Tao of Self-Love & 5 Amazing Retreats

There are many levels and kinds of love in this world: personal, divine, platonic, romantic, parental, conditional, unconditional, etc. Self-Love is the jewel hidden in the center of life’s labyrinth, the LOVE behind all the different forms of love.

Qi cultivation can assist in tracking one’s core loving essence to its root. That is possible because Qi = Love arising from the heart of the Cosmos. Qi is the loving Gift of the Life Force that sustains all crreation. In the Taoist view, the very presence of Nature as a playground for life and human love is an act of cosmic love.

Michael Winn’s SUMMER 2018 RETREAT SCHEDULE

Summer Retreats 2018 will be at Michael Winn’s mountain home or in a geodesic dome on new land adjacent to his home. Book your own housing (BnB, list of hotels on website). Geo-locater: 19 Merrills Ridge, Asheville NC 28803. Our private shuttle available if you don’t have a car. 12 minutes from downtown Asheville.

All retreats begin Friday eve 7 pm, end Wed. noon. Sat-Tues: 9:30 am – 6 pm.

Week 1: June 22 – 27: Medical & Spiritual Qigong Fundamentals 1 – 4. (Option to attend Weekend only, Fundamentals 1&2, if space is available)

Week 2: June 29 – July 4: Healing Love: Tao Sexology – with Jem Minor (my wife)

Week 3: July 6 – July 11: Inner Sexual Alchemy: Lesser Kan & Li

Week 4: July 13 – 18:
Sun-Moon-Earth Alchemy: Healing Ancestral Bloodlines. Greater Kan & Li.

Week 5: July 20 – 25:
Star Alchemy: Seal 5 Shen & Awaken 12 Over Souls Causal Power

More details below. or visit http://www.HealingTaoRetreats.com

FEEL FREE TO HIT REPLY – I LOVE HEARING FROM YOU!

Dear Lovers of Self-love and Those Who Cannot Find It,

It’s hard enough to locate the nature of our “self” in the immensity of this cosmos, much less “love” it. Yet my conclusion, after 40 years of serious spiritual exploration: when we cultivate deep Self-love, it is our highest achievement.

What is “self”? What is “love”? Can we even get beyond these words or concepts to directly perceive the Great or Cosmic Self loving its tiny cell as a human self? If our human self is part of Nature, why does it need to actively love itself? Does the situation reflect a needy Creator that births insecure humans to mirror it’s own neurotic split into spirit and matter? Or is there a more complex story here that is being hidden from us, to keep us innocent, so as to not influence our Free Will choices this lifetime – a mystery revealed at death?

“Love Thyself” is increasingly common spiritual advice, perhaps because the Christian “Love Thy Neighbor as Thyself” has proven to be historically too difficult ot follow. It seems a lot of folks hate themself, perhaps subsconsciously, and dump that hate on the neighbor. Or they take it out on blind rampages against society, hence all the mass shootings. So loving your “self” sounds worthwhile, but in reality is an ambiguous, if not a downright confusing task with many layers to it.

The water is further muddied by the growing popularity of Buddhism in the West. Most sects believe there is no intrinsic self, and that any belief in a self causes suffering. Other organized religions are based on some variant of salvation, redemption, or reuniting the physical self with some spiritual essence in heaven. This implicitly burdens the lowly physical “self” with guilt or blame or bad karma for not being connected to Source in the first place. Feels like these accusations are very unfair, that we arrive as innocent infants in the middle of some ancient battlefield between Heaven and Earth.

The Taoist viewpoint on self in China varies, depending on the sect and how they interpret the Taoist cosmology (some have mixed in Buddhist and Confucian ideals). The fundamental Taoist view is that a human being is a microcosm of the macro-cosmos, and that every human “self” or Little Cosmos is spontaneously arising up out of wuji, a mysterious portal of unfathomable Mystery. Wuji is often translated as Nothingness, but this is not accurate. It literally means the Un-knowable. So I prefer to translate wuji as the space of Pure Openness, from which completely fresh and unprogrammed creative impulses express.

The “bible” of Taoism is the Tao Te Ching, literally the “Scripture on the Way and its Natural Integrity”. Lao-Tzu set the standard that every mini-self is inherently good, that it has been given “te” by the Great Tao. This “te” (pronounced “de”), the te in Tao Te Ching, is commonly translated as “virtue” or “integrity” or “spiritual power” . It implies there IS an essence we can call our Authentic self. It is our mission and the power to accomplish it that is given to us by the Tao.

Te/de is where we derive our creative Free Will that allows us to choose our own destiny. Without a self to take responsiblity for our actions, life becomes a mere human puppet play, with higher forces pulling the strings. So when we talk about Self-love, we are really talking about loving our gift of Free Will to create a self, an individual destiny that flows through Time and Space.

But the Taoist self is a PROCESS, a continuum in which the body-personality or heart-mind (xin) and soul (ling) and great spirit or oversoul (da shen) all take part. This is a continuum of lesser self to greater Self. This  process implies that the Tao and Cosmos love themselves — and that humans should also love themselves as a reflection of the larger cosmic Self-process.

This notion of a “processual self” eliminates in one brilliant stroke all the dualistic name-calling, self-denial, guilt-burdening and blaming found in many religious doctrines about who is karmically responsible for suffering. In Taoist cosmology the responsibility for suffering is evenly shared by a multi-dimensional self, which co-creates everything with the Qi field as its playmate and dance partner. Our physical human mini-self process reflects this Cosmic Self-Process. If the Tao loves its creation, this Cosmos, we humans needs to love our self, the life we create.

Tao goes even further, giving our human suffering meaning and value. Suffering is a necessary polarity to joy, part of the human creative process, in the way that an oyster needs an irritating grain of sand to grow a lovely luminescent pearl. Our very ability to feel suffering is a virtue and part of our spiritual integrity as mini-Creator beings with the power to make loving free will choices. When we love ourselves, our suffering transmutes into its opposite polaritiy, JOY.

The Practical Question: How to Best Love Your Self?

Out of this notion of a processual self grew a body of Taoist techniques to speed up the evolution and experience of beauty and joy in the everyday world of suffering. The best of those techniques (in my humble experience) are found in Taoist qigong combined withthe meditative process of inner alchemy, starting with the Inner Smile.

NOTE: Did YOU download my free ebook on the Way of the Inner Smile that comes with this newsletter subscription? If not, go to my homepage and re-subscribe, you’ll get an instant download. http://www.HealingTaoUSA.com

To a Taoist, cultivating the universal medium of Qi is the most DIRECT way of loving yourself. That’s because Qi or Chi is the building block of the Processual Self. As our Chi flows, so our Self goes. That’s why I’ve titled this newsletter “Chi Flows Naturally”. You cannot stop the Self from flowing and changing – it’s totally natural. But you can help it along. That is what it means to “love yourself” more deeply.

I have spent my last 38 years distilling out the best out of thousands of Taoist methods, to help make self-cultivation simple enough for Westerners to easily practice and make progress in deepening self-love. This is why I titled my work in progress Primordial Tai Chi: The Way of Enlightedned Self-Love. Publication has been delayed while I write extra chapters on the cause of evil Qi, and on the Tao of Death: Do Hell and Reincarnation Exist?”

When you love yourself, it spontaneously overflows into the lives of people around you. Since 1995 Healing Tao USA has held a community space in which Taoist kindred spirits could colectively cultivate. This is Healing Tao University’s Summer Retreat program, now in its 23rd year.

Love Yourself by Gifting Yourself a Tao Retreat

These retreats are my practical offering to the planetary process of growing human Self-love. The tuition price of $550 has barely budged in the last 15 years, and is subsidized by my non-profit 501c3. That eans students can write off about 40% of thier costs as tax-deductible. Additional scholarships and discounts (multiple retreat, junior, senior, foreigner, instructor) are available as well, along with extended payment programs at no interest.

I believe these are the most affordable, highest quality energy cultivation retreats you’ll find anywhere. It’s a great way to LOVE YOURSELF in this super creative and dynamic period of planetary change. I urge you to make the leap forward in your self-love and in quickening your life’s higheset destiny.

Check out the list of retreats below starting June 22 and ending July 25. You’ll love being supported by the community of fun-loving, open-minded free spirits that are attracted to this self-cultivation process. This year is a transition year to a new space and so the faculty is taking a sabbatical until the summer of 2019. I will be teaching a single track of five retreats.

First get your questions answered at http://www.healingtaoretreats.com. You can sign up by phone or online, only $150. to hold your spot.

Contact Jan (office manager and registrar) at 888- 999-0555 or 828-505-1444, or email summersupport@earthlink.net.

May the Blessings of Self-Love grace Your Way,

Michael Winn