Learning Taoism

It's not that Taoism is hard to learn.

If you have a need for facts, you can take quite a bit of time exploring hundreds of texts explaining what it meant to so many different teachers and practitioners.

If you need to explore, you can go to countless temples and talk to priests and hermits alike for their angles into Taoism.

If you need, desire, require... etc its up to you to create, paint, build , full fill a path to meet the shape of the empty space we each have inside

The reality of it is: I would say we have a handful of key concepts.

but these concepts merge and burst into the fullness of life...

Becoming the 10,000 little things we each embrace and juggle in our life.

I re-say it, re-phrase the lessons, twist it about so each student can grasp the simplicity. From there you discover release, heart, kindness etc... And then from there, you practice and expand into a fuller nature.

But always remember it's your job to add the flash ;)

Burning Dan by naturalturn

Have fun finding it.

Namaste

PS

Don't forget to play along the way.

Relationship Release

I spend quite a bit of time teaching how to release. In this post lets look at repairing relationships and the process of release.

Relationships evolve over time. A bad relationship is one where the needs within the relationship have changed but the relationship itself is stuck in older patterns. If a relationship doesn't change over time to fit those involved: then either the people inside will be unhappy or over the longer term the relationship will break.

As a result I teach how to release misconceptions holding back or harming the relationship.

However, the process of release is tricky. People often think they only have to release one thing... Yet most times release is a larger process of releasing several co-dependent factors. This is why release is difficult. If you don't release fully, then other hidden problems will surface and seemingly drag you back to the original problem.

Lets look at a specific example of when a relationship is experiencing a break up. Breaking up is of course an extreme form of release.

Breaking up is often a forced release. A forced release means one person in the partnership is unwilling to release. Being forced to release often reinforces unhealthy actions in the last desperate attempts to hold on to relationship. Acts of clinging then just further serve to wedge apart the unhealthy relationship.

When I work with those in separation, the first thing to understand is often times both parties grab onto older patterns to help them move through the separation. The problem being, those older patterns are the reason the relationship broke in the first place. So repeating them sets a person up for extended failures in the future.

I teach in forced separations, it's best to enable the release to help heal each party rather than clinging to what didn't work and ensure a permanent lose of friendship.

When a partner leaves, the process of release has started and it's important to let it run the course for purposes of healing. Any such release is actually much more than moving beyond a partner.

When you release another person to be free: it also means letting yourself be free.

It's easy to make a mistake of placing your fears and thoughts into your former partner. Don't project what they are or are not feeling! If you do that, you will hurt yourself, them and further push the partner away.

This is why I teach a person to use kindness in the process of release. Kindness permits a person to minimize damage within a separation and enables people to repair longer term relationships.

The release process includes stopping all self punishment of yourself for what you might have done wrong in the past. Don't punish former partners or yourself for past mistakes, doing so pushes others away and also ensures re-living past mistakes.

People often insist on holding to something of their former partner. Strangely people usually choose to hold to the mistakes that broke the relationship in the first place. On the surface this is done to figure out what went wrong. Yet deeper underneath, this is done to hold on to something of the old relationship. This is projection and only pushes partners further away. So again part of the release is letting go of the need to know, to need to "project" into another personal fears and problems.

Release the mistakes of the past, in order to be free and find a path true to the heart.

Release is a very critical process, but understand release has many levels.

A short post for a complicated time in a person's life. The goal is to help remind a person, when finding oneself in any process of release: to be careful, take pause and follow the course of release in a manner that lets you grow, rather than letting the release break you in half. It is always possible to turn any process of release into a positive experience, but it isn't always a simple path to discover.

Release requires both patience and self kindness to navigate.

Namaste

Questions: Prayer

I received this question last week

If you will, when you pray, to whom do you pray? Keep in mind that I understand the word pray as a hebrew word which literally means 'to ask'.

I don't pray in words, or in direct asking:

The process of prayer is a process of connection to wholeness, touching into the weave of living unity.

While in Taoism we do have phrases and such. I don't go there since it's too easy to misinterpret the translation.

I think the best way for me to say this is:

I pray with a mixture of:

1. Seeing a wholesome connection to be made,
   
2. Asking out: By speaking in personal actions of kindness, that clarify that connection.
   
3. Then releasing into acceptance

If you live well, life itself is the prayer and your dance of actions speak out and ripple to replay back with answers to prayers put forth. Simply in this mixture of intention, personal action and acceptance.

A Taoist friend who runs a weekly circle sent me this

A man walking through the forest saw a fox that had lost its legs and wondered how it lived. Then he saw a tiger come in with game in its mouth. The tiger had its fill and left the rest of the meat for the fox. The next day the gods fed the fox by the means of the same tiger. The man began to wonder at the greatness of the deities and said to himself, “I, too, shall just rest in a corner with full trust that the universe will provide me with all I need.”

He did this for many days but nothing happened, and he was almost at death’s door when he heard a voice say, “ Oh, you who are in the path of error, open your eyes to the truth! Follow the example of the tiger and stop imitating the disabled fox!” Sufi

Many Taoists call upon the immortals or a particular immortal to focus the prayer. Yet know being immortal is accepting one's full nature.

I call upon my heart and a connection of completeness we all share with the universe. Some would term that a higher power. In my acceptance, the weave into which we perform the asking doesn't need to be defined, as such you can even say Tao at that point...

There is a point in Taoist practice where one achieves clarity of thought, no thought, just potentials which as a practitioner we embrace, activate and explore. I teach this to all my students, it's a core part of how to explore Taoism.

I no longer channel thought since it's outside to how I even "think" so to speak. On a normal day to day moment, I let my mind reside within a area of crystal like clarity.

Meditation and mantra are practices to focus awareness. Now what happens when you simply live in clarity and awareness outside the need for meditation and mantra? This means being within an undefinable space where clarity of thought... means no thought, but rather simply being fully present in one's life.

It's when in this clarity, it's possible to channel, to help others, or pray, by holding space in manner to aid another person's heart of being, in kindness to share and open up potentials for others as required when they are open or are in release to discovering their nature. To help assist connection to occur.

This is a form of prayer: but channeled of kindness in supporting those around us. To help connect another truly: both to their center of heart and to the larger world they are part of.

How I say and do this... well depending on who I talk to... I can describe it in a thousand different ways, all the same thing... just perception colors how we label the process.

and for many this is...

Prayer.

Namaste

Today's Poem

Tides of Color

Plunging into a pool of color
Moods wash and pass as weather
Fronts and storms
Stirring up depths and sediments
Disturbing inner peaceful Blue

Mixing within
sky Blue freedom
Pushed along
deep Blue ocean currents
Frozen by
glacial ice Blue indecision

All these shades
Becoming crackled Blue

Tomorrow I will try another
Being the light, is to choose a color
To reflect of our inner nature
while bursting to full fill ness
outwards back to clarity
Within these tides of color


--------------------------------------

Just playing in Blue right now. Blame it on Peony. :) Her blog entry shifted my mind into blue today. Check out her blog, she has a wonderful writing style both honest and colorful.

Namaste

Wednesday now

I just finished drinking that tea

only to discover it's Wednesday now

Time is so not linear ;)

Namaste

Monday 7 am

Ah Monday

Not a moment for wisdom, just some hot tea

Being wise can come later after I have had a chance to experience the half sleep waking up place between rooster calls, morning stirrings and paperwork.

:)

Namaste

Spring

Yes, spring has come
This morning a nameless hill
Is shrouded in mist.

Basho

Right now I feel spring
She is here, Perhaps hiding behind the clouds
But she is here

It's time to say hi to old friends
Upon a nameless hill
Once again

Namaste

Reasons for life

Another blogger Leon wrote a larger and good post on life observations which included this line

It is difficult to understand why we are here on this planet.

Immediately I thought the following:

We are here to be ourselves no matter what larger reasons that might or might not exist.

So why worry about larger reasons and instead enjoy the personal reason of just being alive :) to then being yourself: be it as anne, leon, casey, bob, susan, linda etc

I find all this interesting, when people are unhappy: unhappy at being themselves since they have been taught to be someone else by media, family or culture.

Once you alienate yourself, you alienate and remove the personal reason for life itself.

Hence the reason why we find so many people searching in circles, while missing their own center, their own heart of being themselves on their own terms.

Peace

Passing by in Kindness

Helping others doesn't have to be hard or overly complicated

It's core process is simple where kindness ripples out and it makes more difference than what most people ever think. Mainstream culture has forgotten heart in the rush of the day.

Julie and I just mix it all together. Been doing this for years really, but it catches one off guard at times when just seemingly randomly starting to help another. It's not purposeful as much as just realizing a person needs a smile or kind word and it moves from there. Not complicated, but it typically makes all the difference as it happens often at the "right" time since it naturally just arises from the moment. If you flow the kindness in the right moment, the acts of kindness typically are pretty easy actions that flow along with your own life, without resistance.

Since it flows into

Sharing the ride in our longer journey of exploration

If even just for a passing moment...

Namaste

Sharing a Moment of my Morning

Take a second.

Settle in a comfortable position.


Make sure you back is straight: wiggle your shoulders

Now drop your shoulders and move your neck gently.

Breathe with this, don't forget to breathe


let out a nice long breath, as you relax your shoulders...


At this moment: a wind, a gentle breeze is coming thru the open doors, feel the air around you, feel it shifting, cool and warm edges dancing across the skin

In the mind release: no thoughts (no measurement) just clarity of the moment.

IN this moment I share with you

• Bird songs:
  one , two, no 4 different intermingle jungle birds
  Sharp and proud songs
  Defining the first edge to our senses
  
  
• Water falling to its pace,
  Tumbling into a new world
  Taking us beyond, the chirping chorus
  
  
• Wind shifting...
  So the trees can speak
  in the tongue of rustling fronds
  Fronds as arms coming down
  Lifting our awareness higher towards the sky
  
  
• Sun and clouds
  Dancing into intermixed tango of shadow and light
  touching us and yet moving without record
  

I am sharing a moment of my life now, to give others a place of center. Take a moment to feel the brief moment I just shared.

Be present
Relax for a moment to know
this is accessible to everyone

Just starting simply; relaxing into awareness of ... connection

All of what I described was in the same second, you can access it at any moment by allowing your mind to connect to the potentials I described: allowing yourself freedom of release.... release into your breath... into potentials of your own life.


This doesn't have to be hard, nor a vacation, nor an escape... Just take a moment to be present in life right now... and discover how everything can expand out in awareness if you simply...

Let go into the moment
not to measure
but to be connected within
by being part of

life

I shared my moment to help a few readers discover their own timeless moment...

I have done this in the craziest work locations or just in the quietest of forests... this is open to experience no matter where you are now.

Try it, you will be surprised in the release where you can go.

Namaste

Answers and Looking ahead

Answers, people seek answers for what might be.. for tomorrow

in the end for comfort's sake alone...

not worth the price, as

to know what is to be... sacrifices what you live as now.

Keep that in mind when looking ahead and planning out what might be. Don't forget to consider the quality of your life in being free


Of course with so many not living freely, it would be natural to only look ahead, not realizing what has been lost in the here and now. And in looking ahead towards only profit and comfort in mind, that only further reduces and limits choices available to embrace in one's life.

---

Some days I do wonder why I do post at all. Oh I know it serves a collection of purposes... and so it meanders , I will continue to post for a while for no reason at all except to ponder, in the same way we talk out loud to the spirits at large.

And we were just hit by an earthquake...

more later

Update:
Small earthquake probably only a 5 or a close 4... no aftershocks... but rolled the house nicely and rolled me off the ball I balance on while typing... heh!

Update:

Yep here it is on USGS a 5.1 south of us.

fun while living on a volcano

Namaste

Flowing with life

I liked this song and video. I first saw it a few years ago and once in a while I stop back to smile.

I especially like the lines

"I won't dare to fix the twist in you.

You will show me eventually what you will do"

We all twist and fold our life into a beautiful living origami work of art. The poetry of our soul. A Taoist heals by taking the twists in our life and using then to climb higher. The twist of our fate and lives are our part of our uniqueness and are used to learn from to live more fully.

Taoist wisdom is within living life itself :) be open and the way is already there to explore

Namaste

Enlightenment In Connection

A beautiful testament on how we are slowly connecting around the world



Namaste

Part of the lost generation

What generation am I within? I think about this at times.

I was born between boomer and busters and am neither. I am not gen x nor y

I am lost between the generational lines. So many people I know are part of this "lost" generation.

And it's a timeless generation, we cross all of time, Wandering into and between societies cracks. Occasionally dropping in to test out a fad or what the mainstream generation is doing... only to drop back out again: since it isn't who we are...

And yet my generation, the lost generation is growing... more and more people are kicking it out, rejecting society's bullshit, the economic totalitarian world government... is just a big lie of a few pulling Wizard of Oz like show with puppet strings backed by a mixture of sinews from corporate, military and police state might and so we drop out, since we don't play the game in tune of dollars. We follow our heart, live to what makes us smile and explore!

Are you part of the Lost generation? Feeling like you just don't belong to society or with peers acting like robotic no one is home inside action figures?

Do you Grok?

Namaste

Patterns and Pride

Our patterns and how we trace them out are important parts of how we connect to the world.

Here is an interesting article from New York Times talking about job lose and pride.

Here also is a song from syntax called pride

While some might think pride as a negative emotion: it isn't. It's false pride that is the negative emotion. False pride is a delusion and dangerous. Real pride in work well done is an emotional measuring stick many use to help define their life.

Pride represents accomplishment that connects to others and then back to oneself. In the current economic situation too many people can easily lose that pride when losing a job. That could be the start of depression and other problems, especially when pride is the last major positive event in a person's life. It's strange how pride at times can be the last reminder of the past a person will hold on to. That is a testament on how powerful pride is to emotional connection of a person's achievements.

While in Taoism we don't spend much time in pride, as a person, when I do something extremely well, that feeling of pride comes up to help give note to the moment. We won't dwell in the pride. To dwell in pride leads to other problems, (a house of cards so to speak) but when you do a kick ass job in something, feel the pride in the heart, :) smile and then take it to the next place of life. Use the pride to move your life onward and not to get stuck on the past. It's the emotional prodding stick, telling a person: see you did do it once, now you can do it again! It's just that people forget to take it forward.

As with everything in Taoism: you experience, embrace and then release.

It's human to have pride at the moment of embracing completion but then it's always time to release pride to move on with the surf of life. Pride should be a series of waves to ride: not a single event in one's life.

Namaste

Trends and The Greatest of Times

We are living in great times, times where people will look back, debate and wonder what really happened...

Of course we are doing that right now: wondering what the hell is happening ourselves.

Trends, look at the trends. It isn't hard to see the various dots, the various actions and events which are both releasing and building up as newer and greater potential.

As Taoists we are trained in practices of both awareness and flowing with potential. The trap for new practitioners is to activate potentials too soon, to read and measure results, and then create the vision to occur.

Don't ask for answers to be, Work now to make you life full. Reach out in kindness and make the times the best they can be. Don't let society dictate your heart nor actions. Live naturally to what is right and work in a way to not be comfortable, but to be alive.

If you do this, people will look back and smile in wonder, they will ponder:

how was it possible for so many to start freshly, to rebuild a new world to heart?

And you might ask me how, and I must smile and say: I just taught you the path, but the action still must come from your heart , your hands, your life.

Seemingly, we were taught to wait, wait for the new Martin Luther King, For Gandhi, For Jesus, For For For others to save and make the difference...

The only difference between any of these famous Saviors and you is one: They just started acting to their heart with kindness... Nothing else.

Live to your heart, dismiss fear and you too will discover a new world...

The secret isn't hard, what is hard is:

Just doing it.

Its not about being the focal point for others, it's just about focusing in on your own heart and living it.

I smile since it's so easy in reality and know this: any excuse you give me to the contrary, any logical or emotional argument against what I say... is just an excuse... and a personal lie you use to disempower yourself. I won't debate this, it just is.

It's your choice to make the times great or your choice... to allow the trends to just carry you further away from your own heart and life.

I am personally living in the greatest of all times, peace and be welcomed to join in with heart.

Namaste

Look to the side for answers.

When reading another person's works, digging into the past to read another person's path to enlightenment... It is never just that. Instead you find clues, and pieces of the story before enlightenment...

If you ever wonder what is missing when reading scripts and text of old:

It is this... you are out of phase to the final path of the author. You have to read to the side and ahead a little. Make a leap of faith so to speak

I watch scholars, historians and seekers try so hard to connect all the dots together from past works with a literal tact... Watching them seemingly so close... yet totally off the mark when not being aware that they have to look to the side, ahead and to the now... to be back in the present and in their heart to complete the puzzle.

Namaste