As the old saying goes, “The virtue of Heaven nourishes a man’s nature; the Qi of Earth nourishes a man’s life.” These are the two natures of a human’s life involving the mind, body and spirit. When it specifically refers to the Taoist longevity practice, they are the two Qi-flowing engine (气机) systems running inside the human body that connects to the outside. One is called the prenatal system (seed before birth system or kidney system) which depends on Heaven’s energy, the cosmic energies that include the sun, moon, starts and earth planet’s alignment with them. The other one is called the postnatal system (nutritive system after birth system or spleen system) which depends on the Earth energy, the food and diet, the geographic location, and seasons. A human’s life and longevity are determined by both Heaven Qi and Earth Qi, the spiritual energetic being and the physical being.To summarize this concept: the Heaven Qi is for cultivating a human’s true nature and the Earth Qi is for cultivating physical strength, vitality and physical longevity. Taoist disciples’ spiritual practices focus on both aspects. People often question themselves about why they came here on earth. This may explain the reason why do we come on earth and the purpose of living.
Cultivation of Heaven’s Nature
Actions following the Tao of Heaven are defined as the De (virtue) of Heaven. People undertake spiritual practices to awaken Heaven’s nature in themselves. One of the important ways of practice is through quiescent meditation. When Heaven’s Qi with higher consciousness naturally flows into one’s body, one’s thoughts, and one’s greedy desires then become lessened, one’s heart thus becomes peaceful, open, loving and compassionate. There is nothing forcing one to follow Heaven’s nature. Heaven’s nature awakens within oneself naturally. It does so because this is the Tao of Heaven, the absolute truth of everything seen and unseen. The experience of pure Heaven’s Qi flowing into a human, is a feeling of pure bliss, and the clarity of life purpose. This is the direct positive effect upon people’s actions if they start to have a spiritual practice. The ultimate end result of following Heaven’s Qi to the highest levels is that of manifesting supreme peace in all aspects of one’s life, raise one’s conscious spirit level to the cosmic source and even obtain various new abilities.
Acts As A Spiritual Being
Connecting and receiving Heaven Qi, allows one’s mind, body and spirit to align together, and become one’s higher self, a spiritual being. The truth is one’s spiritual being lies within the physical body, allowing it to expand and grow. For this to happen one needs to receive Heaven’s Qi and cultivate Heaven’s nature. This way, when everything in life is achieved by following the Tao of Heaven, things are done for the benefit of all. This results in great kindness. These actions only come from true spiritual beings.
How Can One’s Heart benefit from kindness?
Doing kind actions makes Heaven Qi strong and joyful, so people are happy and joyful. This is one way that people’s health directly benefits from the Qi. In this reality, when one offers kindness, a smile and gratitude are received in return. Positive energy fills one’s spiritual being. This helps open people’s hearts and they gain feelings of being useful, feelings of hope in life, feelings of being connected. Thus, fears of loneliness and abandonment disappear. Further, it stimulates creativity and passion to offer more kindness and love to others. This creates a positive cycle and accumulates positive karma in one’s life. The larger the offering of kindness is, the larger the scale of happiness will reach one’s heart. There is an endless flow of bliss and peace when one attains true selflessness. Selfless service to others, can be seen in such brave actions as to save another’s life, or in providing comfort and care to others who are suffering or in donating money for a good purpose. All of these actions are the nature of Heaven Qi.
Be Aware
People may experience many times of transformation during their life time. The ability to remain on the spiritual path, every step along the way requires sincerity, humility, honesty, compassion and an open heart. It takes time to reach the highest levels of Heaven Qi, Consciousness. Persistence and discipline are for the one who is on the right path. Taoists believe that one moves one’s self into alignment with the Tao by discipline, focus, faith and belief. He or she who is greedy and desires the Heaven Qi for themselves alone cannot invite Heaven Qi (higher consciousness) into his or her life because Heaven Qi is always selflessly providing to all. To cleanse one’s selfish thoughts, one must not only let go of every thought and behavior that makes one selfish and full of desire, but turn them into ways of helping humanity in a large scale. Once people start to make this effort to offer kindness to the large scale of humanity, creativity, passion and abundance will naturally grow. Heaven Qi will enter into one’s life at higher levels and lead one on the path, effortlessly. Once someone steps into their soul mission of work, they will realize this work becomes effortless and self-sustaining.
Cultivation of Earth Nature
The second life system is to acquire Earth Qi which cultivates the essences of the physical body. This is the Yin aspect of physical well-being. This physical cultivation has a direct benefit on the physical body resulting in longevity and even immortality. Taoist spiritual practice has various forms and practices for cultivating physical well-being. One common practice is to cultivate internal Dan, which is considered as the internal life energy. Another common technique is to use external Dan, which is a special Taoist medicine pill to strengthen the practitioner’s physical body to become immortal. This external Dan alchemy technique is extremely complicated and subtle to learn and practice. If it is still exists, only very rare Taoist practitioners can still carry that tradition. However, modern Taoist disciples all have profound substantial knowledge about traditional medicine. They apply to themselves regularly to strengthen and nourish their physical life. Exploring and cultivating our human nature and following the nature of earth, one naturally becomes flexible, humble, nurturing and caring, and compromising. Things will be accomplished and completed around people who carry these natures. Thus, one seeks earth’s nature so that the physical body can be nourished by the earth Qi. The experience of earth Qi can be many fold, but always leads into nurturing and caring actions for one’s own physical body. The Tao of Earth guides one to drop old harmful physical habits and instead eat properly and be in harmony with nature and seasonal changes.
The Three Treasures of A Human Body
There are three treasures in the Cosmo. They are the sun, moon, and stars. There are three treasures in human bodies. One is as Jing (essence), the Yin aspect and belongs to the earth Qi; one is as Qi, (energy), the Yang aspect belonging to Heaven Qi. When both are abundant, they create Shen, the spirit or consciousness. This is the third aspect. The higher Shen energy (consciousness) depends on the abundance of Jing and Qi, that is the abundance of both Earth Qi and Heaven Qi. All of these three aspects can transform into each other and create a healthy human being and reach to high levels of consciousness. Taoists collect and summarize a series of methods and principles to practice both spiritual nature and physical well-being. Practicing one without the other is not a true discipline of Taoism.
Be Aware
Most modern people focus only on their lives. They lack understanding the of the Tao and its nature. They often eat, play, do things for pleasure, without considering the cost to their life and the life of every being on Earth. They do not consider that their selfishness creates ripples affecting the entire cosmos. They lack the knowledge of how to cultivate essential life energy and essence and instead they waste their life force, energy and essence on their desires. This leaves their bodies and spirit exhausted often resulting in illness and a shortened lifespan. One needs to know how to preserve one’s essence and life energy. “Human following the Earth” is the principle of conscious living where one practices merging the nature of earth with a loving, compassionate, nurturing and harmonious intention. Through this practice a human will develop a happy, abundant life with good health and longevity. On this planet, the mother carries all and feeds all. Our future generations need to know how to protect and preserve the earth and the food source for all beings.
