My Path in Qi Gong

The seeds of my path in Qi Gong were sown as I grew up with hippie parents in a working-class section of Brooklyn. Of my grandparents, one was a low-level gangster, and the other was a Veteran of D-Day. My father started smoking pot in the mid-sixties, and I grew up dancing to the Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, the Beatles, etc. So I had this weird mix of free-spirit hippieness and a not-so-healthy dose of working-class pragmatism. My parents were into alternative healing, and my father even took Tai Chi from Robert Chuckrow in Westchester, NY. I attended a few classes but was so young and hyper that it didn’t grab me.
 

When I started karate in 1979, it was mainly for self-defense, but I did become interested in the Asian aesthetic and some martial wisdom—as much as a teenager could. 

Then, as an awkward high schooler, my need for self-defense grew and overshadowed any aesthetic musings. My experience with trauma and feeling alienated was in full bloom. When my karate school closed, I got darker and more aggressive, which lasted for a few years. At that time, I met Rocky Graziano, Jake La Motta, and a few other famous boxers. After that experience, I felt kind of turned off by fighting. Even as a 17-year-old in pre-politically correct days, hearing the N-word shouted out when a Black former Heavyweight champion entered the room didn't sit right—adding to that their faces had been remodeled from being hit there so many times. 

After fighting in the Golden Gloves Tournament at Madison Square Garden and my experiences with some boxing champs, fighting was not a great life choice. I also met a girl who was into dancing and art, and my friends turned me onto Pink Floyd’s music; their albums, The Wall, Wish You Were Here, and Dark Side of the Moon, notably Eclipse, showed me a vision of understanding psychological pain and alienation and being in tune with the Universe seemed like the right path. Then, I started taking drugs to explore a shamanistic union with nature. I went to art school to pursue this further. I spent the next 10 years pursuing a vision of art that was trying to become in tune with nature. I attended a College in a mountain town in New York State. This was my first experience in the mountains. So, journeying to the mountains and taking psychedelics became a passion. I became frustrated with the school’s demands and wanted to be a free spirit. I lost my pragmatic side. 

After a series of profound life changes, I left everything in NY and decided to hitchhike to California as a free spirit, taking a copy of the Tao Teh Ching with me. I eventually landed in Taos, NM, and some truly magical things sparked a spiritual transformation. Unfortunately, I was on the receiving end of some nasty experiences and witnessed the backstabbing all too common in the art world. To be clear, I was also not in a mentally healthy space either. So I left Taos and headed to Seattle just when grunge took off, and I felt at home there. After more backstabbing experiences in the art world, I began questioning what art even offers me. I also became friends with the girlfriend of Alice In Chains’s Lead singer, Demri. I saw her 3 days before she was to die from a drug overdose. She looked like an old woman. When I heard she died, I knew this path wasn’t for me. The pursuit of fame is a black hole filled with backstabbing and an ever-present gravitational pull toward an early death. 

It seemed like the universe was looking out for me, and this theme kept coming up in my life; I knew I needed a change, and martial arts saved me once as a young man. So, I knew it was something I needed again.  I attended an Aikido school in Seattle. I learned a great deal, but the teachers demanded a large amount of money for testing. When I said I didn’t know if I had it, the teacher yelled at me. I knew right there I was done with that school. Moreover, I was experiencing some pain from injuries as a young man, so I spoke with my Naturopathic Doctor, and he suggested I take Tai Chi. I had already been doing a lot of acupuncture for the pain, so it seemed like a natural progression. 

I loved Tai Chi and began practicing every day. I started reading every book on Qi Gong I could find, knowing this was my path. My chronic wrist pain and early exposure to Asian healing methods seem to come to fruition in my study of Tai Chi and Qi Gong. 

This started me getting involved in health; my wrist injury was the main instigator of this pursuit, leading me to understand more about the human body and Chinese Medicine. I became fascinated with the body and Qi Gong and opened the door to a path that unified nature, health, and the body. A friend in my Tai Chi class told me about a Qi Gong master named Dr. Wong. I immediately attended his class that Saturday. Dr. Wong began discussing Traditional Chinese Medicine theory and how Qi Gong was an integral path.  

Soon after, I attended the famous Energetic Retreat in Washington State, where I first met Fook Yueng. Fook Yueng is a renowned Qi Gong master who demonstrated some serious skills even in his 80s. At that retreat, I also met Gao Fu, a famous Chen Tai Chi Master who was also in her 80s. Both these masters were so healthy and fit that I knew I needed to commit to this path. I also thought to myself that I felt like my old art school days of tripping in the mountain, but I was able to do it without drugs, and more importantly, it was positive and healing with no adverse side effects. 

Through a long, committed practice, I have learned to trust my body. The wisdom and the Qi are there; it always gives you what you need if you listen.

The Importance of Naturalness in Tai Chi

Tao Te Ching - Lao Tzu - chapter 53

If I have even just a little sense,

I will walk on the main road and my only fear will be of straying from it.

Keeping to the main road is easy,

But people love to be sidetracked.

When the court is arrayed in splendor,

The fields are full of weeds,

And the granaries are bare.

Some wear are gorgeous clothes,

Carry sharp swords,

And indulge themselves with food and drink;

They have more possessions than they can use.

They are robber barons.

This is certainly not the way of Tao.

(translation by Gia-fu Feng and Jane English)

When first studying Tai Chi, a common question usually arises about coordinating breath with the movements. That one question needs a little background before it can be answered. Let's start with a seminar, I attended in 1999 with Madame Gao Fu. She was 82 at the time. It was a seminar in which you could choose who you want to workout with. I was new to Tai Chi and did not know who was famous and who was not. There were other teachers there who offered exotic styles with even more exotic names.

But all this 82 year old Chinese woman taught was zhan zhuang (standing meditation), and chan ssu jin (standing and doing spiral movements) for 3 hours per day. I thought there must be something to this because her practice is so simple while the others at the workshop presented more complicated esoteric forms. I ended up practicing with her for the rest of the 5 days. Towards the end of each practice we got a chance to ask questions. Someone in the crowd asked about matching the breathing with the movements. Madame Gao Fu said it was not necessary to try to match them up. Adding that after continued practice they would come together naturally. During one of those question sessions I asked, "my connection to my Qi comes and goes; sometimes I feel really in tune and then it goes away." "Is that how it is supposed to be?" She said that the more you practice the deeper the connection until you are never disconnected.

What Madame Gao Fu espoused was a type of natural unforced but committed practice, while standing in place or moving. Now in 2017, 18 years later, I still remember that seminar and I am still deeply committed to the wisdom she passed on.

Often when simply being natural you are perceived as lazy and in America laziness is the enemy. To just be natural in America is difficult because so many experts want you to DO STUFF, ACCOMPLISH GOALS and ACHIEVE RESULTS. I have found a lot of conflicting messages being promoted by health experts in America, "you should diet," "go jogging," "think positive," "have social networks," "sleep 8 hours per night,""set goals," "be successful," "challenge yourself," "meditate daily" and "reduce stress." The problem is that people are lost and the experts are lost. The Tao just is. All you have to do is follow the current. Where is the current? It is everywhere but the best place to start is in your body.

Many years ago when I visited Mississippi. My wife wanted to take me to her family summer vacation spot, the Buffalo River in Arkansas. There my wife and I went in a canoe and her father and mother went in a separate canoe. My father-in-law is a very devout Christian in Mississippi and I was this Tai Chi practitioner who KNEW the Tao, After all I have been studying the Tao Te Ching since the 80s. But this very 'square,' in the 60’s sense, school district superintendent, put his canoe in the water as I did. As he entered the river he effortlessly glided towards the part of the river where the current was strongest, whereas I battled the water and huffed and puffed and shouldered my way to that same current then it changed, as currents tend to do, and I lost it. So I again struggled to get into the right path. I would look up and there was this old guy blissfully gleaming along. Granted it was my first and really only time canoeing in a river but it is a good example of how to find the Tao.The Tao is not exclusively found in China, it is not owned by Taoists it simply is. You don’t even have to do Tai Chi to find it, although, I find that the pace of Tai Chi and the movements themselves reveal a deep understanding of the spiral energy that is part of the universe and doing them assists in finding the current within yourself.

There are two parts to this naturalness, one is the release to the Tao, the state of which is wu wei. I have explained wu wei before. It is a type of thoughtful non-action. It is not simply doing nothing, which many interpret it as and it is not using force to make something happen either. The second part of naturalness is song. Song is a state of being, like being relaxed but with a slight level of attentiveness. So it is not standing at attention like a soldier nor is relaxing at a beach in Cabo. It is somewhere in between.

Song is also applied to parts of the body and it involves conscious releasing of control of the waist, neck etc. The hardest part of Tai Chi is to release these parts of the body where most people store their tension. You find when working on this release that you are more able to find your center of balance because many of us are living in a shell like body that is not even aware of our true place on earth.

So to attain song is the first important but hardest step because it allows for the energy to settle in your dan tian and then it can start is transformation process.

Tao Te Ching - Lao Tzu - chapter 15

Who can wait quietly while the mud settles?

Who can remain still until the moment of action?

Observers of the Tao do not seek fulfilment.

Not seeking fulfillment, they are not swayed by desire for change.

(translation by Gia-fu Feng and Jane English)

There are a lot of hours, maybe a lifetime of work that goes into what was just described above. In fact that is the main practice, whether you chose to just sit and meditate or do the most esoteric ancient qi gong, song is the main activity to find the Tao. You can not find your center without song, you cannot do Tai Chi without song, and you can not attain wu wei if you do not song.

Note: Tai Chi could mean the series of postures most people think when Tai Chi is mentioned or it could be the balancing of yin/yang energies to canoe a river more adeptly or live to a ripe old age of 88 and still be teaching a physical activity.

"Madame Gao Fu died in Beijing January 17, 2005 at 88 years of age, following a brief illness."
http://seattletaiji.oo.net/bio.htm

The Yin-Yang of Survival: Toxic Masculinity, and Taoism

Once in awhile when I am resting on the weekends I will watch a reality TV show. Unlike many people I find of them interesting to see how people behave in certain stressful situations. Last week, I got caught up in the Naked and Afraid XL season. This latest offering featured 12 people who had already survived for 21 days in the wilderness with a single partner totally naked. So these 12 naked veterans were tasked with surviving in the wilds of the Orinoco river basin in Colombia with two other veterans, who were chosen by the producers. They were only given a knife, a bag, and each person got to chose one survival item: either a water container, a net, a fishing kit, or a fire making kit. So no one person had everything they needed to make it the whole 40 days. They were not given food, or water, or clothes.


There were four groups of three. The only group I am going to analyze is the one with a male, who described himself as, “The Alpha Male” and specifically said that he is not “an” alpha male but “The” alpha male. He was matched with two women, one of whom was a vegetarian. Literally within minutes of arriving the alpha male started cutting large trees down and building a massive shelter. The one item he chose to bring along was a bow and arrow. He tried hunting for food but was unsuccessful. In the first few days he expended lots of precious energy doing many tasks. He derided the women for being lazy and hurled other abusive insults at them. The women stood their ground and cautioned him against expending too much energy. At one point he moved into a separate camp, which he had to build himself. After he had completed that and expended even more energy, he realized he had no means of making fire, as the women had the fire starter. So he went back to them asking for the fire starter. He tried to make amends but he was not clear in his intention and could not resolve the conflict he instigated. This decision left him without the means to start a fire, a necessary part of surviving. Needless to say, the women chose a better survival strategy and they made it the full forty days by having a wise understanding of resource conservation and “the” alpha male tapped out early and was sent home.

The reason why I took the time to explain that show is because this is a clear cut example of how Taoist principles can work and how toxic masculinity can lead to one’s downfall. I say Taoist principles, but clearly the women in the show did not say what their philosophy was so I am kind of using their survival strategy as an example of Taoist principles in action. Come to think of it, these woman gave a better demonstration of Taoist principles than some old dude with a man bun posting his lecture on YouTube.

The alpha male in the show was the poster boy for toxic masculinity, with his need to be right, to not listen to “weak” women, and a vegetarian no less. He ignored numerous cautions, at his own peril. As a Tai Chi instructor who has been teaching older adults since 2001, I have seen this play out time and time again. In fact, most older males do not chose Tai Chi as their exercise and would rather drop their wives off to their “dance-like” exercise. Those women being dropped off have taught me many lessons about checking my own masculinity. I have learned that women are more likely to go to the doctor’s and older men who live with their wives go to the doctor more and live longer. Women are open to feedback and listen to others more and they live six and a half years longer than men in the U.S.. Whether by script or by personal choice the women in the show clearly demonstrated the qualities Taoists would characterize as Yin, or soft.

Taoist models of gender account for the fact that feminine qualities are important and even superior to male qualities. Before we go any further, it must be stated that Chinese culture did not bring about a gender revolution by any means and there are numerous accounts of women that have been persecuted. However, it must also be acknowledged that Taoism is unique in that it gave a highly significant placement of women and feminine qualities in its value system, especially when comparing it to other systems of that era like Christianity, and Buddhism etc..
The main symbol for Taoism is the Yin-Yang symbol, or Tai Chi doh, with a Yin half, that is soft, dark, and feminine, and Yang half that is hard, bright, and male. Yes, it is a binary view of the universe but it is important to note that each half has a bit of its other within it. That significant dot means that each has the other within them, meaning there is always a little masculinity in a female, and a little femininity in a male. The most important part of the symbol is that both aspects are intertwined and equal in the creation of the universe.

In chapter 6 of the Taoist classic by Lao Tzu, as translated by Gia Fu-feng and Jane English, he mentions the valley spirit,

Tao Te Ching - Lao Tzu - chapter 6

The valley spirit never dies;

It is the woman, primal mother.

Her gateway is the root of heaven and earth.

It is like a veil barely seen.

Use it; it will never fail.

Stand by the door of any Tai Chi class in the world and you will hear talk about using hard force as opposed to soft force. Hard force is usually characterized as a male trait, which is in juxtaposition to the female trait of yielding, that is considered to be the highest level of internalizing the Tao.

The ultimate expression of Yin energy is in Wu-Wei, or non-action. I was always thrown off by that, and many Americans have difficulties grasping it, instead they see it as Jesus-take-the wheel, kind of non-action; totally letting go without any “human” help. I confess it took me a while to understand, but now I have come to understand it as “strategic” or thoughtful non-action. So the women in the alpha male’s group definitely exhibited Wu-Wei. They did it so well that the alpha male called them lazy but they were not lazy at all. Instead of cutting massive trees down they used a sparce shelter, even though they used the shelter the alpha male built, remember they did not ask him to build it, they would have made a simplier shelter. Additionally, while he was out hunting and climbing trees, they wove a fish trap and foraged for fruits and nuts. The vegetarian was practicularly smart in her awareness of her nutrient intake. She rationed her foraged food to make it until the 40 days. They also met up with another group which created a larger team effort. The women were able to work with in another group and therefore increase their chances of surviving.

The Yin, feminine trait of yielding allows clarity and opens up the opportunity of using the force of the earth. So in Tai Chi we relax so that we can use the force of the earth (gravity and leverage) more effectively. If we relax (let go) and don't force it, we can increase our impact. If we move with fear and tension Yang or male qualities, then we have to use even more non-Wu Wei force. Thus creating a non-harmonious trajectory. Often Wu-Wei is poo pooed by martial artists and fighters as weakness or fantasy. More on that in a few paragraphs but first I have to address the binary approach.

I can see that feminists might object to this binary approach because Taoism assigns traits to gender. But this is where the Yin-Yang comes into play, a female can have male traits, and a male can have female traits. So in Tai Chi, I consciously cultivate Yin- female traits to temper my Yang- male traits. Sometimes in everyday life, I get frustrated and become aggressive, which leads to as my wife says, me manhandling things. Tai Chi, helps me temper that Yang aggression and bring about a clarity of action and peace of mind. Just because we say that there are male traits and female traits doesn’t mean that gender assignment is rigidly in one group, the Yin-Yang symbolizes fluidity between gender and the transformation of energy from one group to the other.

All this talk of Yin energy does get dicey though, especially when it comes to martial arts, In combative situations things happen fast and there is a time and a place for the use of Yang force or violence. But right now in our time period violence is low but this could change. The alpha males of the world might rise again. This is why I see liberal idealism as too idealistic because it doesn’t acknowledge a world in which there are violent alpha males. All too often, liberals try to explain that behavior as it being socially constructed, where as the Taoist approach understands it is a way in nature, but not the best way, not the way of the Tao.

I grew up in Brooklyn in the late 60s and early 70s. It was not for the faint of heart. Men there were very aggressive, I witnessed my maternal grandfather beat up a guy and his wife after we left a restaurant. They had a disagreement about who had the right away and it came to blows. All this is typical male machismo of that era, but liberals seems to think this behavior is gone for ever. Unfortunately, I believe it is just dormant. I have a Hobbesian view of nature. So if the group from Naked and Afraid XL that I have been discussing were in a Hobbesian world, where there is no governing body, he could have cannibalized one of the women, taken the fire starter and made the other women his wife or in a less dramatic turn of events, the women might have seen him as more of an asset than an ass because of his 6 foot 5 stature and bold nature. So even the alpha male strategy is a viable solution in certain contexts and it is not socially constructed as many social scientists would have you believe. But again, following the Tao leads to a more fruitful relationship and even in a Hobbesian world working as a team with full support is better than cannibalizing each other. My point here is that hyper-masculinity is not socially constructed and it is important to practice martial arts because the Hobbesian world is never far from civilization.

This is why martial arts, especially Asian martial arts, like Tai Chi, Aikido, Judo, Jiu Jitsu, Wing Chun and others preach tempering hyper-masculinity and using one’s mind to leverage the anger in others. Anger creates a loss of balance and a lack of clear vision, and tempering doesn’t only work on Yang energy, it also can bring up Yin qualities. My friend Bishop, who is a university policeman and a Wing Chun instructor, told me that he discusses the balance/blending of Yin and Yang energies to his students all the time. “Too much of one or the other is never a good thing, but when COMBINED in the right way, the result is greater than the two parts.”

My close friends in martial arts, Dave, Larry, and Bishop all work on using Yin traits when dealing with angry male behavior, specifically Dave and Bishop who work directly with that behavior in public settings as a bouncer and a university police officer. I have heard countless stories of how they have used their martial training, specifically leverage and a cool clear head to not engage in the heightened emotion that often happens when young males, who have been drinking alcohol, come in contact with the opportunity for sex. My other friend, Larry teaches younger professional fighters the discipline it takes to check your wildness and throw accurate punches that hit their target with brutal efficacy. Larry and I often discuss the difficulty many of his students, mostly males have with listening and controlling their hyper masculinity. He has said that the ones who do become great are the ones who don’t get trapped by their hyper-masculinity/overly aggressive nature.

Practising martial arts and internalizing the principle of Yin-Yang deepens one’s understanding of themselves. It shows one how to take control of anger and hyper-aggression so that one can think clearly and make better decisions that lead to positive outcomes. Moreover, it also gives us an insight into human nature because you have seen the ugliness become tame.

Principal Vs Pinciple

Most religious people believe you must believe in an omnipotent "Principal" to get into heaven, or at the very least, it is a prerequisite to be saved from eternal suffering.

According to Online Etymology.com, principal as a noun originally meant  a  "ruler” or  “governor." It also meant  a “person in charge of a public school." On the other hand, since the 14th century, principles have been seen as a rule or basic set of truths. Said more simply, a principal is a high-level authority figure who administers laws or principles, while a principle is a basic set of fundamental truths.

You probably see where I am going with this, but it is something that I have not seen discussed much. Within religious groups there is clearly a desire to differentiate one group from another by claiming allegiance to a specific set of deities and rituals, while also showing that the other group is less than holy and even that they are evil. This is classic, “in-group, out-group” stuff, which many humans are trying to get beyond. Yet we keep bumping into it.

Regardless of the basic instinct to continue excluding others I see no spiritual reason to continue it. In my own spiritual exploration I have been trying to understand where to place my faith, or hang my hat and this line of inquiry has led to me try to lay my faith on principles thus obviating the need to “out-group” someone based solely on the name they have chosen as their ruler. I would argue what is the point of the name of the leader at all, except beyond in-group/out-group. I see no value in it at all. I know the second commandment in the Judeo-Christian bible there is a rule which states that “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” While there are two others that also place great value on the name of god. However, those commandments hold little spiritual value to me.

Regardless of how much value I place on it or someone else does, why is it important to acknowledge name of the principal? If god is almighty and omnipotent, then why would they care for such trifles in a name? Wouldn't the person/god you worship love you even more if you studied the principles that he/she/it has established?

Taking this line of thinking further, there are literally hundreds of names of God, and add to that the many different cultural pronunciations, along with metaphors and such. Taking all this into account it is quite a foolish activity, trying to exclude people from heaven because they do not use the same 900 codes words that your group does.

Now if someone, does not heed a principle that you have established as important to you or your belief system, for instance, I follow many Taoist principles, and one I find particularly important is that the human body is a microcosm of the universe, the macrocosm. Thus harmonizing your body with nature is a legitimate path to harmonizing with the greater procreative life force or the creator of the universe. So it follows, if someone shows no value for their own body then they would not be abiding by the principles I believe are deeply important to being a spiritual person. Taking another angle on this line of thinking, lets us say there is a group of people who call their practice Yoga, and follow their own energetic system. Does this mean they are wrong because they use a different set of names? Since we have established that they follow the same principle, health of the body. Should I, following a Taoist approach condemn them?

I remember having a conversation about religion with a Christian fundamentalist and he said if you don’t follow Jesus, and his specific denomination you will go to hell. I questioned him further, first I asked him to listen to a story I had heard a long time ago about a Methodist preacher, who witnessed the freeing of concentration camp detainees. It goes, the preacher said that many of the ex-detainees were beating up the guards but a lone women was not participating in the melee. He went to her and asked her why she was not taking vengeance on her tormentors. She said, it would make her like them. So I asked my fundamentalist friend, is she going to hell because she is Jewish? He said without hesitation, yes. I was floored. To this day that story tears me up because I am not so sure I could be like her. I know that I might not be able to control myself if the tables were turned on my tormentors. I know if I were in her situation, I would be counting the days and looking for any possible opportunity for revenge. Hell, I do it when someone cuts me off on the road. But yet, in some perverse world, she will be in hell suffering all because she didn’t proclaim one of the correct names of god as her savior. Puzzling. I told my friend if the god in his head would think that woman was not a saint than I would have nothing to with said god. That conversation with the fundamentalist was formative in my own thinking about god, worship and religion.  But honestly it has taken me a long time to reconcile these thoughts that lead to the proverbial fork in the road.

Pascal's Wager and the “Live a Good Life” Quote

Then I came upon a fork in the road with Pascal pointing in one direction and the “Live a good life” quote heading in another. Pascal’s wager asserts that the loss of not believing, eternal damnation, greatly outweighs the very limited earthly pleasure you could gain. The "Live a Good Life" path states that if you live a good moral life and if there is/are a god/gods and they abide by moral principles they will not care about your devotion to them. If they do not have principles than what kind of god are they and you shouldn’t want to believe in them, and if there is no god, you still win because you have spread that morality to your community.

At 51 years old, I have worn out many shoes walking on the “live a good life path" and I know it is good for me on every level I can imagine, and deep, deep down in me I can’t believe that the most omnipotent entity in the universe would condemn me, knowing how hard I work on principles and yet somehow mispronounced one of his/her/it’s 900 or so names.

Sometimes it takes a death to slap you in the face

October 17, 2016, my father, passed away shortly after midnight!

A couple of days before I was sitting in my backyard. Sun shining and sun bathing; vitamin D being absorbed. I can feel it like a dry sponge getting moistened by water.

My backyard excavated, laid open feels the sun too. Water evaporating, photosynthesis and the great transformation happening with all the 5 elements of nature mutually supporting each other.

My father in hospice. No pain, but no immune system either. Chemo sucked the Chi out of his body. Sometimes your body can’t handle the pound of cure, hence ancient wisdom is nothing to ridicule.

My father never spoke his feelings. He never laid them bare. His heart never opened; nothing to absorb, nothing to let out. No evaporation, no mutually supportive cycle; NOT in tune. Only death lies ahead.

Sometimes it is indeed too late! Sometimes people do not feel how the earth works. Not necessarily the science of it but the intrinsic art of the cycles that communicates a tune higher than its individual notes.

I am no better. I didn’t even get the idea to go into the sun on my own. My cute, not even one year old puppy did it and I saw him absorbing and deep down I knew it was the right thing to do. I listened! I listened to my dog from the pound. I listen to all I can and take notes.

The fall of man is not knowledge itself but the belief that we are separate from nature. I know Noah saw it that way, he listened.

My father thought he could heal himself and he failed miserably. Not because he tried but because he closed himself and no longer listened.

Many people think they are beyond nature, in fact, America often promotes the idea that we defeated nature. What arrogance! That is the fall of man.

The one truth I follow is gravity and nature’s cycles are buried deep within me and my mind often obscures this fundamental truth. I wrestle with my mind’s illusions and delusions to lay myself bare to nature and woe to those who do not take heed.

This is why my beliefs sync up with Pantheism and Taoism, more than other belief systems. More on this in future posts.