I have been reading with great interest the conceptual frameworks that many of you are striving to give voice to. I don’t have an academic mind for spiritual practices, or much else, but have deep respect and gratitude for those who can marry them to their personal experience. Especially when your experience parallels my past and supports my present engagement in Taoist internal alchemy.

I come out of the tantric yoga ranks and have dabbled in western alchemy along the way not fully dealing with the inner frameworks of my own that lay under the surface. Each of those traditions cultivated my inner virtues and gave me tools to access and embody them in service. For this I am grateful.

This is what Michael wrote yesterday which touched me:

“And because most desires are directed at some form, this desire to eliminate desire becomes a judgment against ALL form (also known as Earth). Its a false judgment, because the desire for form arises in the formless, that is WHY incarnation happens. Spirit is transmuting itself into matter because it DESIRES to see itself – not because someone was bad in a previous life (what I call the false theory of Karma).

So the issue of desire cannot be resolved in the formless, since it arises there. Again, the tension between form and formless can only be resolved by a third state, the original (yuan) state of the trinity of jing,chi, shen in the primordial unity-chaos state. That state is not a distant historical memory – its in the deep core of every human being. IMPORTANT TO NOTE THAT JING – ESSENCE OF FORM – IS PRESENT IN THE PRIMORDIAL. Evolution is unfolding that original “self” into the physical/Earth and formless/Heaven planes.”

This stimulates a meditation on my approach to the feminine in my life–whether she be in the form of personal desire, sexuality, feeling or daily physical care.

I realize that this teaching is not new to me. I have read it in various forms, be they new age or ancient texts,have engaged practices that support it, but it is one thing to conceptually grasp and try to form myself into its reflection and another to face the personal frameworks that work against it which I have grafted and held onto for core identity.

I become aware of the nuclear family, cultural and ancestral mindforms that are embraced in shadow. The memory of not having my desires respected as a child to harboring guilt and shame around intimacy and fear for my safety have driven me towards refuge in spiritual traditions.

I could only find support on some level — whether because of a lack in the tradition itself or the level of teacher or my own internal filters, I can’t fully discern — but each carried deep within a revulsion of the physical and a striving to live out the virtues of the prenatal world. I see how this perception/separation is the true sickness behind my ills.

“JING – ESSENCE OF FORM – IS PRESENT IN THE PRIMORDIAL.” And so too the converse? The primordial is present in the Jing.

There is not one drop of consciousness/form left out of heaven.

baba