Archive for the 'Articles' Category

Time and again I run into people who have trouble sleeping. For many of us the deep sleep that all of us experienced as children where we wake totally refreshed is just a memory. Well I’m happy to tell you there is a wonderful simple way Continue reading ‘Sleeping Problems? The Easy Taoist Way to Solve them’

When presented with circumstances of pleasure or pain, unconscious brain processing will take you in the direction of pleasure each and every time. We are happiness-seeking animals by nature, a fact we can learn a lot from if we take time and energy to investigate it. Continue reading ‘The Simplicity of Happiness by Viggo Johansen’

 The Lungs where resignation & strength resides:
By Andrew Fretwell

The Taoist model of the  inner world is simply brilliant and the more I dive deeper into it the more amazed I am that this model of in depth inner psychology is over 5,000 years old it really contains a wealth of wisdom.

The Taoists considered our soul to not be singular but to be a collective like a soul family and different aspects of our soul reside in each of what the Taoists called the Zang Fu, our internal organs.  At the end of this newsletter is a simple meditation and a link to an audio where you can start to relate to your inner soul family through the internal organs and get them really communicating with each other.

You see, like any family there can be disputes and different points of view within, this is why many times we feel conflicted on the inside because different aspects of our soul have different desires and a different agenda.

For example one part of our soul family will  be very committed to quitting smoking and when that part of our soul is dominant we are very committed.

But…… There can be more parts of our soul that are much more lazy and resigned to the status quo with no interest at all in development, it’s this part of us that we must address and start to refine with meditation and commitment.  The article above by Viggo will directly hit that part of us that is not interested in development and what I want to say is it’s the same for all of us, in fact we can define human greatness as someone who has taken on this challenge of conflicting inner voices and still acted based on core values

Values really emanate from the deepest aspect of you  from the authentic self your spirit so when we align with our values we align with the deepest part of ourselves, the trick is to get our inner soul family the outer personality aligned up with our values as well, then we act in the world doing something that I call “firing on all cylinders”

Most people spend their whole lives bouncing back and forth internally between these different parts of the soul and never really feel a sense of peace and integration and lack personal power to really commit.

It’s no wonder it is perceived as difficult to follow through on our commitments it’s because we feel split inside.

How about the simple split that Viggo talks about above most of us resist pain and fall into suffering that’s a choice that one of our soul family makes we can have another aspect of our soul that can really accept pain so I think very important to have this distinction that different parts of us can at any time take  over the show so to speak,  it’s what makes being human so interesting and very surprising there will be times when you fully accept a situation and the pain that arises and then seconds later go into suffering.

Both myself and Viggo think that combining cognitive therapy and the Taoist inner alchemy meditations are the solution

We can use the power of our breathing and the inherent strength that’s in the lungs to help us when we experience pain.

When something in your outer world causes pain in your inner world  breath into it fully, the lungs  contribute strength to our inner soul family, feel into it fully as well Metal is the element the Taoists masters associated with feeling fully our experience of being a conscious spirit in a physical body.

In a way the very act of breathing is a commitment to life and a human life is defined by breath. When we leave the watery realm of our mother’s womb the first thing we do is take the first breath; an in-breath  that starts our physical  life, if we die a natural death the very last thing we will do is breath out as our spirit leaves this physical world.

Take a few minutes and feel into this, that your life is defined by the amount of breaths you will take between that first breath and the very last one.

Breath touches all our being simultaneously from the most subtle spirit where ultimately the breath arises from, to our emotional body and our physical body. So to truly let life breath us is the ultimate strength of the lungs.

Conversely when we don’t breath when we limit our breathing we limit our ability to engage in life and this is where the feeling of resignation comes in we all know we have great potential but by breathing at a fraction of our capacity we  shut ourselves off to our aliveness and we just start to resign and loose that commitment to our greatness.

Below Mr George Bernard Shaw aptly explains this in his own unique way

“This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of Nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.” — George Bernard Shaw

My understanding of Enlightenment by Andrew Fretwell

To understand what Enlightenment is we need to understand who we are as human beings.

We have an outer physical self, our body and how we perceive ourselves as a physical being. We then have as a inner energetic self called the soul, our inner being, dreams, thoughts, feelings and also the unconscious mind make up this self.

We then at the deepest level of our being have an Original Self or Authentic Self Continue reading ‘Understanding of Enlightenment’