate themselves. The purpose of iinner alchemy is to leap to the higheset heaven more quickly, rather than slow group evolution that may take thousands of years.
Five Elements Pattern at Core of Every Human
The 5-pointed star in the center also represents a Completed Human Being. This is any human being who has internalized the five sacred directions/elements/tones within themselves. When this happens, there is no boundary between their body and the body of Nature.
This is a human being in perfect harmony and balance with its environment, they have expanded their awareness to become one with the universal natural flow. It is a state of consciousness that is simultaneously transcendent (multi-dimensional) and immanent (physically present). This describes a True Human (sheng ren), or Sage.
The star expresses the principle of five elements/five phases, which, along with yin-yang theory, is central to all Chinese culture. These principles are the foundation of Chinese medicine, feng shui, qigong, inner and outer alchemy, astrology, face and palm reading, martial arts and war strategy, city planning, the Chinese calendar, etc.
Five Elements is also a universal pattern, found in all ancient cultures as the sacred four directions and the Center.
Flipping Yin-Yang Poles to Rejuvenate Life
The mirroring of the eight trigram tones also suggests a timeless equilibrium of cosmic musical forces that are all held in the Unnamed center, as a 9th tone-force. This 9th tone is the Fundamental, or Original Tone that sings out all the tones of creation.
The eight tonal-trigrams in my arrangement have been changed from the traditional Early Heaven arrangement: each pair of trigrams has been flipped or inverted twice. Heaven (three solid lines) used to be on top, now it is below. Earth (three broken lines) used to be on bottom, now it is on top.
Fire (yang-yin-yang lines) and Water (yin-yang-yin) lines have reversed their positions o the left and right. This does not change the total of 9 strokes for each pair.
This flipping of the eight trigram-tones naturally occurs the ‘refining’ process of inner alchemy meditations. When we meditate, we dissolve our fixed sense of duality/separation by ‘flipping’ the energetic poles inside our body-mind. This is a kind of energetic “cooking” of the deep structure of our Personal Energy Body.
This produces a refreshed state of consciousness, and one that is more stable. This is similar to life and death cycles in nature rejuvenating each other.
The flipping or inverting of any two polarities creates a new awakening of the third force in the center, the Original Breath of Humanity.
Paradigm Shift: A New Heaven on Earth
What does ‘a new Heaven on Earth’ mean? The Chinese term is ‘zhong tian’.
It implies the sexual coupling of Early Heaven (formless plane) and Later Heaven (physical plane). It also reveals that humanity is in a major paradigm shift, a major birthing process, a critical point in the turning of the great cosmic wheel.
Heaven, the formless, is below Earth, the embodiment of form. Heaven supports Earth (vertical axis), and Fire is stabilized by Water (horizontal axis). This represents the free flow of chi or subtle energy between these poles ‘ the state of wu wei manifested.
Wu-wei is the ‘no-resistance’ state of grace natural to every being. It was made famous by Lao Tzu in his 2500 year old classic, Tao Te Ching (daodejing).
Qigong and Meditation as Best Tools for Personal Change
Tao inner Alchemy and qigong (chi kung) are the meditation and movement aspects of an ancient spiritual science. Healing Tao USA has as its mission to make these wonderful spiritual tools available to you. They can help each of us to speed up the process of unfolding our Natural Path.
Alchemy is the ancient term for the natural way to speed up evolution. It allows us to more easily and quickly merge with Nature and the formless Oneness of the Tao while preserving our individual will and responsibility for shaping creation.