The post Astrology and Crystals: The Best Healing Stones for Each of the 12 Zodiac Signs appeared first on Conscious Lifestyle Magazine.
]]>BY MONTE FARBER & AMY ZERNER
photo: gabby conde
Crystals can help serve as spiritual power tools to teach us how to bring the mind to a greater sense of peace, the body into a more stable, grounded state, and the spirit into connection with the infinite from which springs all creation. Our power gemstones can remind us of a higher truth and keep us centered in that light. When we become aware of the qualities of beauty, frequency, and color and their possible uses, stone “medicine” may help us explore what our current needs are and how we may transform certain situations by using a stone as a meditative focus and an inspirational power source. Gems and minerals have patterns and pictures on their surfaces that can transport you to another world, igniting your imagination. They are very tactile and soothing to touch and hold.
How are the zodiac signs and crystals related? The idea of healing with crystals was first popularized in the 1930s when the famous American trance psychic Edgar Cayce claimed that his visions revealed that, in the time of Atlantis, crystals were used as a source of energy. He even described a crystal capstone on a centrally located pyramid that could power airships. He also mentioned various specific stones when prescribing healing protocols for the people he read for.
When it comes to astrology and crystals, each stone becomes a meditative amplifier that can help you to transform your situation. Stones can keep you centered and reminded of a higher truth. By looking to the mineral kingdom for assistance in the healing process, we are connecting to tools that enable us to look deeper within so as to obtain an understanding of the cause of the distress that is creating disease. Distress can be caused by negative beliefs, by environmental factors, or by interactions with people, which can sometimes create havoc in our energy field. When we consume alcohol or drugs, we can also affect our energy fields and cause a disruption in our vibrations.
Always remember that crystal healing should be used in conjunction with—and not as a substitute for—conventional medicine. There are many factors that make up our well-being. Illnesses need to be tended to by a trusted physician, with yourself as your best advocate. As we all know, however, stress and distress can also have a profound effect on our health. All thoughts and actions have consequences, creating harmony or disharmony. Disharmony can cause illness. Working with ritual and with healing rocks and crystals help you to create harmony, handle your stress, and feel better.
The following healing stones for the zodiac signs offer a beautiful stability and can help you focus on your strengths so that you can use them to compensate for your weaknesses. When we use crystals or stones as healing tools, they have the ability to rebalance a disruptive vibration so that we can be aware of the reason behind the distress.
Below we describe the nature and special healing message of crystals for each sign of the zodiac. We have gathered the information for these astrological associations through working with them for many years, and below we suggest the perfect power stone for each sign.
The garnet takes its name from the resemblance of its deep red color to that of the pomegranate. It can help bring success in things you passionately believe in and, if appropriate, the sparks of sexual energy. This zodiac crystal may also be useful when wisdom and balance in this most important exchange of energies are needed. If this is so, look within to see if true love, tenderness, and genuine respect and caring are part of your romantic passion.
Garnet can help bring balance and self-awareness and destroy flightiness, leaving in its place love, romance, and sometimes lustiness, for those who need it. Because of its rich color and association with the root chakra, the garnet suggests a powerful influence for sensuality and sexuality. It may help put you in touch with your animal instincts, enabling you to act and react with their pure body wisdom. Therapists who believe in the power of gemstones use the garnet in counseling couples whose sexual chemistry has begun to wane.
For meditation and ritual purposes, the garnet is used primarily as a power stone, to enhance self-confidence and help to manifest personal and career goals. Garnet has properties useful for giving inspiration during times of confusion. The red garnet is a stone of profound love and helps to ensure fidelity in relationships. This astrology crystal is also known as a stone of patience and persistence and is emblematic of spiritual awareness and compassion.
Garnet is highly versatile—it encourages the wearer to search for answers—and the answers that come as a result of this search will be helpful and important ones. Worn on a regular basis, the stone is believed to boost energy and stimulate romantic love.
Garnet’s message: Because it has a bold energy, the garnet makes a perfect amulet for someone whose confidence or self-esteem needs bolstering. Because of its warm vibrations, it makes a good meditation stone for security and intimacy.
Other good gemstones for Aries are: bloodstone, red jasper and pyrite.
Rose quartz is the stone that can help heal the heart, as it works on an emotional level. It can help you to become more aware of the love that is all around you and can assist you in getting in touch with your emotions. Rose quartz teaches us to love ourselves more, thus opening us up to a greater universal love. When we don’t love ourselves fully, we are wounded inside, and a wound will always cry out to be healed. Rose quartz heals emotional wounds by giving compassion and comfort. It can be used to help us to overcome grief.
Like other healing crystals for zodiac signs, rose quartz’s properties include inner peace, tranquility, and all matters dealing with giving and receiving affection.
Unlike the hard-edged, pointed crystals of clear quartz, the lovely rose quartz is found in great veins running through Mother Earth like her life’s blood. Use it when compassion and generosity need to be shown, or when healing and forgiveness are needed. Rose quartz may help those who have suffered through trauma and the pain of an unhappy childhood. If this is true for you, start by forgiving yourself and others. Be gentle with yourself and others; we have all suffered wounds. From forgiveness can come a path to true healing.
You can also sleep with rose quartz beneath your pillow. The pain of a difficult past problem may come up in dreams, but you can better handle this if you affirm before you go to sleep that you are ready to release the pain.
Rose quartz’s message: Self-fulfillment and inner peace require you to love and nurture yourself and those you care about. Work on how to give love as well as how to receive it. Remember to forgive.
Other good gemstones for Taurus are: emerald, malachite and selenite.
Agate is a general protector of the entire body and the entire auric field. Agate can help us to focus on growth and healing. It attracts strength and vitality, and it has the ability to help bring your body into balance. A special property of agate is the blending and balancing of energies for power, protection, and organizational qualities, causing a stabilizing effect. Agate also can help reinforce the body’s connection to the Earth. It can give courage and dispel fears, all of which increase self-confidence. It gives you the strength to carry on, even when you feel weak or tired.
This zodiac crystal offers protection from bad dreams and also protects one from stress and worry. Agates with banded colors were placed at the head of a sleeper to give rich and varied dreams.
Since our earliest civilizations, agates have been prized gems. They were used in jewelry and as power tools in Babylonia. Conjurers in Persia used the crystal to try to affect the weather. In ancient Asia, agates were used to see the future. Studying the circular patterns helped open the pathway to receive guidance and messages by connecting the pathways between the conscious and subconscious minds.
Agate can also be enlisted for emotional healing, especially to resolve bitterness and resentments. It is believed to be a stone of harmony and therefore can help soften feelings of envy by grounding agitation. By bringing the elements of one’s being into harmony, it can improve relationships. Agate also enhances creativity and stimulates the intellect. Carry an agate when you have to make an important decision.
Agate’s message: Placing an agate under your pillow may aid with insomnia and can stimulate pleasant dreams. If you have to deal with numbers, an agate placed on your desk will help you be more precise. You’ll also be more analytical as well as creative in your approach to situations.
Other good gemstones for Gemini are: clear quartz, tiger’s eye and bi-colored tourmaline.
Carnelian grounds energy and helps us to pay attention to the present moment, thus teaching us to focus and manifest our personal power. Use it to encourage strength and the courage to prevail. Carnelian helps to ease stress and anxiety and to improve memory.
Use this astrology crystal when barriers of time and space or discouraging news threaten to stop you on your path. If this is true for you now, it is necessary for you to look below the surface of things in order for you to know what is really going on, for things are not what they seem. There is no reason to give up unless and until you know exactly how things stand. Once you do, carnelian can help you regain your courage.
Carry carnelian with you to guard against those who try to use their power over you. This zodiac crystal can also help you regain the drive you need to pursue your goals or help to give birth to a new project or flesh out an existing one. Believed to prevent depression, carnelian helps to build courage by providing self-esteem and an optimistic outlook.
Carnelian stimulates energy, physical power, and courage, and helps to ground you on the physical plane.
Early Egyptians used carnelian for amulets, as it was thought to protect the wearer from evil, and to prevent anger and envy. Renaissance sages kept a carnelian amulet in the home to protect themselves from curses.
Carnelian’s message: It offers patience while counteracting doubt and negative thoughts. It also assists in decision making by helping us ground ourselves in the present, and make decisions based not on our past, but on our present reality.
Other good gemstones for Cancer are: pearl, ammonite and moonstone.
The citrine’s sunny color helps restore the mind in much the same way that basking in the life-giving light of Father Sun does. Citrine helps one to maintain a positive outlook on life. It removes blocks and fears on all levels and helps one to better communicate with others. Citrine helps create a sense of stability, adds energy and emotional balance, and provides a rational approach to things, grounding us in the here and now.
Citrine’s energy means that a positive, optimistic attitude will produce a positive outcome. Use it when great self-confidence and self-esteem are needed. Stress and fatigue, either emotional or physical, can make life seem bleak and can make you unable to cope with challenges. Make sure to get enough rest and have some fun. Citrine can help you regain your emotional balance. We all stray from our path. How long it takes us to recover is what determines our successes and failures.
Citrine is one of the best crystals for all zodiac signs when it comes to manifesting power on both a practical and a magical level. Because it encourages a healthy ego, self-esteem, and feelings of worth, it empowers its wearer both emotionally and spiritually. New Age healers believe that the stone can increase the significance of dreams and open the mind to new and more positive thought forms. Due to its color, it is believed to strengthen the urinary and endocrine systems.
Citrine is known to clean toxic impurities out of the air and aura. On a supernatural level, it boosts willpower, happiness, and confidence, while reducing self-destructive tendencies. As a result of this, it can also bring good fortune, often in surprising and very unexpected ways.
Citrine’s message: Some therapists believe that people who are have lost a sense of identity because of an unhappy or abusive relationship can reclaim much of their personal power by meditating with citrine on a regular basis.
Other good gemstones for Leo are: amber, topaz and jasper.
This stone acts in a protective way, on both the physical and spiritual levels. Jade has long been believed to facilitate and fortify a long life. The Chinese have traditionally held jade in very high esteem, and it has a lovely history as a protective talisman.
Amulets of animals were carved to promote a healthier, longer life and would attract the protection of the spirits when needed. Jade was also used in rituals to attract wealth and fortune. Statues of this stone for abundance and protection were common. Dishes were often carved from jade. The gem was also believed to symbolize longevity, and therefore food or drink contained in jade vessels would absorb that energy.
Jade energy bestows peace, calmness, harmony, tranquility, and mental clarity, and encourages one to safely express one’s true feelings and emotions. It strongly influences the matters of the heart and can help to improve relationships. Jade is wonderful for repairing relationship connections and ties that have been lost or broken.
This stone also promotes a more unified environment so you may accomplish compromise with partners, family members, or co-workers. Jade inspires and promotes creative thought as a zodiac crystal.
For business matters, you can use jade to unite diverse individuals and get them working toward common goals. It aids in creating a harmonious atmosphere and a desire for success and abundance without materialism or greed.
Jade is also favorable for strengthening clear reasoning and in so doing stimulates excellent decision making. Because it has a balancing effect, jade motivates the wearer to believe that his or her plans and ambitions are worthy of success.
Jade’s message: This is a helpful stone for those who have a nervous temperament or who are easily overwhelmed. The loving energies of this stone will assist you in recovering from emotional trauma because it provides grounding energy and a sense of security.
Other good gemstones for Virgo are: Amazonite, sapphire and zircon.
One of the most ancient protection stones, turquoise is a sacred stone associated with sky energy because of its color. It also brings sky energy to Earth. Prized in Asian as well as Native American culture, it is known as a multipurpose stone, excellent for promoting a sense of self-awareness and the ability to communicate honestly and from the heart. The stone encourages creative thinking, as many do, but turquoise has the power to help channel that creative energy in a productive and useful way.
Turquoise is considered a lucky stone; it facilitates the attraction of abundance and prosperity. Turquoise has a balancing and grounding influence. Its properties include mental relaxation, stress reduction, confidence, attunement, and physical well-being., making it one of the most popular healing stones for the 12 zodiac signs in astrology.
The blue-green turquoise is a stone sacred to many tribes around the world. Use it when you feel the need to call on your spirit guides because you have reached an important time in your life or a crossroads. Turquoise is helpful when you need to restore communication with your Higher Self, and it stimulates your development on the spiritual level. If this is true for you now, it is time to take action to restore your faith. Life often appears meaningless when our faith in the unseen forces that surround and sustain us is weak.
Turquoise can help us not to be distracted by our sorrows. It can help restore our sense of humor so we can enjoy life’s gifts as well as its challenges, for we cannot have one without the other. Miracles can be seen every day. Turquoise is a favorite stone among New Age healers, who believe that it has the power to energize the body and spirit, as well as to balance right brain–left brain disparity.
Turquoise’s message: True communication is about more than words, and turquoise can help achieve this. Carrying a piece of turquoise will help keep you centered, and wearing it improves all the senses, including the sixth sense.
Other good gemstones for Libra are: diamond, chrysoprase and lepidolite.
Obsidian is a stone of protection that prevents one from becoming emotionally drained by others. It can work as a shield against unwanted vibrations and help protect you from physical or emotional harm. Native Americans keep this stone on them to protect them from negative energies or psychic attack.
Obsidian tends to give emotional stability in times of high stress, in part by preventing the draining of energy from the body. The energy to help with grounding is the strongest attribute available in this stone. Keeping obsidian with you helps prevent negative thought patterns and can also be used for space clearing by removing the vibrations of unhelpful or distracting entities.
Obsidian is an excellent crystal-gazing tool. Some practitioners have better luck peering into obsidian’s black depths to reach their subconscious messages than into a traditional clear quartz crystal ball.
The black, glasslike obsidian is forged in the fires of volcanoes, Mother Earth’s way of clearing away the old to make way for the new. It helps with transitions, so use it when you realize that the old must be completely released before the new can enter your life. It may also be useful when obsessions and negative thoughts and actions are blocking you. If this is happening to you, try to let every negative thought and action you encounter in yourself or in others remind you to think and act positively.
This gemstone may help you recover forgotten abilities within yourself. Obsidian can help you to become more aware of your true place in the universe by sharpening your inner vision. It will also help you become more aware of your imperfections and at the same time provide constructive solutions and insights.
Obsidian’s message: Do not give in to the desire to think and act negatively, even if others do. This is a difficult but most powerful teaching. Our negativity comes back to us in unpleasant ways. Obsidian may help you cope with negativity and keep centered in unstable times. Do not resist change.
Other good zodiac crystals for Scorpio are: onyx, ruby and black opal.
The amethyst’s purple color, the color of pure spirit and the seemingly magical things connected with it, is rare in nature. Use it when you need approval from the universe, or when peace and calm are needed. If this is so, try this basic meditation: Take a few moments to breathe calmly and focus your attention on your breathing. Let all thoughts drift away like clouds. After a while you may sense the small voice of your Higher Self. Be aware of the natural fear of not being in control or not knowing exactly what to do next on your path. Amethyst can help you trust in yourself and “let go and let God/Goddess.” Holding an amethyst may help ease the pain and sorrow of a loss or defeat.
Easily recognizable for its beautiful color, this stone is known to promote personal serenity and feelings of peace. This specific astrology crystal derives its reputation for being a healing stone from ancient and medieval times when it was used as an amulet against drunkenness. The amethyst is a power stone on many levels; holds the intention to heal the body as well as the spirit. The amethyst has long been used to open one’s psychic centers.
In folklore, this stone is believed to have a soothing and relaxing effect. Holistic healers sometimes use amethyst to ease toothache and bruising. It calms an overactive mind and brings a sense of tranquility to those who are frazzled by overwork. It is used as a dream stone and to help insomnia. For those who are psychically sensitive, it can improve the ability of second sight. As an amulet, it can be worn as a protective talisman against jealousy, envy, and deception.
Amethyst’s message: Amethyst is believed to be helpful in the treatment of insomnia. By putting an amethyst under the pillow, the troubled sleeper should experience better REM sleep, with less chance of fitful slumber.
Other good gemstones for Sagittarius are: sodalite, sugilite and tanzanite.
Amber is the oldest geological specimen to be used in jewelry. Archeologists digging primitive sites near the Baltic Sea have found evidence of amber jewelry that is approximately forty thousand years old.
This good-luck zodiac crystal brings the purifying, revitalizing force of the Sun and the absorptive, transmuting energy of the Earth together to create a powerful tool. In mythology, Apollo cried amber tears after being banished from Olympus. Medieval housewives would burn amber to bring good energy into their homes. Native American tribal healers used it in fire ceremonies.
Ancient Greeks discovered that if they rubbed a piece of amber vigorously, it became electrically charged. The early name for amber was electron, which is the root word for today’s electricity. Amber’s use as a power tool reaches back to man’s earliest history.
Amber absorbs negative energy, helps to ground one to the Earth plane, and protects the sensitive person. It helps to distribute vitality to our aura, and it centers a person during meditation. Amber can be worn or carried to help calm the nerves. Amber allows a person to receive from the universe, yet assists one in remaining physically alert.
Amber is not technically a crystal but is an organic compound. Some 360 million years ago, extinct pine trees oozed thick sticky resins. As these resins flowed, a variety of living and decomposing matter became trapped inside. Then the resin was made to fossilize under the great pressure from the Earth’s changes. Many ancient traditions associate amber with the universal life force because, essentially, actual life has been trapped inside.
Amber’s message: Amber is excellent at removing self-imposed obstacles on any projects you are attempting to create. It enhances a constructive way of behaving, fueled by self-confidence. It can attract new friendships and aid in focusing your intentions for manifestation, helping you to reach your goals.
Other good gemstones for Capricorn are: jet, smoky quartz and chrysoprase.
Mother Nature seems to have used the deep blue lapis to capture the sky in solid form. The glittering pyrite inclusions against the deep blue backdrop of this splendid stone create a striking likeness of a galaxy. Lapis is an excellent stone to help with peaceful sleep and psychic dreaming. It can bring matters more clearly to the mind. The stone will allow for cosmic communication with other dimensions of reality. Sleeping with this gemstone can help you see the meaning in your dreams more clearly by allowing you to interpret and understand the messages or information that your subconscious is providing.
Use lapis to help with success in business and other worldly pursuits. It is good to use for humanitarian quests and interests, as it has far-reaching effects, just like a galaxy. Early cultures valued lapis lazuli more highly than gold. In Egypt it was customary to bury a lapis lazuli scarab with the dead, as it was believed to offer protection. It is also believed to enhance higher love, powers of intelligence, and concentrated intention.
This zodiac crystal can help you focus on universal brotherhood and sisterhood cooperation to produce abundance. Some other properties of lapis are illumination, wisdom, mental insight, and clarity of thought. It may also help when systems of information exchange, transportation, and communication are blocked. Lapis can help you to communicate your deeply felt beliefs and put them into practice in the outer world. It can help shy, introverted people express themselves. Expressing your true self can free energies you would otherwise waste repressing. Lapis helps to release old, buried emotions, thereby helping to dispel depression.
Lapis lazuli’s message: Meditate with lapis when you need all methods for moving people, services, and facts to be as direct and simple as possible. Use it when you need a higher perspective on your situation. When blocked channels are cleared by lapis, expect energies to be a bit chaotic initially, before they calm down.
Other good gemstones for Aquarius are: fluorite, azurite and labradorite.
The opal owes its fiery beauty to the refractions of tiny imperfections and water trapped within its crystalline cells. The dance of color in opal is the result of light being radiated by microscopic silica spheres. Watching the colors flash when luminous sparkles flicker within an opal gemstone leaves you with little doubt that this is a beautiful and powerful crystal.
This astrology crystal may bring you enlightenment, integrity, or even the fires of romance. It enhances the emotions and amplifies personal traits. Opal can assist you with almost any aspect of your life, such as joy, love, or success. Let your opal fire up your heart’s desire and make your wishes come true. Opal helps magnetize opportunities for things to happen in exciting new ways. Use opal to call in good luck and good fortune, to initiate prosperity consciousness, and to encourage new ideas.
Opal acts as a magnet by helping to illuminate your interests and ability to see great possibilities. It encourages you to dance your life by amplifying your emotions and heightening your experiences.
There are two main opal categories, common and precious. Precious opals are those with the famous rainbow sparkles. Common opals are stones without fire.
If you are bored or in a rut, either type of opal can spark a flame of passion and ignite your imagination, helping you see solutions to mundane problems. It turns up the power in everything.
Adding this gemstone to any prayer, ritual, or creative work will strengthen your intention and affirmation. Shamans used opals in important ceremonies such as vision quests. For divination and oracle use, you may want to wear or hold an opal. It will enhance your attunement to the messages of the Tarot or other psychic readings.
Opal’s message: It magnifies your thoughts and feelings and promotes all intuitive abilities. In ancient times the opal was thought to be a very powerful healing stone and was believed to open up the senses of the third eye. The opal can be a doorway to your spiritual awareness.
Other good gemstones for Pisces are: aquamarine, coral and pearl
This excerpt has been reprinted with permission from Astrology for Wellness: Star Sign Guides for Body, Mind & Spirit Vitality by Monte Farber and Amy Zerner.
About The Authors
Monte Farber was born in Brooklyn, NY. He studied comparative religion and became interested in astrology in 1974 when he met his future wife and artistic collaborator, Amy Zerner. “Amy was studying astrology and I was studying Amy, so I learned astrology! It became our language of love.” Farber’s desire to make astrology understood and accessible to a broad audience led him to devise “Karma Cards: A Guide to Your Future through Astrology,” having sold over 250,000 copies in twelve languages. Farber and Zerner went on to create books, book/card sets, and unique kits that also made other esoteric systems accessible, such as the tarot, alchemy, The Goddess, talking boards, meditation, shamanism, psychic development, and relationships. Farber is now the world’s foremost creator of interactive personal guidance systems. Learn more at TheEnchantedWorld.com.
Amy Zerner is one of the leading collage artists in the world. She uses an appliqued palette of found materials, vintage textiles and amulets to make her worlds of wonder rich with layers of meaning and imagination. For forty years she has used her prodigious talent to create thousands of works of art which embody and convey the inspiration and healing power she has experienced through her study and personal application of ancient sacred teachings. Learn more at EnchantedWorld.com and AmyZerner.com.
The post Astrology and Crystals: The Best Healing Stones for Each of the 12 Zodiac Signs appeared first on Conscious Lifestyle Magazine.
]]>BY PEDRAM SHOJAI, OMD
The Way gave birth to the One.
The One gave birth to the Two.
The Two gave birth to the Three.
And the Three gave birth to the ten thousand things.
— Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching (translated by Thomas Cleary)
These complementary opposites exist in an ever-changing and ever-flowing dynamic state that constantly self-corrects and harmonizes. The ancient philosophers of China used the term Tao for the Supreme Ultimate or the universe as we know it. It is the All. In the beginning, there was Wu Wei, or the Great Emptiness, and from this came yin and yang.
This is one of the most popular Taoist beliefs. Everything in the universe has a yin and yang component to it, and all things have a balance point. For example, there would be no meaning to “up” if the concept of “down” didn’t exist. There is no “hot” without “cold” and so on. This primordial distinction not only relates to everything around us; it is also what fundamentally drives the motion within us. We, being an active functional aspect of nature, exemplify the same polar balancing; with sustained attention to this subject matter, we can find the Tao, or the balance point, in all things.
Essentially, there was the original state of the universe wherein all things were One. There was unity consciousness and eternal togetherness of all things—and then, BOOM! Polarization. All things all at once are now imbued with this elementary concept and this perception of separation. This is the mark of polarity. Now, it is critical to remember that these poles are the seemingly opposite characteristics of the same objects or things. This polarity gives us a dualistic view of the same phenomena. Yin and yang are constituent parts or mirror reflections of the same one, which is simply split into two, the same way a beam of light splits when hitting a prism. In the beginning and in the end, it is all Tao. Polarity is just the game we are playing.
The lists below show some basic examples of yin and yang to better illustrate this Taoism philosophy. These obvious examples will help further illustrate a point in our understanding of human nature—namely, the distinctions we make in our approach to self-growth and enlightenment.
Yin and Yang Examples
Yin: Earth,Cold, Down, Matter, Female, Passive, Soft, Body, Materialism, Science
Yang: Sun, Hot, Up, Energy, Male, Active, Hard, Spirit, Spiritualism, Religion
In our culture, we are either on one end or another. Either you work for Wall Street and drive the expensive car, or you wear patchouli and tour with the band. Either you are a Democrat or a Republican, for abortion or against it, patriotic or unpatriotic, with us or against us, and on and on. The mark of our society is that it is stained with the rigidity of dualistic thinking, and we suffer from its intolerance daily in our public discourse.
According to Taoist beliefs, gray is the fusion of black and white and of yin and yang. It is the understanding that there is balance, communication, and interaction with all things at all times. We in the United States live in a culture that was started by a group of religious fundamentalists (the Puritans), who essentially lived in a world of black and white. They were too much to handle for their contemporaries in Europe, and so they came to the New World to (conquer and) live their way of life. Sex was evil, and women were witches. Everything was black or white, and there was judgment all around. It was neither fun nor tolerant.
We are now living in the shadow of that polarized thinking, and the national discourse echoes that imbalance. The insanity of the Red Team-Blue Team mentality has allowed us to stray from our humanity and has really watered down the quality of human intellectual interaction, the meeting of ideas, and peaceful disagreement. Fundamentalism (in all religions and creeds) is a child of this imbalance; it is a reflection of our collective ignorance—our ignorance of the truth. To attain balance in the world outside of us, it is important to realize that we must first establish that state within ourselves. The external is simply a reflection of our internal state. Therefore, any balance we would like in our lives must come from a genuinely balanced state that originates from inside of us. We are the holographic projectors, and the “reality” we see beyond our flesh and blood is simply the reflection of our internal state. As the ancient alchemical axiom attributed to Hermes Trismegistus states, “As above, so below.”
Generally, Yin and yang, and other Taoism beliefs and practices, represent the totality of creation from opposite sides of each other. Together they are whole, and together there is balance. One cannot exist without the other, and we cannot examine anything without a balanced frame of reference, which requires looking at both sides and finding the middle. The polarity created by yin and yang can be compared to (if we so dare) the breath of life in biblical texts. At first, there is only Tao in this differentiation. Then, movement begins, and the energy of life starts to stir and revolve around itself, swirling the myriad things in the universe into being. It is as if a centrifugal and centripetal force erupted simultaneously, both creating and destroying, rising and falling, growing and decaying. In balance, the universe sustains itself and grows slowly in sentience and capacity. We can compare it to an oak tree. It grows a bit every year and then sheds weak branches in the autumn, which then become mulched as compost for the tree’s own growth the following season. The tree eventually grows so big that the main branches cannot support their own weight, and they collapse, only to become the soil for the seeds of its progeny to grow up strong and repeat the cycle.
The early Taoists learned everything from observing nature, deep introspection, inner energy cultivation, and development of gnosis. They discovered the principle of yin and yang to be the impetus and driving force of all life, and this concept is inextricably linked to the additional Taoism beliefs and practices we will discuss.
Figure 1. Seasonal Interplay
Yin and yang can also be thought of as two inverted waves that are flowing along a central axis. In figure 1, we can see the interplay of the seasons and how they relate to the rising and falling tides of yin and yang. The equinox points are when the forces come together on the axis, and the solstices are at the extremes of one or the other.
If we then take this interplay and add an element of torsion or twisting into a three-dimensional model, we end up with something that looks the double helix of a DNA molecule, as shown in figure 2.
Figure 2. The Double Helix of DNA Resembles the Interplay of Yin and Yang
This double helix DNA serves as the information storehouse for all life on this planet, and the interplay of these strands dictates which proteins are synthesized and how we express physiologically in nature. So to, This remarkable dance between the polar forces directs the language of internal energetic communication and becomes the basis of much of our transformational work.
Once the universe is split into the polarized binary system of yin and yang, there arises a distinction between the different levels of material manifestation. If spirit and matter, which at the level of the Tao are one and the same, are separated with the birth of yin and yang, then we start to see a scale of densification versus illumination. Keep in mind that yin and yang are relative to each other, always. There is no absolute yin to speak of; things are only yin when compared with something else. We can say “hot” when it’s 100 degrees out, and we could say that this is very yang, but that assumes that an average day is, say, 72 degrees. A 100-degree day would certainly be more yang in this instance. But what if we compared that to a 350-degree oven or the surface of the sun? The 100-degree day would be more yin compared to these. There is a density “gradient” from spirit to matter in which matter is more dense than spirit.
Now, taking this gradient as an example, we can hold it as a frame of reference for the Taoist understanding of the Three Treasures: jing, qi, and shen. The Three Treasures also can be organized on a density gradient, with jing being the most yin, or most dense, and shen being the most yang, or least dense.
Per the teachings of Taoism, the polarization of spirit and essence creates the currency of life (the qi energy). It is the medium or language of communication of All That Is. This is why it is so powerful to work with qi. When we understand the dynamics of qi flow in our body, we can begin the alchemical process of bringing the poles of spirit and essence back to a balanced equilibrium. In the duality-free stillness, we have direct access to the zero-point energy field and are capable of rewriting the code of how we manifest in three dimensions via our DNA.
A useful example is to compare these Three Treasures to a candle, wherein the wax is the essence (jing), the flame is the energy (qi), and the aura around the flame is the spirit (shen). The goal is to preserve the essence (wax) and sustain a healthy flow of energy (flame) so that the spirit (aura) can soar. This is a very simplistic example, and much more will be said about this. But before we go there, let’s look at each of the Three Treasures individually.
Jing is the essential vitality that is stored in our body. Remember, the Taoist understanding of reality is intimately tied to the internal understanding of our body and the movement of the life force through us. To understand these dynamics is to gain enlightenment universally. Jing is the most yin of the three treasures, and it represents the core of our material existence. It is a most precious substance that is to be cherished and guarded.
Very similar to the way that polarity created the spectrum of energy to matter, the essence is differentiated as well. The Taoist belief is that we have our “pre-heaven” essence, our “post-heaven” essence, and our “day-to-day” essence.
Pre-Heaven Essence
The pre-heaven essence comes from the blending of the sexual energies of our biological parents. This energy nourishes the embryo and the fetus during pregnancy and essentially comes downstream from our ancestral DNA. It determines our individual, constitutional makeup, strength, and vitality and is what makes us each unique. It’s the hand we’ve been dealt by our parents. A tremendous amount of history, information, and karma comes through our bloodlines via the DNA that gets registered at this level of our essence. Some people are blessed, and many others come in with a number of challenges in regard to this. Now, this is the aspect of the essence that’s the hardest to increase, and much of the information in my book Inner Alchemy will unlock the secrets of how we can do just that through the practice of qi gong. This is an integral piece of the puzzle that must be addressed in our energetic cultivation.
Post-Heaven Essence
In Taoism, the post-heaven essence is attributed to our lifestyles and is quite changeable. It is what we derive from foods and fluids after birth. It’s what we do with ourselves once we’ve come into the world. It has a lot to do with early-stage development and the quality of our nourishment from our birth onward. There is a great deal to say about this topic in regard to healthy bacterial colonies in the gut, breastfeeding, quality of foods, and the loving environment a child is brought into.
We can’t really help what happened before conception or during our infantile development (though, of course, we can do so for our children), but we certainly can help what we do with it from there. This aspect of the essence really can be cultivated and positively affected by lifestyle and practice. In fact, a critical aspect of our practice is to continually refine our essence and increase the amount of condensed jing to work with.
Day-to-Day Essence
If we were to use money as a metaphor, the pre-heaven essence would be a locked-away family trust account that we know is there yet is relatively inaccessible in our day-to-day dealings. Our post-heaven essence would be our money market savings account; we can tap into it—but at a price. And then our day-to-day essence would be our checking account, being deposited to and drawn upon daily for our various needs.
Being derived from the other two types of essence, the day-to-day variety can tap into both the pre-and post-heaven reserves and replenish itself. It serves as the body’s primary backup system. It acts as the reinforcement for all the body’s energies, like a backup battery, supporting our systems when there is an outage. You can also think of it as the overdraft protection on your checking account. It is critical to keep this system healthy for day-to-day functioning in order to maintain health. If we want to enhance our health and state of being, then that is where the Taoist beliefs and practices offered in my book Inner Alchemy serve their purpose. We shouldn’t be just making ends meet every day; instead, we must be in a state of relative overflow and abundance. This will then give us the energy we need to cultivate strong light bodies and open up our perception.
So, although this form of essence is the easiest to access and can be more readily restored, it is still considered jing in the scale of density. It is the baseline backup system for the qi, or energy flow, of the body. Going back to our money metaphor, in relation to the other aspects of essence, our day-to-day is more liquid; however, in relation to our qi or energy flow, it is like a fixed savings account. Again, notice how yin and yang are always relative and how they create a spectrum for comparison. Essence is denser than energy and is therefore less “liquid” in cash flow terms. Our essence is our equity. Yes, we can borrow against it—but at a cost. The point is to store it up and create an endowment that propels us into eternity.
Moving up in refinement from the denser essence, we have our second Treasure, which is our energy. This primary Taoist belief and concept can be likened to all the metabolic and physiological processes in the body that are constantly running. This qi energy is the currency of life. It is always moving and in flux. It is traveling through an energetic matrix or network of channels throughout the body, called the meridians. The Taoist masters knew about these pathways of energy flow for thousands of years; in fact, these pathways are the basis for the practice of acupuncture.
Taking the example of the candle, the energy is the flame; it is what sets things in motion. An unlit candle can be considered potential energy, but it takes that spark of life to get things moving and really make a candle fulfill its purpose, which, in this case, would be to light up a room. Our energy works in very much the same way. It is the life force that comes into a fertilized embryo (once spirit is imbued with matter) that really gets the show on the road; that same energy carries us through our adult lives, helping to fulfill our purpose.
Based on Taoism history, the ancient Taoist masters spent countless hours meditating, cultivating, and studying these phenomena. From them, we have come to understand that there are several types or qualities of this energy to speak of.
Original Qi
This form of energy is essentially the energetic equivalent of essence. It is essence transformed into energy. Being a dynamic and rarified form of pre-heaven essence, it is essentially the foundation of all the yin and yang energies of the body. The original qi serves many purposes in the body; it is almost like a fire starter. When other forms of energy are incorporated into the system, it is this original qi that “activates” them and sets things in motion. In turn, this energy is constantly nourished and replenished by the other post-heaven sources of energy, which we are about to discuss. This original qi is housed in the “gate of vitality,” between the two kidneys, and becomes a very important and active agent in our practice of qi gong.
Food Qi
As the name suggests, food qi is the energy we derive from the food we eat. This is the essential first step to having healthy energy flow in the body, and it stresses the importance of having a clean and healthy diet. This is where the stomach receives and the spleen (and the pancreas) transforms our food into a usable form of energy, which it then raises up to the lungs to mix with air.
Gathering Qi
This form of energy, which is housed in the chest, is derived from the food qi mixing with air. Once the raw ingredients from ingested food are assimilated, they need to mix with air to form gathering qi. This idea really stands as a testament to the genius of the ancient Chinese Taoists. In modern biochemistry, we know that in part of the Krebs cycle, there is an incredible symbiotic relationship with a part of our cells called mitochondria that creates what we call the electron transport chain. Essentially, the mitochondria are part of an energy accelerator in our cells that allows us to use oxygen in a very dynamic process to help extract incredible amounts of energy out of simple sugars. Prior to Taoism philosophy, all life on this planet worked anaerobically (without the use of oxygen); the evolution of this cycle enabled eukaryotic cells (of which we mainly consist) to develop efficient energy-extraction systems. This was the beginning of the evolutionary pathway to more elaborate and complicated multicellular structures, of which we are the end result (as many would argue). Although the ancient Taoists did not speak in this language, they could literally see how these energetic currents moved through the human body; they developed a complicated and very accurate model to describe it.
This gathering qi serves to nourish the heart and lungs; it also flows downward to aid the kidneys. It is just as important as the energy we derive from food, and it becomes the emphasis of much of our qi gong, or energy work. The cultivation of energy and healthy oxygenation of the system are intricately tied to one another.
True Qi
True qi is the form of energy that is the end product of the aforementioned processes. When the gathering qi is formed, it is activated by the original qi (which we called the fire starter); from this interaction, true qi results. True qi is the undifferentiated form of energy in the body that then branches off to perform the various functions required by the system. Per Taoist beliefs, this energy takes on two forms in the body: the nutritive qi and the defensive qi.
+ Nutritive qi: This is the type of energy that circulates internally and nourishes all the internal organs. It is closely related with the blood and, in fact, flows with the blood to bring energy to all the systems of the body. There is nothing in the body that does not interface with this form of energy, as it is the main “currency” of internal nourishment. Think of the true qi as the total revenues a country gets from taxes (food, air, water, and essence). In this example, nutritive qi would be the domestic spending on cities, bridges, infrastructure, hospitals, and so forth. It is designed to nourish the interior.
+ Defensive qi: If the nutritive qi is the domestic spending, then this form of energy is the armed forces and border patrol. It protects the exterior from pathogenic invasion and regulates body temperature by controlling the opening and closing of pores on the skin. It is truly the gatekeeper to the body and needs to remain charged and healthy in order to keep us protected. In fact, at any given time, we are surrounded by billions of hostile microorganisms that would quickly invade and devastate our system if it were not for this form of energy. Defensive qi regulates immunity through the skin and mucous membranes and is itself regulated by the lungs, while also being supported by the essence and original qi. It sounds complicated, but it really isn’t too bad.
This basic system, illustrated in figure 3, very adequately explains the flow of how the body’s energies develop and are maintained. It also paints a picture of the complexity of the process. It is almost impossible to routinely eat terrible foods and successfully practice energy cultivation, because the food qi sits at the foundation of this entire process. It is also important to note that this system of interrelated energies is very much like an ecosystem that needs to be maintained. A weak defensive qi will either come from a weak true qi level or, if it has simply weakened through continual assault, will eventually drain the true qi, which backs it up at the expense of the nutritive qi.
Figure 3. The Creation of Qi in the Body
Let’s take this example on the macro scale. We have a whole host of problems in a country that can no longer pay for domestic programs (nutritive qi) because of a long expensive war (defensive qi) that is draining resources (true qi). Combine that with a faltering economy (low gathering qi) with a smaller tax base, and we suddenly get hit by both sides and have crises on our hands. Sound familiar? As above, so below.
The last of the Three Treasures of Taoism is the one most people in the West are enamored by—the realm of spirit. It is the “paradise” to which we run in the West. So, it is really important to broach this subject correctly because we’re walking into very polarized territory.
We live in a culture (Western Judeo-Christian-Islamic) of thinking that lives in a paradigm outside of the Garden. Recall that we were ejected somehow (or so says our Creation myth), and we have to behave and do as told in order to earn the rights to be allowed back into heaven—“heaven” being an off-planet realm where God and all of his angels hang out and watch us from “above.” We have bought into a storyline that pegs us as pathetic, materialistic sinners who are essentially wretches in need of salvation. We have to petition for divinity to intervene and “save” us from our evil human nature, which is obviously despicable.
Let’s carefully tiptoe through this mess because that is not how Taoists see it. Actually, there are billions of other people on this planet who see it differently, and having traveled the world a fair amount, I can say that they seem happier than us.
The Taoist concept of spirit does not exist within some far-off realm in the clouds where we’ll go for some kind of afterlife reward if we behave here on Earth. On the contrary, it is right here and right now. Remember, Tao differentiated into yin and yang—therefore, matter is nothing without spirit. They are complementary, opposite views of the same life. When we cultivate shen (which is also translated as “mind”) in our Taoist practice, we only do so by holding the critical anchor of jing and the smooth flow of qi intact. Stated another way, we cultivate the essence in the body and make it robust with life and vitality; then we use this efficiency and “excess” of energy to refine spirit further and further. This does not mean venturing into magical realms and talking to spirits as an end result; it means developing a deeper and deeper understanding of reality right here and now. The more we potentiate our essence and condense, the more we can see the universe for what it really is. Like a mighty oak tree that sends its taproots deeper and deeper into the ground, we can use these incredible bioelectric “generators” of energy that we call our bodies to literally “turn on the light” and wake up.
When the Buddha was asked what enlightenment felt like, he simply stated that he “woke up.” Now, if you’re reading this, chances are you’ve already had a number of moments where you too “woke up.” Sometimes that “awakening” is even sustained for a longer period, but the sleepy state of ignorance keeps creeping back in, like a spiritual gravity sinking us back to the lull of a sleepy zombie. In this practice, we carefully cultivate the essence and refine the spirit to stay awake and live in that state perpetually. Our practice of taking the “lead” of our personal experience and transmuting it into the “gold” of spiritual awakening is the key to this essential teaching of Taoism. This metaphor applies to the Great Work in two ways:
+ It implies that we are to take our dense and powerful stores of essence and refine them into pure undifferentiated shen. This does not mean using it like a tank of gas and burning it away; instead, it connotes fusing it with spirit by bringing yin and yang together. We must wake up our eternal nature in every atom of our body and impregnate our material base with its spiritual counterpart so we may unlock incredible reserves of energy to wake up and shine.
+ The lead-to-gold metaphor is also applied to taking the “lead” of the unresolved energies in our shadow and releasing it. It involves bringing the skeletons out of our closets and making things right in our lives. Once we release these hidden things, we’ll have opened up room for the Source energy to flow freely through us again. This is the other side of the practice where we must, with our newfound energy released from our qi gong, apply the light of conscious awareness to the blind spots in our shadow.
The refinement of essence into spirit unleashes a tremendous amount of energy, which will eventually be fed into our shadow if we remain mindless. This will then rapidly highlight and magnify all the problems we are having in our lives because they will now have so much more to feed upon. Therefore, in Taoist belief systems, it is critical to practice both sides of this equation. The energy work gives us more power to apply to waking up, but only if we stay focused on doing so!
In the next section, we are going to study the concept of the five elements in Taoist thinking. These are the “flavors” through which reality emanates once movement begins with yin and yang. However, it is important to relay another fine point about the concept of shen before we do so. The five elements differentiate the shen into five aspects (remember that all material manifestations will naturally mirror a spiritual quality). The five aspects of spirit are:
+ Fire (shen): The central notion of what we would consider spirit here in the West, fire is the house of the attention where the mind-spirit focuses its gaze. It is also the seat of compassion and love, which are the energies that intimately connect us with all life. It is housed in the heart.
+ Earth (yi): This is the concept of the intellect—the mind and its powerful facility for concentration. It is also our ability to “digest” concepts and ideas. It is housed in the spleen.
+ Water (zhi): This is the will or intention—the driving force of our manifestation of inner wishes and our ability to transform these desires into tangible reality. It is housed in the kidneys.
+ Wood (hun): This is the house of the “ethereal soul,” which is the aspect of our consciousness that helps reconcile the interface between the heart’s desires and the physical reality that surrounds us. This is largely the aspect of us that is involved in astral travel, and it does a good deal of problem solving while we are asleep. It is housed in the liver.
+ Metal (Po): This is the house of the “corporeal soul,” which is the aspect of our soul that connects us more to the body and its lessons. Metal represents the energy of decline and the season of fall. Fall is when things return to the earth and get mulched; thus, this aspect of the soul deals with grief and letting go. It is housed in the lungs.
So, the shen or spirit, like all other things in Tao philosophy, has flavors to it. In this case, it is differentiated along the spectrum of the five elements.
Taoist beliefs suggest that once the Tao splits into yin and yang, it manifests in five distinct flavors of emanation that we call the five elements. The early Taoists were keen observers of their natural environment and understood that there was no separation between humans and the natural world into which they were born. The Taoists made observations about the cycles and patterns of nature, and this led to a profound understanding of medicine, agriculture, astronomy, astrology, martial arts, and philosophy. In fact, nature lies at the very core of the Taoist understanding of the universe.
Figure 4. The Five Elements
Through personal connection with nature and detailed observation of the seasons and the movement of the stars through the sky, the ancient Taoists understood all reality to be represented by five elements. These elements are related to material, emotional, and spiritual matters in that they represent the entirety of our experience on our planet. But it is always important to remember that they are all aspects of the One—that pure realm of consciousness that exists in an unpolarized state. Through differential emanation, the five elements create the flavor and richness of life and how it moves and expresses itself. Remember, before the separation into yin and yang, there was the formless and unified whole—the Tao. The split into yin and yang created movement. With yin and yang, there are two complementary and opposing forces that dynamically flux into one another. They create the dance of life. All things move and exist through this dance, as it is the very agent of the life force itself. Now, we have further differentiated into the five elements, which give life its flavor and richness. The table below shows a basic impression of these elements, the broad range of their correspondence with the world, and how they map our experience of nature and ourselves.
We will use many of these Taoist beliefs when we discuss how to troubleshoot problems with this framework and, more important, how to correct energetic imbalances using this system.
The five elements provide us with a greater degree of distinction on where any given thing, subject, or thought will be within its balance point of yin and yang. They show where the flow of energy is and how it is expressing at any given time, as shown in figures 4 and 5.
Color: Red
Season: Summer
Internal Organs: Heart, small intestine
Direction: South
Emotion: Joy
Stage of Development: Growth
Virtues: Righteousness
Planets: Mars
Sense Organ: Tongue
Tissues: Vessels
Sound: Laughing
Color: Yellow
Season: None
Internal Organs: Stomach, spleen
Direction: Center
Emotion: Pensiveness
Stage of Development: Transformation
Virtues: Faith
Planets: Saturn
Sense Organ: Mouth
Tissues: Muscles
Sound: Singing
Color: White
Season: Fall
Internal Organs: Lungs, large intestine
Direction: West
Emotion: Sadness
Stage of Development: Harvest
Virtues: Prosperity
Planets: Venus
Sense Organ: Nose
Tissues: Skins
Sound: Crying
Color: Blue, black
Season: Winter
Internal Organs: Kidneys, bladder
Direction: North
Emotion: Fear
Stage of Development: Storage
Virtues: Courage
Planets: Mercury
Sense Organ: Ears
Tissues: Bones
Sound: Groaning
Color: Green
Season: Spring
Internal Organs: Liver, gallbladder
Direction: East
Emotion: Anger
Stage of Development: Birth
Virtues: Benevolence
Planets: Jupiter
Sense Organ: Eyes
Tissues: Sinew, tendons
Sound: Shouting
In the qi gong system, it is recommended that we stand facing the south for our practice. This explains why we diagrammatically place the fire element on top and water below. Assuming we are standing in the Earth position, facing south would put fire in front of us, with metal to our right, water behind, and wood to our left.
Figure 5. The Five Elements with Yin and Yang Movement
This particular representation shows the essential alignment of the elements but does not show the movement of these energies. When we introduce the principles of yin and yang to the equation, there is movement (through polarity), and we begin to see the cycles of nature manifest. We then have the four seasons.
The earth element represents the center around which all of the other elements revolve, and the seasonal elemental correspondences are closely tied to the increase and decline of energy in the annual cycle. The yang energy rises out of the winter, comes to a balance point in the spring, and is at its full expression in the summer before it begins to decline back through the fall and eventually to the cold, quiet stillness of winter. Similarly, the yin energy picks up at the summer solstice and gains momentum through the fall. It is at its height in the winter and then slowly fades through the spring as the yang energy comes up. This entire system is simply a circular spectral representation of the movement of yin and yang in nature. It is all the same phenomena. It has to be—there’s only one reality.
Now, this Taoism system is remarkably similar to many American Indian spiritual and medicinal traditions; in fact, with proper understanding, they can be used interchangeably. Nature is nature—period. Different cultures have evolved to understand and interpret its movement in a slightly different way, but we all understand what winter is, no matter where we are from. Of course, there is less fluctuation of these seasons at the equator (where the forces of yin and yang are more balanced), and there is more abrupt change at the poles.
Figure 6. The Five Elements Overlaid on the Human Body
Figures 4 and 5 give us a relatively simple framework for understanding the five elements and their interactions with each other. They give us a reference point for our energetic practice, and they ground the entire system into something we can all relate to—nature. Now, there is another way to illustrate these correspondences that is quite useful in the realm of medicine and psychology. As shown in figure 6, we can overlay this elemental system on the human body, which the Taoists consider to be a microcosm of the entire universe, to show how these energies interact when it comes to humans.
The elements relate to each other in different ways. The generating cycle, illustrated in figure 7, comes from the Taoism philosophy that the energy of nature flows through a particular sequence in which each element is generated by another. Wood catches fire or decomposes and turns to earth, which over time settles to metal (minerals), which then returns to water (aquifer or rivers) and finally nourishes wood (plants and biomass) all over again. In this system, we call wood the “child” of water, and simultaneously, wood is the “mother” of fire.
Figure 7. The Generating or Nourishing Cycle
This system allows us to understand the proper sequence of our current situation and how that relates to the overall cycle of things. For example, say we are having digestive problems (earth) due to a weak system. We can obviously help bring energy to the earth element, which is the primary afflicted element, but we can also put energy “upstream” into the fire element, which will then naturally flow into the earth element. Along these same lines, maybe the metal element is what is really weak, and it’s draining energy out of the earth element “downstream.” In this case, we address the issue with the metal element, and the earth energy should fill back up naturally.
Teachings of Taoism highlight that in a cycle of life, a disharmony along any point in the circle has repercussions throughout the entire system. This applies to our mind, our body, our family, and our planet. The point is that everything applies to everything in the cycle of the elements, which is why we must constantly strive to maintain balance and harmony in everything we do.
The generating cycle (also called the nourishing cycle) helps us to see the correct flow of energy through the five elements and to understand how that energy pertains to us and our circumstances. This brings us back to the concept of basic awareness in all things. To properly perceive what’s going on around us, we need to look at the bigger picture and see the larger cycles of energetic movement that all things are related to. Only with this sort of bird’s-eye view can we understand the nature of our circumstances and help bring harmony to energetic cycles that are oftentimes larger than us.
Using the same basic framework and Taoist beliefs about the elements, there is one more relationship among the five elements that is important to understand, and that is the controlling cycle. This cycle, shown in figure 8, shows the “checking” or controlling functions of the elements and how they relate to each other.
In this sequence, wood controls earth, which in turn controls water, and so forth. This means that we can use a checking element to control another element that has excessive energy and is out of balance. For example, someone who is very stressed out has an overactive wood element (liver or gallbladder), which can be controlled by the metal element (lungs and large intestine). So, introducing energy into the metal organs can help control the overactive wood. This also works pathologically. Because the overactive wood element is out of control, it can easily exert a negative controlling influence on the earth element (stomach and spleen). We see this all too often in the modern world, where people who are chronically stressed out end up having digestive problems. In chronic conditions, in fact, the metal element gets drained because it’s constantly trying to exert control over the overactive wood element. Because of this, we also see a decline in the metal element, which oftentimes manifests as colds and flus (lungs) or constipation or diarrhea (large intestines).
Figure 8. The Controlling Cycle
According to the teachings of Taoism, this controlling cycle is also very helpful in understanding the interplay of emotions and our mental health. For example, if a person is overcome by the emotion of fear (water element), then that element is over-controlling the fire element (joy) and draining that system as well. We can bring in some earth energy (faith is the positive virtue) to pacify the fear and breathe energy into the corresponding organs to see a radical change in that person. That is the basis of Taoist magic. The only way to learn this and to get it right is to assume that this mystery “person” is you. All healing must originate from within. As the grand master of my tradition often tells us: “First help yourself, then help the people.” Much of our internal nei gong (or inner alchemy) involves learning how to harmonize these elemental energies within ourselves and to really use our body and mind as the workshop to figure it out and get it right. Once we learn this, helping another person will be the natural extension of this skill. True, there is no separation, but most people will take that “abstract” notion and run with it. They will try to save the world without addressing their own energy first. In my experience, this is where most seekers in our modern culture fail. The central tenet of Taoist alchemy is to turn the light of awareness inward and to explore the universe within. From this infinity within, we are then able to unlock all the secrets of the outer world and understand our true nature. From within, we find heaven.
The Taoist way is one of peace, harmony, and honesty. It entails being aware of the cycles and currents of nature and living by those precepts. It demands that we bring the balance within ourselves to everything we encounter and to act spontaneously out of the living, breathing moment. This serves as the basic framework for our understanding of Taoism and the Tao philosophy.
Excerpted with permission from Inner Alchemy: The Urban Monk’s Guide to Happiness, Health, and Vitality by Pedram Shojai. Sounds True, January 2019. Reprinted with permission.
About The Author
Pedram Shojai, OMD, is the New York Times bestselling author behind The Urban Monk academy, mastermind program, podcast, and book. He is former Taoist monk, a Qi Gong master who has studied Kung Fu and Tai Chi for decades, and an accomplished physician of Chinese medicine. Pedram lectures and conducts seminars and retreats around the world on health and wellness within the context of modern life’s challenges. He lives in Southern California with his family. Learn more at theurbanmonk.com.
The post Inner Alchemy: A Complete Guide to the Teachings of Taoist Philosophy on Health and Higher Consciousness appeared first on Conscious Lifestyle Magazine.
]]>BY JONAH PAQUETTE, PSY.D.
+ Positive emotions + Engagement + Meaning
For Seligman, “positive emotions” refers to experiencing pleasant emotions regarding our past, present, and future, and is marked by the experience of generally positive mood-states across these domains. “Engagement” denotes the idea of flow, a state of mind in which we are so engrossed in the task at hand that time seemingly stops. Finally, “meaning” refers to the idea of being connected to a cause greater than oneself. According to this viewpoint of happiness, true well-being consists of a combination of each of these three components, with a sense of meaning or purpose serving as one of the most important keys to being happy. Seligman has since expanded this definition of happiness to include two additional components to the three outlined above: relationships and accomplishments. Reflecting these, Seligman’s updated conceptualization of well-being can be remembered by the acronym PERMA, which denotes the following five elements:+ Positive emotions + Engagement + Relationships + Meaning + Accomplishments
Another prominent researcher in the field of positive psychology, Sonja Lyubomirsky, has described happiness as “the experience of joy, contentment, or positive well-being, combined with a sense that one’s life is good, meaningful, or worthwhile.” As with Seligman’s definition of happiness, this one too emphasizes the multiple layers of true happiness and well-being. Rather than consisting merely of pleasant, fleeting emotions, real happiness in life also includes a deeper sense of meaning, satisfaction with one’s life, and purpose. Throughout this article, in order to help us remain on the same page and have a common understanding of how to find happiness, we will consider well-being and happiness to similarly consist of:+ A strong presence of pleasant and positive emotional states, both in the present moment as well as towards the past and future;
+ A sense of connection to those around us, as well as to our pursuits, vocations, and activities;
+ A deep, underlying feeling of life satisfaction; and
+ A sense of meaning and purpose that can anchor us even when fleeting positive emotions may not be present.
As you can see, the sort of happiness that’s being described above is a much deeper and richer phenomenon than what we might expect. Whereas the “Hollywood” depiction of happiness focuses primarily on intense positive emotions such as joy, ebullience, or pleasure, happiness, as considered by positive psychologists, is a bit of a different experience. Positive emotions are certainly a part of the picture, but equally (perhaps even more so) important are those deeper experiences of meaning and purpose, satisfaction with our lives, and connection to both people and causes in our lives.+ Money and Income: Most, if not all, people think that money is one of the essential keys to being happy. Once basic needs are met, additional money makes very little, if any, difference in terms of a person’s happiness level. Some estimates suggest that once an annual income of roughly $75,000 is met, additional money makes no difference when it comes to making a person happier.
+ Geography: Studies show that with the exception of people suffering from Seasonal Affective Disorder, the average person’s happiness is not affected by where they live geographically. Differences do exist when comparing countries, but that is more related to systems of government and/or oppression. Climate and geography, however, do not appear to play a role in happiness.
+ Getting Married: Research suggests that following an initial boost in happiness (roughly 18 months on average), married individuals tend to revert back to their previous happiness baseline levels.
+ Having Children: Although there is conflicting research on this topic, numerous studies suggest that day-to-day levels of happiness and life satisfaction fall among parents following the birth of a child, and are particularly low during the teenage years. Only once a child moves off to college or leaves the home do happiness scores tend to revert back to their original baseline among parents.
+ Physical Attractiveness: Studies show that the people who score the lowest of any profession for happiness are models.
But why do all these seemingly wonderful things have such little (if any) benefit to our long-term happiness? The answer lies in a few key areas, which we will now briefly turn our attention to. As it turns out, there are a handful of factors on how to be happy, making it hard for us to feel lastingly buoyant; three of which we will briefly discuss below.The post How to Be Happy: 10 Scientifically Proven Keys to Feeling Good All the Time appeared first on Conscious Lifestyle Magazine.
]]>BY MICHELLE S. FONDIN
The post 8 Powerful Ancient Practices for Supercharging and Healing Your Throat Chakra appeared first on Conscious Lifestyle Magazine.
]]>BY PAUL MCKENNA, Ph.D.
1. Complete these 12 sentences about money, wealth, and riches to uncover the key elements of your current unconscious programming and your relationship with money.
+ People with money are… + Money makes people… + I’d have more money if… + My parents always thought money would… + Money causes… + I’m afraid that if I had more money I would… + Money is… + In order to have more money, I would need to… + I think money… + If I were really rich, I would… + My biggest fear about money… + Money is…
2. Circle any of your unconscious money beliefs that might be holding you back, even if they seem unquestionably “true” to you.
3. Repeat this exercise daily for at least the next week. You may find some of the deeper programs take a bit longer to come up to the surface.
4. What did you discover? Are your beliefs and associations with money those of someone who is programmed for poverty or for riches?
By heightening our awareness of our beliefs about money, we can begin to make sense of many of our emotions and behaviors when dealing with it, and by changing them, we can transform the emotional impact of money in our lives. After all, would you rather work half your life for freedom of choice or for the root of all evil? Here are some of the most common beliefs people hold that keep them from creating an abundance of money in their lives: Money corrupts. There is an inherent mistrust of wealth in our society, most of it based on the underlying assumption that money corrupts. But the reality is, money doesn’t corrupt—it reveals. Many wonderful people are doing amazingly positive things with their money. Why not you? There is not enough money to go around. Money is not a zero-sum game—it’s an infinite game, and the more people who are playing it, the more money there is to go around. Provided you are spending money and not just hoarding it, the more money you make, the more money will be circulating in the system. In this sense, the richer you become, the richer you will be making others. I don’t want to make money because I’m scared that I will lose it. That makes about as much sense as saying I don’t want to eat a nice meal because I’m scared that I’ll have to flush it down the toilet later. The purpose of money isn’t to keep it forever, it’s to use it. And once you learn the secrets of making money, which I will share with you in the second part of my book, I Can Make You Rich you’ll realize that as long as you have the capacity to think, you have the ability to make more money. In order to question some of your own limiting beliefs about money and restore a healthier relationship with money, do this simple exercise adapted from Patricia Remele’s book, Money Freedom. It’s based on the idea that when you take away all of our culturally imposed beliefs about what it should and shouldn’t be, money is simply a tool we can use to make our lives easier and reach our goals faster. Therefore, what is true about money must be true about other tools as well…1. Make a list of the most negative-seeming money beliefs you uncovered in the previous exercise.
2. Substitute the word “shovel” (another practical tool) for “money” in each of the sentences on your list. Notice whether the statements still make sense or have any emotional significance.
Examples:+ “The love of shovels is the root of all evil.” + “Shovels don’t grow on trees.” + “I feel guilty because I have more shovels than my father ever did.”
Remember, the idea here is to simply take away the emotional “sting” from these ideas—it doesn’t matter whether or not you really believe them.+ I deserve money. + Money can come to me easily. + There’s more than enough to go around. + It’s okay for me to be rich.
If they feel comfortable to you as you read them—as obvious and true as saying “the sky is blue”—chances are you are already living a fairly rich life and a positive relationship with money. If they feel uncomfortable, untrue, or even unforgivable, you’ve just uncovered one of the real blocks to a lifetime of wealth and freedom. In contrast to the above statements, what were you told as a child about money? Many of my clients answer with things like this:+ You’ll never amount to anything. + Shame on you—why can’t you get anything right? + It’s a good thing you’re beautiful, because you aren’t smart enough to make it on your own.
There is a long list of negative money beliefs and stories people use to keep themselves away from wealth. Maybe you’ve thought that if you became rich you’d change as a person, or you’d become a target, or you would lose your friends. Perhaps you’ve been telling yourself that you won’t be able to handle the pressure, or that you don’t really care that much about money anyway. Many people have been taught things like: “The Bible says money is the root of all evil.” What the Bible actually says is: “The love of money [or, according to some scholars, ‘lust for money’] is the root of all evil”—that is, the pursuit of money for its own sake, as a commodity to be hoarded. Here’s the key: Whatever negative story about wealth you have told yourself in the past, it’s time to let it go. There’s a saying in the world of computer programming: Garbage in = Garbage out. Your mind is like a computer, but it’s only as useful as the programs it’s running. And those programs are made up of your most frequent thoughts and most tightly held beliefs. This is why it is so important to let go of any unconscious money beliefs and ideas you may still be carrying from your childhood about why money is bad or that you’re not good enough to have it. The unconscious mind is not logical. It doesn’t stop and think about what you want or what’s best for you and your relationship with money. It just does whatever it’s been programmed to do. In fact, your mind will not allow you to deviate from the programs you hold in your unconscious. It will do whatever it takes to prove these unconscious programs about money to be true. Over the years, I have worked with many clients who have what they refer to as a “self-sabotage” mechanism. Whenever things are going well for them, it seems as though they manage to screw it up. This is always caused by beliefs in the unconscious mind that will not allow them to succeed. All I do is have them reprogram the limiting beliefs and suddenly their life dramatically changes for the better. For example, I have a friend who was good at creating money, but somehow would always sabotage his efforts to create lasting wealth by finding ways to get rid of his money almost as quickly as he made it. His relationship to money and behavior around money didn’t seem to make any sense until one day he told me of a childhood experience where he had said to his mother that when he grew up, he wanted to be rich. His mother had replied, “Why do you want to do that? Rich people get heart attacks!” No wonder he couldn’t hang on to his money—in his unconscious mind, having a lot of money equaled death! Remember, the unconscious mind is not logical, it’s purposeful—and its number one purpose is survival. Although he hadn’t been conscious of it until that moment, this unsupportive and false money belief had been installed at an impressionable age. As soon as he made any money, his unconscious mind worked at getting rid of it “to keep him alive.” After just 20 minutes of reprogramming, his unconscious fear of getting a heart attack from having too much money had gone. Within a few months his business went into overdrive, and just over a year later he had created a brand new career for himself and was living the life of his dreams. Just becoming conscious of your old programs around money is often enough to take away their power and bring about a happier relationship with money.+ The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. + If I win, others must lose. + In order for someone to make a lot of money, they have to screw other people over.
You may be holding some similar money beliefs for yourself, but here’s the simple truth: If you dislike people with money, it will be difficult to become one of them. Once I became aware of how much I resented people with money, I became aware of how much that resentment was holding me back in my own pursuit of wealth. I knew I had to change the pattern—to reprogram my automatic, unconscious reaction to people who have money. Even if I didn’t like what I thought they had done to get their money, I realized that the only person I was hurting with my resentment was myself. As the saying goes, hanging onto resentment is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die! At first, I used a simple system of substitution. Anytime I noticed myself grumbling inside my head at the success or wealth of someone else, I would immediately replace that thought with a positive one wishing that person well. It felt strange at first, but each time I did it, I noticed I felt a little bit better inside myself. Then, I learned a technique that enabled me to make even more dramatic changes more quickly. Instead of focusing on what I didn’t want (i.e. “to be like them”), it focused my mind on what I did want—to make money and live rich in an ethical and enjoyable way. Here is what I learned, exactly the way that I practice it to this day…1. Think about someone whose success or wealth you have been resenting. Create an image in your mind of what they look like. What color is their hair? What clothes are they wearing? What expression do they have on their face?
2. Now, think about yourself being exactly the way you most want to be—living life on your own terms with the financial assets to do what you really want to be doing. How do you stand, smile, and speak? How happy and confident do you look?
3. Shrink down that picture of your rich self so that it fits in one small corner of the picture of the person you have been resenting.
4. Now, switch the pictures as fast as you can! As the picture of the person you have been resenting shrinks down into the corner, expand the picture of your rich self until it fills the screen. Make sure the expanded picture of your rich self is big, bright, and bold!
5. Take a moment to clear your mind, then repeat the process at least five times. Make the switch faster and faster each time you do it.
Several years ago, there was a study conducted into happiness and comparative wealth, which was quite revealing. Participants were asked to choose between two scenarios. In the first, they were to be paid $90,000 and their friends and colleagues would all be paid $80,000; in the second, they would receive $100,000 but their friends and colleagues would receive $110,000. What do you suppose people chose? If you guessed that they opted for more money, you’d be wrong—an overwhelming majority said they would prefer to have less money as long as it was more than everyone else! This is poor thinking in its most insidious form—using money as a measure of personal value, status, or worth—and sabotages a pleasant relationship with money. In contrast, rich thinkers don’t use their money to make themselves feel better—they use it to make themselves a richer life. The more comfortable you become around every person’s capacity to make a contribution and create wealth, the easier it becomes for you to do the same. This is one of the absolute keys to rich thinking: The more comfortable you become with the wealth of others, the faster your own wealth will grow. Here’s one last exercise you can do that will make it easier for you to release any residual negativity around money and become instantly richer in your thinking and actions…1. Think about someone you believe is struggling financially and imagine them wealthy and successful.
2. Think about someone you believe is already doing well and imagine them becoming even more wealthy and successful.
3. Repeat steps 1 and 2 with as many different people as you like until you feel “clean”—no pity and no resentment.
4. Imagine what the world would be like if there was no poverty and everyone had more than enough to live life on their own terms. How do you feel about living in that world? How do you feel about yourself?
The more often you repeat this exercise, the faster your relationship with money will change and the faster your wealth will grow. This piece is excerpted with permission from I Can Make You Rich by Dr. Paul McKenna. It is published by Hay House and available in bookstores and online at hayhouse.com. The book includes an audio download which works with the unconscious mind book to reprogram your money beliefs and change your thinking and behavior around money for good.The post From Resentment to Riches: The Keys to Transforming Your Relationship With Money appeared first on Conscious Lifestyle Magazine.
]]>BY JAMES ENDREDY
+ Gain control. Explore your dream world with total clarity, and direct and manipulate dream themes, settings, and plots at will.
+ Get inspired. Collect ideas and creative motivation for the waking world from your subconscious.
+ Fulfill fantasies. During LD you can do whatever you want.
+ Therapy. While lucid dreaming you can face your fears, phobias, anxieties, past traumas, and even nightmares.
+ Gain energy and power. Lucid dreamers have shown that proficiency in lucid dreaming carries over many positive changes in the waking world.
1. Sit down in a comfortable position before going to bed. It’s best to sit on your bed, or somewhere close to where you will sleep that night.
2. Simply sit for a minute and notice where your thoughts are. When ready, close your eyes and begin to visualize the events of your day.
3. You can visualize events as if looking at a movie screen in your mind, or you can take the visual perspective of looking at the scene from the outside or above. Take one event at a time, and breathe it in through your nose while reliving it. If it is an event you want to energetically discharge, then forcefully breathe it out through your mouth as you visualize the energy leaving you and dissipating. If it is a pleasant event, simply exhale through your nose and notice how the event made you feel. Reviewing energetically positive events is a great way to fortify positivity before dreaming; however, it is important to clear the energy-draining events before dreaming. Do as many events as you feel necessary. If you had an easy day, this process could be very quick; if you had a hard day, it will obviously take longer. In any case don’t rush, take your time, and get your energy moving to be in a clear and positive state.
4. When you feel finished, stand up, take one more deep breath, and while exhaling sweep your energy field clean by placing your hands on the top of your head and sweeping down over your chest, abdomen, genitals, legs, and feet. When you get to your feet, swish your hands out away from your body. The sweeping can be done slowly or rapidly, whatever feels right to you in the moment. Do this once or many times. I usually do it a few times just because it tends to feel really good and refreshing. I often find myself smiling after this, which is perfect for what comes next!
Your lucid dream training will start with keeping a dream journal and improving your dream recall. Your journal will help you discover what your dreams are like. . . . Learning to remember your dreams is necessary if you want to learn to dream lucidly. Until you have excellent dream recall, you won’t stand much of a chance of having lucid dreams. There are two reasons for this. First, without recall, even if you do have a lucid dream you won’t remember it. Indeed, we all have probably lost numerous lucid dreams among the many thousands of dreams we have forgotten in the normal course of our lives. Second, good dream recall is crucial because to become lucid you have to recognize that your dream is a dream while it is happening. Since they are your dreams that you are trying to recognize you have to become familiar with what they are like. . . . You can accomplish this by collecting your dreams and analyzing them for dreamlike elements. . . . Before it will be worth your time to work on lucid dream induction methods you should be able to recall at least one dream every night.
I suggest you buy a special dedicated journal with a lock to record both goals, intentions, and detailed recollections of your nightly dreams. It’s important that others don’t handle or especially don’t look in your journal, thus the lock. If you care to share your dreams with others, especially other lucid dreamers, that’s fine and can be very helpful, but this work is extremely private and shouldn’t be shared without your knowledge. Also, having a special pen to write with makes the experience more special, even sacred. We’re going to get into when and what to write in your journal shortly. But here I also want to mention a helpful tip from my experience. Often when waking from a dream in the night and not ready yet to wake up for the day, I don’t want to become fully awake because I know in my still half asleep (or more) state, I can easily slip right back into dreaming. Waking up to the point of turning on the light and writing might, or would, detract from going back to dreaming. But if I didn’t make some effort to immediately record the dream, I would almost always forget it. Waking up in the morning, I would know, on the periphery of my consciousness, that I had dreamt but wouldn’t be able to remember the dream. I think we all experience this. The solution I came up with is to hang a small whiteboard on the wall next to my bed with a marker attached to it. When I briefly wake up and remember my dream, I scribble a few key words on the board so I can remember the dream when I’m fully awake. When I’m awake I take cues from the scribbled notes and write out the details of the dream in my journal. As stated earlier, dream recall is a vital step to lucid dreaming. The little tricks and techniques we use and come up with to polish our dream recall all help in our goal to become lucid.+ Group 1 was asked to think about goals they’d like to accomplish over the next four weeks and reflect on the importance of those goals.
+ Group 2 was asked to write down their goals and reflect on their importance, as group 1 had done.
+ Group 3 went a little further. Not only were they to write down their goals, but they were also asked to write down some actions they could take.
+ Group 4 went further still: they wrote their goals down, reflected on their importance, and wrote some action steps, but they also sent these action commitments to a supportive friend.
+ Group 5 did all that group 4 did, but they also made weekly progress reports to their supportive friend.
As you might have guessed, Group 5 achieved the most and Group 1 the least. Group 5, in fact, achieved 78 percent more than Group 1 did. Writing out your dreaming goals will absolutely help with:+ Clarification. Being clear and prepared for any adventure increases the probability of success. For example, if you are going on a trip with a specific destination in mind, you can clarify what to pack, how you will get there, and knowing when you have arrived. The same goes with lucid dreaming techniques. Writing down your goals forces you to select something specific and decide what you want.
+ Motivation. Writing down your goals and clarifying them is just the beginning of the journey. When going on a trip you have to prepare, get on the road or plane, and actually arrive. Writing down the goals and reviewing them spurs the motivation toward the actual actions.
+ Keeping on track. So many circumstances pull us this way and that every day. Writing down goals helps us filter out what are the most important actions to take.
+ Evaluation. Written goals are like mile markers on a highway. They enable you to see how far you have come and how far you need to go. They also provide an opportunity for celebration when you attain them!
So the first items to write in your journal refer to why you want to lucid dream. Clarify your motivation. Examples:+ I want to explore consciousness. + I want to fly around in my dreams. + I want to learn shamanic dreaming. + I want to heal myself. + I want to heal others. + I want to improve my self-confidence. I want to overcome . . .
I like to make a title page as the first page of my journal. Then at the top of the second page goes the date and the heading “Motivation,” followed by why I want to lucid dream. Next, I’ll write some affirmations and truths about what I’m doing. Examples:+ I will do my best to prepare for dreaming so I will be successful in becoming lucid. + I will try not to be frustrated when not successful. + The process of learning lucid dreaming takes time; I will go at my own speed. + My dream journal is a magical item of my subconscious and dream world. + I am clear on my motivation to do this and have written it down in my journal. + I will be successful in lucid dreaming!
Now don’t forget at any moment to write down feelings, emotions, thoughts, affirmations, doubts—whatever. It’s really interesting to see what we wrote in the beginning of the lucid dream journey months and years later. After this initial section in your journal, skip at least ten pages for future goals, affirmations, and notes. On the first page of the actual journal you will record the dreams you have on your first night; put the date at the top and the two most important six- and seven-word phrases for this stage:+ I will remember my dreams tonight. + I will write down my dreams tonight.
Place a bookmark at that page so you can easily find it when you awaken during the night. But first let’s look at induction techniques—techniques for inducing lucid dreams.+ Buy something + Write something down + Hear someone say my name + Handle cash + See a yellow car + Hear someone laugh + Turn on a TV + Turn on a computer + Throw something away + Read something + Check the time + Hang up the phone + Put a key in a lock + See a bird + See an advertisement + Open a door + Eat anything + Flush a toilet + See the stars + Turn on a light
This is just a sample list; you must make your own. Obviously, if you are an editor you would choose something else besides reading as a target, or if you are a telemarketer, something besides hanging up the phone. We want the targets to be things we will do a few times a day (like flushing a toilet), not all day long. When you hit a target, it’s time for a reality check. A reality check can be lots of things:+ Touching. What happens when you touch something solid? + Breathing. Can you hold both your nose and mouth shut and breathe? + Jumping. When you jump, do you come right back down or do you float down? + Reading. Can you read a sentence twice without its changing? + Mirrors. Does your reflection look normal in the mirror? + Math. Can you add up two numbers for a correct answer?
Each of these reality checks can be useful. My preference is holding my nose and mouth shut and the palm test, which is not on the above list. To do the palm test, open one hand and then forcefully tap the index, middle, and ring fingers of your other hand on the palm of the open hand. I prefer this test over the others because seeing (finding) your hands in a dream is one of the main techniques of becoming lucid, which we will discuss later. The more often you do a reality check in waking life, the more likely it is that you will do the same reality check in any given dream to test if you are aware that you are dreaming. The key to reality checks is to do them mindfully and frequently while at the same time asking yourself, “Am I dreaming?” “Am I awake?”—or some other variation of this question. If you are not asking yourself the question in waking life, then chances are you won’t ask yourself the question in the dream. It is the question, not the action itself, that will make this lucid dreaming technique successful. Your brain creates neural constructs based on experiential learning: patterns of thinking based on your real-life experiences. For example, we know about the laws of gravity: we know that in the waking world we can’t just jump off the ground and fly away. There’s no question about it, just as there’s no question that 71 percent of Earth’s surface is currently water, Earth is in the Milky Way Galaxy, and the Browns won’t win the Super Bowl this year. Consequently, most of us continue through life without ever questioning the world around us. We become so accustomed to our reality, we forget to question it. And this applies in the dream world too. However, when we question our reality on a regular basis, we open ourselves to actually experiencing alternate realities. When this becomes second nature in waking life, it will become second nature in dreams too. This is the bridge we are looking for to the world of lucid dreams. The other benefit of doing frequent reality checks throughout the day is that it ensures that you are constantly thinking about lucid dreaming. The more you focus on something, the more likely it is to occur, especially in the case of lucid dreaming. A perfect example of this is my current situation with writing this lucid dreaming portion. Since I started writing it and have been focusing on it all day for many days, the number of my dreams has increased and my recall has been outstanding. Remember: whatever we do in the waking world naturally affects our dream world. By constantly thinking of lucid dreaming while awake, we enhance our chances of becoming lucid while we are dreaming. Reality checks, reading and researching about it, and practicing other lucid dreaming techniques I will present shortly all combine to help us with our goal. Summary of reality check technique: 1. Make a list of targets. Choose twenty targets that you know you will hit during a one-week period, multiple times a day. Group them into three targets for each day, and write them in your journal. Below are examples of daily targets for the first two weekdays.Monday
+ Open a door + Eat anything + Flush a toilet
Tuesday
+ Hang up the phone + Put a key in a lock + See a bird
2. Memorize the day’s targets. When you get up in the morning, after you write in your journal about your dreams of the night, read and memorize your reality check targets for that day. Don’t read ahead; read only the targets for that particular day. 3. Remember to perform your reality check while doing your targets during the day If one of your targets is putting a key in a lock, while you insert a key, you will have to use your prospective memory to do your reality check. While doing your physical reality check, sincerely ask yourself, “Am I dreaming?” At this point I would suggest doing another different reality check because sometimes in dreams one is not enough to convince ourselves. In the waking world the answer to your question will more than likely be, “No, I’m not dreaming.” Remember, the action of questioning your reality and state of consciousness in your waking state while increasing your prospective memory is the point of the exercise. Soon you will be doing this while dreaming. The more you do it while awake, the easier it will be to do while dreaming. Keep track of your targets hit during the day with a small notebook or just a piece of paper. Also write down the targets you missed. Many times I have had the “put a key in a lock” target on my list, but often when I get to work in the morning and turn off my car, I realize I’ve missed my very first reality check when I started the car. That was a failure of my prospective memory, which needs improvement. 4. Tally up your hits and failures. At the end of the day write a tally of your hits and failures in your journal so you can mark your progress. This lucid dreaming technique has a definite snowball effect. The more you practice, the better you get. Congratulate yourself when you see improvement, and smile knowing you are intentionally raising your awareness and developing your memory. If you realize you are missing a lot of your targets, continue with the process and try not to be discouraged. Keep trying your best, and you will get it. Remember, hitting your target is only a portion of the technique related to prospective memory. Just as important is actually performing the reality check in a conscientious and high-level manner and sincerely questioning reality. If you fail to do either, hitting the target becomes somewhat trivial. Excerpted from Advanced Shamanism by James Endredy 2018 Bear & Company. Printed with permission from the publisher Inner Traditions International. InnerTraditions.comThe post Shamanic Dreaming: How to Expand Into Higher Consciousness While You Sleep appeared first on Conscious Lifestyle Magazine.
]]>BY BARBARA MOORE
+ Inhale for a count of three.
+ Exhale for a count of five.
+ Hold your breath (or, more precisely, your lack of breath) for three to five counts.
This final hold creates the space necessary to give stagnant energy room to break apart and to create room for other energy to help move it along. Do these long, slow, deliberate breaths a few times, using your inhale to help break up stagnant energy. After your final round, hold your lack of breath for as long as you can—no longer than five counts. You do this to enhance the creation of space, to experience the emptiness. This space is now available for you to fill, so as you take in your next breath, consciously choose what you want to bring in (this, too, is cultivation, but it is hard to have an exhale without an inhale).1. Which seem like ones you’d never use? Why? 2. Which are you looking forward to trying? Why? 3. Of the ones you’ve tried, which surprised you the most? Why?
Excerpted from Modern Guide to Energy Clearing by Barbara Moore. © 2018 by Barbara Moore. Used by permission from Llewellyn Worldwide, Ltd., Llewellyn.com.The post Getting Rid of Negative Energy: 20 Powerful Practices for Cleansing and Clearing Your Energy Field appeared first on Conscious Lifestyle Magazine.
]]>BY MEGHAN MCDONALD
The post This Deck of Cards is Specially Designed to Bring You Into a State of Flow, Joy and Harmony With All Life appeared first on Conscious Lifestyle Magazine.
]]>BY RICHARD WEBSTER
+ Fire (Aries, Leo, and Sagittarius) Fire is positive, assertive, energetic, enthusiastic, impulsive, inspirational, courageous, powerful, passionate, and initiating.
+ Earth (Taurus, Virgo, and Capricorn) Earth is cautious, responsible, reliable, ambitious, practical, focused, disciplined, dependable, solid, and persevering.
+ Air (Gemini, Libra, and Aquarius) Air is lighthearted, joyful, curious, restless, independent, communicative, impractical, entertaining, intellectual, and trusting.
+ Water (Cancer, Scorpio, and Pisces) Water is compassionate, forgiving, understanding, emotional, creative, intuitive and spiritual.
+ March 21–April 20 + Element: Fire Ruling + Planet: Mars People born under the sign of Aries are leaders and pioneers. They enjoy responsibility and are happiest when managing and organizing others. They are magnetic and outgoing and can inspire others to action with their dynamic leadership. They are courageous and prepared to take calculated risks, and they fight for what they believe in. They need to be busy to be happy. Arians are often happiest when working for themselves, but also rise to positions of leadership and responsibility when working for others. They are curious and have a keen interest in everything that’s going on. Because they’re quick-witted and like to get to the heart of any problem, they can get impatient with people who take time to come to a decision. They enjoy talking and look forward to social activities. They make warm and lively friends.
+ April 21–May 21 + Element: Earth + Ruling Planet: Venus People born under the sign of Taurus are practical, patient, and determined. According to astrology basics for this sun sign, they’re naturally cautious and think matters through before acting. Because of this, they can appear stubborn and obstinate to others. They like to do things their own way. Taureans can be extremely generous, but they always keep something in reserve, as security is important to them. They are generally good at managing their financial affairs. They are persistent and possess enormous drive and determination. Taureans love beauty and work best in harmonious surroundings. Their homes invariably display good quality and tasteful objects, and whenever they buy something, it has to be of good quality. The main lesson Taureans need to learn is how to control obstinacy. Once they’ve made up their minds on something, it’s almost impossible to change it. This can make them inflexible and unforgiving, which is out of tune with the calm, harmonious approach they usually have.
+ May 22–June 21 + Element: Air Ruling + Planet: Mercury People born under the sign of Gemini are ingenious, versatile, restless, and quick-thinking. They love meeting new people, and have an unquenchable thirst for knowledge. They are good with words, and can talk at great length on almost anything. They enjoy occupations that use their voices in some way. They enjoy mental stimulation, but often waste time on idle chatter. They are easygoing and get on well with almost everyone. They’re versatile, highly creative, and often artistic. They need a great deal of variety in their lives. This endless search for variety often means they leave a trail of half-finished projects behind them. They possess a great deal of nervous energy and always seek quick results. They have the ability to see both sides of a problem.
+ June 22–July 22 + Element: Water + Ruling Planet: Moon People born under the sign of Cancer are romantic, emotional, and imaginative. They are ruled largely by their feelings. They are highly sensitive and easily hurt, but are able to fight back when pushed into a corner. They have the ability to charm and captivate others and use this to devastating effect when they know what they want. Because they’re incredibly tenacious, they ultimately achieve their goals.
A core concept in understanding astrology is that each sign is ruled by a particular planet, and Cancerians are ruled by the Moon, which emphasizes the sensitive, emotional side of their natures. Consequently, they may sometimes appear unwilling to commit in case they get hurt. Cancerians love the security of home and family, and they make extremely good parents. They can be self-indulgent and spend money freely, yet they’re also extremely good at getting a bargain. They are usually highly intuitive, and have the potential to develop considerable psychic ability.+ July 23–August 22 + Element: Fire Ruling + Planet: Sun People born under the sign of Leo are ambitious, determined people with open, friendly natures. They are born leaders and instinctively gravitate to positions where their leadership potential can be utilized. They’re open, honest, and enthusiastic about every aspect of their lives. Because they’re generally happy, they want everyone close to them to be happy too. They are confident and determined and always make their presence felt in everything they do. They invariably get where they want to go, though overconfidence can cause delays and problems along the way. Pride is very important to Leos, and they hate being ridiculed or demeaned. They are susceptible to flattery and need to learn how to control this. They are generous and enjoy making magnanimous gestures. They spread their warmth and enthusiasm everywhere they go. They can exaggerate or distort the truth at times, as they like to weave a good story.
+ August 23–September 23 + Element: Earth Ruling + Planet: Mercury According to astrology basics, people born under the sign of Virgo are modest, down-to-earth, and matter of fact. They have a shrewd outlook on life. They are intelligent, cautious, conforming people who invariably look respectable and tidy. They enjoy doing detailed and precise work, and this, coupled with good memories, makes them highly capable administrators. They can assess people quickly, though they usually keep their thoughts to themselves. They are naturally reserved, and this makes it hard to get close to them until they’re ready to let you in. They make good friends once this happens. They are their own worst critics, as they constantly aim for perfection and set high standards for themselves. They enjoy analyzing things and can sometimes pay excessive attention to tiny details. They are self-motivated but find it impossible to complete anything to the high standards they require. This can cause significant worry. They generally prefer working behind the scenes but enjoy the inner satisfaction of a job well done. They can be outspoken and critical, and this often comes into play when they feel that justice and fair play are absent.
+ September 24–October 22 + Element: Air Ruling + Planet: Venus People born under the sign of Libra are harmonious, well-balanced, and friendly. They have a tendency to be indecisive. They are good talkers but prefer to avoid arguments and confrontations. They’re honest and sincere and expect others to be the same. They feel their emotions deeply and are very involved in the lives of the people they care for. They love beauty and have good taste. Librans find it hard to make decisions. They like to think about the matter, agonize over it, and weigh it up carefully before making a decision. This can cause impatience in other people, especially when the indecision is over something that is unimportant. However, once the decision has been made, they’ll follow it through with great determination. Librans have a strong sense of justice and fair play. They often side with the underdog.
+ October 23–November 21 + Element: Water Ruling + Planet: Mars People born under the sign of Scorpio are forceful and determined. They have enormous powers of concentration, but don’t always reveal this side of themselves as they’re also secretive and never reveal their true nature to anyone. They’re intuitive, and this gives them great insight into how other people work and react. Scorpios are individualistic. They’re prepared to take risks, but they’re always carefully calculated first. They watch and wait for opportunities, using the element of surprise to their advantage. Scorpios usually know what it is that they want, and they possess incredible determination and tenacity, which helps them reach their goals.
+ November 22–December 22 + Element: Fire Ruling + Planet: Jupiter People born under the sign of Sagittarius are friendly, open, and optimistic. They are naturally enthusiastic and have a great zest for life. They’re honest and loyal, but can be outspoken and tactless at times. Independence is important to them, and they need space and room around them in order to thrive. Because of this, they’re often interested in sports and other outdoor activities. Sagittarians need to learn to channel their energies, as they often try to do too many different things at the same time. This is especially the case when they’re young, and it can be frustrating to others who can see their potential. Sagittarians enjoy learning, and often do this on their own, as they feel hemmed in and restricted in classrooms. They possess considerable foresight and vision, and over a lifetime develop a strong philosophy of life.
+ December 23–January 20 + Element: Earth Ruling + Planet: Saturn People born under the sign of Capricorn are solid, practical, and hardworking. They have a serious approach to life and slowly but steadily reach their goals. They are cautious, logical, careful, and fair. They’re ambitious and set their sights on far off distant goals that they invariably achieve. They are practical, conservative people who like to work everything out carefully before acting. According to the basics of astrology, they are thrifty and careful with money. They enjoy saving money but are happy to use it for specific purposes. They find it hard to express their emotions but can be extremely romantic with the right partner. They enjoy family life and are good, responsible, and loving parents.
+ January 21–February 19 + Element: Air + Ruling Planet: Uranus People born under the sign of Aquarius are sympathetic, broad-minded, tolerant, unconventional, and completely lacking in prejudice. They’re inclined to be independent, intellectual, inventive, and altruistic. They possess strong humanitarian ideals and are happiest when they’re involved in helping others. Their humanitarianism extends to all humanity. Aquarians have a scientific frame of mind and are always progressive and frequently radical in their ideas. They’re constantly looking ahead, trying to turn their dreams into reality. They accept people for who they are and accept their needs and idiosyncrasies. They make excellent, long-lasting friendships. Aquarians seek the truth of life in everything they do. They learn using both logic and intuition. They live largely on a mental plane and enjoy coming up with original ideas.
+ February 20–March 20 + Element: Water + Ruling Planet: Neptune People born under the sign of Pisces are gentle, imaginative, thoughtful, philanthropic, and creative. Although they can be vague and indecisive at times, they are generally popular and make successes of their lives. They’re sensitive and easily hurt, and this can lead to disappointments and emotional crises. They need encouragement to perform well. Pisceans are intuitive, receptive, and sympathetic. This makes them good judges of character. However, it also means they get easily hurt, and they suffer in silence when rebuffed or dismissed. They are extremely compassionate and are always available with a shoulder to lean on. They are happiest in any occupation that involves helping others.
+ Conjunction: This occurs when two planets are within 8 degrees of each other. The conjunctions usually indicate areas that will show good results.
+ Trine: This occurs when the planets are approximately 120 degrees apart, with a leeway of 8 degrees on either side. The trine is the most fortunate aspect, as the energies of the two planets harmonize easily. This aspect often shows you where your greatest strengths are.
+ Sextile: This occurs when the planets are approximately 60 degrees apart, with a leeway of 8 degrees on either side. This is an “easy” aspect that generally works in your favor without much input from you.
+ Semi-sextile: This occurs when the planets are approximately 30 degrees apart, again with a leeway of 8 degrees on either side. This is also an “easy” aspect. Despite this, you shouldn’t take it for granted in your understanding of astrology, as it indicates areas where you can shine.
Unfavorable Aspects The unfavorable aspects emphasize the negative characteristics of the planets involved. The unfavorable aspects often motivate people to action, as they want to overcome the challenges and difficulties the particular aspect produces.+ Opposition: This occurs when the two planets are approximately 180 degrees apart with a leeway of 8 degrees on either side. This is a difficult aspect, and it takes a great deal of effort to overcome any problems it creates.
+ Square: This occurs when the two planets are approximately 90 degrees apart, with a leeway of 8 degrees on either side. This aspect works against your best interests, and it takes a great deal of hard work to eliminate the negativity it creates.
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]]>BY DR. RICHARD LOUIS MILLER, M.A., Ph.D.
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