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Dear Lovers of Living in an Enlightened NOW, a super-healthy body, in Unity with the Great Beyond:

I have a question.

I am on a Taoist path.

But can Tao be clearly defined?

Lao Tzu in 500 b.c. offered the Original Tao path as a practical Way of Life (pronounced “dow”. Scholars use pinyin Dao).

    The Chinese character for Tao means “natural Way” or “walk a path”. Natural, in the way that trees don’t struggle to grow, or need to be taught. They just grow.

    Humans are the same – we will grow, no matter what. But can we truly accept – and love – the energy flowing within our body that is growing us?

    Tao is a paradox. Unlike major religions, it has no “official doctrine” of salvation, no stories about God(s) creating the world.  It has a cosmology with principles, that describe the unfolding of a cosmic Qi Field.

    Tao

is abstract, a philosophy, and yet is also very grounded, rooted in Nature and its cycles. Original Tao had no deities.

    Earlier dynasties had the world first monotheistic relgion, with a single Ruler God named Shang Di. But only the Emperor and the wealthy could contact it.They would offer it human sacrfice, usually captured enemies.

Lao Tzu erased that religious hierarchy, which made him a revolutionary. Shang Di was replaced by an impersonal Qi Field accessible equally to everyone.

    Tao has helped me navigate complex Yin-Yang pathways in the physical world. Yin-Yang includes ANY polarity: male-female, good-evil, love-hate, suffering-bliss, etc.

    Yet “Return to Origin” was Lao Tzu’s main theme – how to restore our common intangible Source – while still living in a physical body.

RADICAL. No one needs to die and go to Heaven to figure out the mystery of life.

    Wow! I admire Lao Tzu’s spiritual ambition and his deep commitment to embodiment. He defines Tao as a feminine path, honors The Mother of All Things.

    Very different from most Old Boy religions, which secretly are anti-feminine. They hate the body as the source of desire, suffering and sin. They want to escape earth, go to a dis-embodied Heaven.  

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       How Do You “Do” the “Way”?

    When I first read the Tao Te Ching (“The Natural Way and its Inner Power”) in college, I loved its poetic truths. But I asked myself: “HOW do you actually DO it?”

    Decades later, after diving deep into qigong and inner alchemy, I figured out you don’t really “do” IT. Tao is always happening.

    It functions through a Qi Field that flows effortlessly, constantly renewing and harmonizing everything within the cosmos.

     If  TAO does all that, without working up a sweat, what is left for us humans to “do”?  How do we respond to our body’s spontaneous self-arising?

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-Merging into Tao 

Speeds Our Evolution

    Tao is a process of unstoppable change. No cosmic entity is in “control” of it. But we can increase our personal causal power, deepen our embodiment, and speed our evolution, by merging deeper into its Qi Field?

    By personal surrender to it, one gains control over the stream of Qi flowing through our individual body-mind. When we open our heart to its Qi Field, the Qi flows more openly into us.

    The “Te” in Tao Te Ching (pronounced “de”) is our soul’s “inner power”. This gift from the Tao, embedded into every soul, gives us the power to accomplish our mission in life – as our service, or “return gift” to the Tao.

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Authenticity = Follow Your Own Way

    Everyone, and everything, is supported by the Tao. Even when we feel unloved and desperate, it’s all part of the cosmic dance. Yes, that includes Evil and suffering – which stimulate our awareness of their polar opposites, Good and Pleasure.

    In modern-speak, our personal Way (Tao) is what ever empowers our authentic “self-process”.

    That’s why Original Taoists don’t follow anyone else’s Way. It will eventually feel fake. You can learn from others without giving up your Way. You make them part of YOUR Way.

    Every moment of our life is our Path. There is no “belief in something outside of us.” Just like trees don’t need to “believe” in God in order to grow.

    Each of us is a unique microcosm of the unfolding Great Tao. We are each gifted with impersonal Pure Love of ALL Life, arising from the Qi Field.

    Every human has the Free Will to express that divine love in their own personal Way.  Personal love is the unique joy of being Human.

    Tao cosmology describes a kind of universal Prime Mover called “wuji“. But it cannot be defined, believed in, grasped, or controlled. Wuji is the “Un-knowable Supreme Mystery”, not a Ruler God.

   My Tao practices taught me that when we align with Tao, we can steer its Qi Field in a direction guided by our soul (ling, lit. “heart essence”).

    Our soul spark is also flowing from Source, so it should know what is going on in higher dimensions. Certainly it’s more awake than our sensory-driven ordinary heart-mind (xin).

  Its job is to navigate physicality. But most people get caught in its trance, the illusion it’s more real than the many other dimensions of Self.

    I embrace Tao as a unique, simple, whole-body natural philosophy. It advocates we live a simple life in harmony with a conscious cosmos. Its a Self-guided path for us tiny “beings” living inside a giant cosmic “Being”. 

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Tao Temple Religion – 

How Does it Fit In?

Temple of Heaven in Beijing, 14th cen.

     700 years after Lao Tzu wrote the Tao Te Ching, a hermit named Zhang Daoling had a vision. He claimed “Lord Lao” instructed him to start a religion.

    In 142 c.e. he founded Celestial Masters sect. It temples, ordained priests, statues of deities — all owned by the emperor. 

    It was a business deal: Zhang needed his financial backing. In exchange, the Emperor was crowned the Son of Heaven.

  This turned Tao into a cultural project. Radically different from the Original Tao, which could not be controlled by any earthly ruler.

    1700 years (13th cen. c.e.) after Lao Tzu, an obscure Taoist cult with a few dozen followers based in a cave, overnight exploded to 20,000. temples.

    Why did the Complete Perfection Sect (Quanzhen) suddenly thrive, when hundreds of other local Tao groups disappeared in history’s dustbin?

    Simple. The Emperor, Genghis Khan, decreed all Quanzhen temples did not have to pay taxes or do hard labor. It was a shrewd move to buy instant religious support.

    Every temple in China immediately converted to this obscure sect. But this was cynical self-interest, not a ground swell of spiritual support for Taoism.

    Ironically, Genghis, who conquered China, was the world’s biggest mass murderer. His ruthless Mongol horde killed 45 million humans!

    Today the sect’s monks and nuns are “religious workers” serving the the Khan’s latest successor – the  atheist Chinese Communist Party.

    Does this sect have some heavy karma to work out?  The former Vice Abbot of Mt. Hua, after leaving his job and the sect: “Quanzhen may be headed for extinction, Its death will be part of natural Tao cycle”.

    These religious Taoist sects serve the Chinese people in valuable ways. They are place holders for a rich ancient past, Their temples offer a therapeutic space for the Chinese, who don’t believe in psycho-therapy.

    These religious Tao sects cannot and have not been successfully exported outside China. They mix in Buddhist, Confucian, and state-ownership values, which dilute and rigidly distort free-flowing Taoist ideals.

    They lack the universal appeal of Lao Tzu’s Original Tao. Its adherents are now called Wandering Taoists.

    That’s why on my China Dream Trip (Sept 6-22, 2024) https://healingtaousa.com/china-trip/current-dream-trip/  we visit Hangu Pass, where Lao Tzu transmitted the Tao Te Ching.  

    I want folks to feel the vibrational difference with the Taoist (religious sect) temples we visit.

    On the 2016 Dream Trip we did a Primordial Tai Chi Ceremony at Hangu Pass that left folks feeling spiritually drunk with Celestial Qi.

    We will visit nine of the most powerful Tao temples in China on this September Dream Trip. But Hangu Pass Transmission Site is the most amazing Tao power spot I’ve found in all of China.

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                            Lao Tzu:

Creation Combusts From Within

    Lao Tzu described Original Tao as free of any Ruler, divine or worldly. Creation is a spontaneous “self-arising” (ziran) from wuji, the cosmic womb. It’s the “conscious combustion” of ALL things from a single energy. This he called “the One”, a.k.a. Yuan Qi or Original Breath.

Taoist wuji is not to be confused with the physics Big Bang Theory. That explosion is mechanical, without any self-awareness of birthing a unique, self-conscious cosmos based on Free Will and Love.

    In verse 42 Lao Tzu described how “the Tao births the One, the One births the Two”, a Yin-Yang pulsating Qi Field made famous by the taiji symbol. The Two then couples with the One, to birth “the Three”. This is why Taoism is filled with holy trinities.

    The Three forces – Yin, Yang, and Yuan – spontaneously combust to birth “the 10,000 Things”, i.e. our physical reality. This is not a one-time event like the Big Bang, but happening NOW, in our Eternal Present Moment.

    In the Taoist combustive process, there is no hierarchy, no top down Ruler controlling the destiny of every being. Nature  all combusts from within, not from a deity “above”.

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  Lao Tzu’s poetic treatise in 81 verses inspired 800+ commentaries and translations over the next 2500 years.  Philosophers, Confucians, Buddhists, political analysts, business men, parents, cosmologists – each found it supported their unique Way.

    Exciting. But also confusing. Does it mean TAO is totally subjective? Does “Tao”mean whatever we want it to mean?

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Tao is Umbrella Term in China,

Used by Many Groups

    Most Westerners do not know that “Tao” in Chinese is NOT owned by the many schools, sects, Wandering Taoists or the 750 million peasant Folk Taoists that comprise the amorphous, modern “Tao-ism”.

    Tao is used by Buddhists and Confucians as an umbrella term for the totality of “All That Is”. In ancient China, other schools of thought, such as Mohists and Legalists, all used the term Tao, centuries before any school of Taoism had accumulated enough authority to claim that title.

    This umbrella term ha survived into modern times. I attended  a New York City event advertised as a “Taoist Initiation”. They served a great vegetarian meal, then started chanting. I noticed their altar had statues of Buddha and many deities on it.

    I asked what sect of Taoism they represented. They were shocked I knew anything about Taoism in China. They finally admitted they were a Buddhist group of missionaries from Taiwan.

    But it wasn’t false advertising. “Tao” was their chosen umbrella term for “highest spiritual authority”.

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Tao as Loving Energy Science

 Healing Tao USA logo reverses trigram positions. It couples fire & water spheres = combustion of alchemy in the “eye” of a Vesica Piscis.

    I’ve westernized the language of “my Tao” – a combo of qigong and inner alchemy meditation. I call it a “Loving Energy Science”. It offers moderns access to the single energy field that lies hidden beneath material science and deity religion.

    It unifies them, ends their 400-year paradigm war that began when Galileo, after declaring the Earth revolved around the Sun, was arrested by the Pope.

    Tao directly connects us to a deep Qi Field. It simultaneously births all higher dimensions (“Heavens”), AND regulates trillions of stars and 50 billion species on our planet Earth,  AND juggles the Free Will impulse of 8 billion Human souls to fulfill their destiny.

    It’s quite a feat, to create all this at once. A major realization from my Tao practice is that Heaven, Earth, and Humanity all occupy the same creative Space at the same Time.

    That could serve as working answer to the question, “can TAO be defined?”

    We just need to expand our vibrational bandwidth to enjoy their orgasmic combustion.

    Humans have a special role in this cosmic dance. Lao Tzu says heaven and Earth are the “parents” of Humanity. As their Child, we have been gifted with a high level of Free Will.

    This gives us the power to embody “wu wei”, the art of living spontaneously within each soul’s unique mix of Qi frequencies. 

    As we take each step in life, Tao unfolds, from within, this Heaven-Earth-Human Trinity effortlessly in front of us.

    Simple and beautiful. Can you allow your Self to feel the awesome power of Nature flowing within your body? Can you open your heart wide to love all partners in this cosmic dance?

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