It's a strange thing, Taoism is one of the oldest religions, and all spelling programs underline it in red, they say, "we don't know such a word." Every month, in Yandex, tens of thousands of people request this word, but it hardly adds clarity to anyone. The florid works of the Taoist classics, deliberately confusing the common man in the street with their language, only add an even greater shade of mystery to this term. Even modern teachers write in such a way that an unprepared person begins to fall asleep after reading a couple of pages. I would like to correct this situation as much as possible.
Indeed, Taoist practices are difficult to understand, especially for those who have never practiced meditation, qigong or real yoga. And here I would like to talk about Taoist alchemy, or rather, how I understand it.
Taoist alchemical practice goes back millennia, only God himself knows where it originates. A multitude of prejudices and false teachers have surrounded the Taoist system and do not allow real practice to get out.
So let's try it in a simple way
Taoist alchemy is the science of prolonging life and transforming a person, transferring his vibrations to higher states, where there are more opportunities for the conscious creation of reality and where there is a real opportunity to find heaven on this earth and in your soul.
Taoist alchemy has three levels available to humans. I will describe only the initial stages, since the advanced levels, after all, are useless to describe, they just need to be done.
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How to Extend Life with Taoist Alchemy
First, a little theory. The theory of fire and water. Forces of Yin and Yang. Everyone knows the Yin-Yang symbol. Perhaps this is one of the most famous symbols in the world, and again, it becomes very strange to me that the words are Taoist, Taoist, etc. grammar programs are underlined in red! In this symbol, masculine and feminine principles merged in an incessant movement. Yin pulls Yang, Yang pushes Yin.
Taoists believe that the human body consists of two main substances: Yin - female energy, Yang - male energy. And their fusion occurs during the conception of the child. Male and female energies merge together during orgasm. It is from this moment that the growth of awareness of the future person begins, the basis of which will be the energies of the father and mother.
During orgasm, a vortex is formed, attracting the immortal Soul into the body, which will remain in it as long as the potential for the merging of these two forces remains. As they grow older, these two energies manifest themselves more and more, the body grows and gets stronger. In most cases, this continues until adolescence. In adolescence, these energies begin to decay. I will not write about the reasons for this state of affairs here, this is a topic for a separate article. I will only say that we ourselves create the prerequisites for our decomposition by our behavior.
So, the two forces merged into one. These are the powers of Fire and Water. By its nature, fire is hot energy and it tends to rise upward. Imagine a flame, it always goes up and never goes down, this is natural. The opposite story happens with water, it tends to flow down, strive for the ground and fill the voids.
These are the reasons for the decomposition of our body and mind. The fire burns out, the fuel runs out, and the water flows out, the female energy ends up in the body. After the last fire has burned out and all the water has flowed away, the body dies, freeing the soul. In fact, both of these reservoirs, fire and water, can be replenished. After the restoration of the reservoirs, they can be merged together again, and this is what Taoist alchemy does.
The first stage of alchemical transformation
As we have already found out, there are two forces - male and female. At the first stage of Taoist alchemy, masculine power is associated with the heart and fire, and feminine with the kidneys with water. To replenish the reservoirs of water and fire, the Taoists have created many practices, such as qigong, Tao-yin - Taoist yoga, Tai Chi Chuan, and hatha yoga. Various exercises are designed not only to strengthen the body, but also to restore the lost energy.
In the classroom, we go through the practice of qigong and tao-yin in detail, as well as complexes of other systems, for example, Latin American practices, which Carlos Castaneda called the term Tensegrity. It would be possible to paint here various qigong complexes, but from what you read about them, nothing will change. All Taoist practices need to be done, from a simple reading, unfortunately or not, there will be no sense.
The whole practice begins with preparatory qigong, it liberates the body and prepares it for meditation, purification and additional energy intake. This is followed by static and breathing exercises designed to strengthen the body and fill it with new energy. Relaxation and openness of the mind to new information plays a huge role in Taoist practice. The relaxation process, for a number of reasons, occurs gradually. A person gradually removes his defenses, one by one, while strengthening his body and mind. It is this gradualness that makes it possible to softly and painlessly enter the practice, not destroying, but gently transforming the subtle settings of the human psyche.
After the preparatory exercises, we begin to work with meditations. Here is one of them:
Lotus meditation
The forces of Fire - heart and Water - kidneys merge in it. It perfectly regulates blood pressure, soothes the mind and is very beneficial for overall health.
This is how it is described by Master Mantek Chia:
1. Breathe into Dan Tien and think of the beautiful blooming lotus.
You can see an open flower by imagining it red with golden yellow petals in the center. Smile at him gratefully.
2. Look at the petals, stem and roots. Leaves float on the surface of the water. Look at the stem as it descends from the flower to the roots stuck in the mud. Feel the roots being sucked into the pond bed. The roots receive the most necessary amount of nutrition from the wet soil.
3. Feel the harmony of fire and water. The flower bed and petals are open to the sun and the universe to absorb the life-sustaining rays. The sun is the source of fire energy. The land contains the necessary water. Smile and thank this life-giving harmony of the forces of fire and water, yang and yin, male and female.
4. Connect images with your heart and kidneys. As you continue breathing the Tan Tien, expanding and contracting, look inward at your heart and kidneys. The buds are the roots that absorb water. The heart is an open lotus that absorbs the fiery gift of the sun. The spine is a healthy and flexible stem that connects these two energies.
5. Inhale into the heart and exhale into the kidneys. Coordinate the Tan Tien Breath: breathe into your heart, absorbing the warmth of the sun, feeling it pass down the crown of your head, and blend it with love, joy and happiness in the red lotus of the heart. Pull this loving, hot heart energy back into the wing point opposite the heart center (the point between T5 and T6), inhaling slowly. Then, exhale the hot energy down the lotus stem and your spine into the cool buds, warming them with loving energy from your heart. You can enhance the effect of emotional balance by exhaling with a heart sound, Howe, as you mentally direct your heart energy down your spine.
6. In the opposite direction, inhale into the kidneys and exhale up into the heart. Think of the buds as nourishing lotus bulbs with roots extending down through the legs and feet into the mud, absorbing the soothing blue watery energy of the earth. As you inhale into the kidneys, feel the roots suck in the cool, refreshing, nourishing blue water energy up through the feet, through the legs to the kidneys. Feel the kidneys mingle with the cool, refreshing blue water energy that flows up the legs. As you exhale, you can mentally pronounce the sound of the kidneys, Chuuuuuu, and send this refreshing stream of soft, cool, moist blue energy up the flexible stem of your spine through the wind point into a grateful and happy heart.
7. Continue changing the direction of your breathing several times.
Red light from crown to heart and down to kidneys; blue light from a sparkling spring into the kidneys and up into the heart.
8. Then just relax and don't worry about breathing anymore. Just move the smiling mind back and forth between the heart and the kidneys along the connecting stem of the spine. Equilibrium will be established automatically. Smile at the perfection and splendor of the lotus.
Smile gratefully at your kidneys, spine and heart.
Lotus meditation is very soothing and natural. The more you practice it, the easier it becomes to know this inner peace. We also use relaxation meditations such as Inner smile and meditation for deeper cleansing, relaxation and restoration of normal functioning of internal organs - Six healing sounds.
The practice of the Fusion of the Five Elements belongs to the same stage of Taoist alchemy. In this practice, a deeper cleansing of the subtle bodies of the practitioner takes place and his preparation for subsequent levels.
The great Taoist Zhuang Ji believed that with the help of the practices of the first level of Taoist alchemy, it was impossible to achieve real immortality. One can only strengthen the body and prepare it for deeper levels of transformation.
The second stage of Taoist alchemy
The second stage of Taoist alchemy was opened by the practices of Kan and Li. In these practices, the yin and yang ingredients are energy. This is a fairly advanced level of Taoist practice, and not all practitioners can reach it quickly. The main postulate of these practices is that the normal position of fire and water in the human body is reversed.
Normally, the energy of fire is at the top and the energy of water is at the bottom. In Kan Li we put fire under water, creating a "Cauldron" in the lower Dantian, that is, at the level of the navel, inside the body. The energy of the fire in this position will heat the water in the boiler. The heated "steam" will rise from the boiler, which will flush and renew all internal organs, systems, meridians and glands.
This steam has an incredible healing effect. Stagnation in the body and problems that could not be affected by ordinary practices during this meditation can manifest in the form of pain and discomfort. The whole body is undergoing a fairly serious transformation. That is why these practices should be done only after serious preparation of the body, its energetic and physical purification.
The practice of Kan and Li is divided into three levels. In the first stage, the cauldron with heated water is at the level of the practitioner's navel. In the second level of Kan and Li, the cauldron is moved to the level of the solar plexus. This leads to an increase in the energy of the practice itself and to a deeper study of the body.
The third stage of Taoist alchemy
In the third level of practice, a cauldron is created in the region of the heart. This brings the practitioner to fairly high levels of enlightenment. Creation of a boiler at the level of the heart is already "aerobatics" available to few.
In the practice of Kan and Li, in addition to steaming and renewing the internal organs, there are many additional formulas. These practices are sometimes called: Small, Large, and Great Enlightenments of Kan and Li. During these meditations, there is a global purification of not only the practitioner's body, but also his consciousness. Channels and meridians are opened that cannot be opened with simple qigong or yoga exercises.
In these practices, there is a formula called Overcoming Death. During meditation, the practitioner unites in an orgasmic state, his sexual energy and the energy of Heaven. At the same time, an energetic fusion of the glands of the brain occurs. This leads to the conception of an immortal embryo and the restoration of the energetic integrity of the body. An immortal embryo is an energy structure, it is used as a vehicle for the movement of the soul to higher planes.
At the third level of Taoist alchemy, the adept creates an immortal body, theoretically capable of being home to the soul for an unlimited amount of time. Practices of the third level are not described in books and are the property of every practitioner. These meditations go beyond ordinary perception. I will only mention them.
These practices are: Unification of Kan and Li, Union of Earth and Heaven, Unification of Heaven and Man. The following ingredients are used as alchemical ingredients:
The yin ingredient is the human body, and Chuang Tzu mentions the heart as the yang ingredient. Master Mantek Chia uses human nature itself as a yin ingredient, and the Holy Spirit as a yang ingredient. It is at this level that merging with the Higher Self takes place. Each of the alchemical stages can take from several years to several centuries. These are practices full of transcendental discoveries.