The "Cosmos" Televison Series Returns

 
The National Geographic Television Channel (FOX) is now presenting a new 2014 version of the famous "Cosmos" series each Sunday.  It is now narrated by Neil deGrasse Tyson. 

Last Sunday, the NGTC (FOX) ran all the old "Cosmos" 1980 series episodes, narrated by Carl Sagan.  I recorded each episode and rewatched the original series. 

Cosmos  By Carl Sagan (1934-1996).  Introduction by Ann Druyan, and Foreword by Neil deGrasse Tyson.  Reprinted by Ballantine Books in 2013.  Originally published by Random House in 1980.  Index, recommended reading, notes, 432 pages. ISBN: 9780345539435.  VSCL.  The most popular science book of the last 50 years.  The TV series, Cosmos (1980), has been viewed by over 500 million people. 

The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark  By Carl Sagan.  New York, Ballantine Books, 1996.  Index, references, 457 pages.  ISBN: 9780345409461.  VSCL.  A thorough investigation of pseudo-science in contemporary life.  

I am rereading both Cosmos and The Demon Haunted World.  

Instead of Cosmos a person could watch, instead, one or more of the many current television "programs" featuring zombies, bigfoot, mediums, vampires, super-heroes with magical powers, ghost hunting, demons, psychics, preachers of the supernatural, UFO hunters, magicians, fabricated crime dramas, wizards, Bible myths, aliens, witches, angels, paranormal phenomena, prophets, religious relics, cults and many other topics of questionable value to the scientifically and practically minded.  How have these topics contributed one iota to our progress in medicine, agriculture, technology, tools, homemaking, better communities, or practical living?  Unquestionably, to my mind, in America, our tolerance for bunk, stupidity, spooky fictions, fringe rarities, bogus ideas, trivia and nonsense knows no limit on television.  Television is now worse that in 1990 when Professor Sagan tried to enlighten us about the dangers of pseudo-science. 

  

Savoring Beauty Daily

A friend of mine who lives in a nearby town, Evi Shumacher, is doing creative work with her photographs and short poems on her new blog:  Savoring Beauty Daily.  

Evi is also a very active and creative member of Facebook at her Evi Schumacher homepage.  

Evi and her husband, Richard, have practiced Tai Chi Chuan and Qigong with me for a few years.  

March 13th, 2014

~

"On a clear day you really can see forever~or so it seems

even things far away suddenly seem near enough to touch

homeward bound~Mt Shasta beckons~dominating our view

nearly three hours north~snowy flanks illuminated by the sun

how enticing and magical the view~hovering above the orchards

a mirage~rising from the valley floor~seen by travelers for miles

speeding up the freeway headed north~closer to it's white splendor

our thoughts drift to the early pioneers who would see it for weeks

 arduous journey north never ending it seemed~near and yet so far

driving their oxen~mile after tiring mile~ maybe fifteen a day 

 tremendous courage and strength~trying to find their way home."
-  Evi Schumacher, Savoring Beauty Daily

Walking - A Small Rebirth of Well-Being

"When my neighbor walks the dogs, he performs a ritual act of sacer simplicitas, to use the church Latin: "sacred simplicity."  Walking the dog is in truth a ritual of renewal and revival on an intimate scale - a small rebirth of well-being on a daily basis."
-   Robert Fulghum, From Beginning to End

"For someone who walks regularly, their body is better able to deliver oxygen to all systems, including the brain, because they’ve improved their cardiovascular function. Not surprisingly, regular walkers report better mental clarity and ability to focus. Creativity is enhanced because walkers have the ability to relax their mind and let it wander around while they’re walking. Outdoor strollers can have the benefit of beautiful scenery as well as just seeing things from a different perspective, which stimulates creative thought and the imagination.  Whether you want to improve your body, your mind or both, the benefits of walking should encourage you to make the time to do it."
-  Mental Benefits of Walking, Creating a Good Life

"Although the vast majority of walkers never even think of using a walking staff, I unhesitatingly include it among the foundations of the house that travels on my back."
-   Colin Fletcher, The Complete Walker III

"Today I know there is nothing beyond the farthest of far ridges except a sign-post to unknown places.  The end is in the means - in the sight of that beautiful long straight line of the Downs in which a curve is latent - in the houses we shall never enter, with their dark secret windows and quiet hearth smoke, or their ruins friendly only to elders and nettles - in the people passing whom we shall never know thought we may love them.  Today I know that I walk because it is necessary to do so in order to both live and to make a living."
-  Edward Thomas,  A Fellow Walker  

Ways of Walking:  Quotations, Sayings, Poems, Lore  

The Good Life

Mike Garofalo in 1984
Rock Creek Basin, Mt. Starr (12,870')  
Sierra Nevada, CA 

Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu, Chapter 70

Dao De Jing, Laozi
Chapter 70

"My words are very easy to understand and very easy to practice:
but in the world no one can understand, no one can practice them.
Words have an ancestor; Deeds have a master - Reason. 
Since he is not understood, therefore I am not understood.
Those who understand me are few, and thus I am distinguished.
Therefore the holy man wears wool, and hides in his bosom his jewels."
-  Translated by D. T. Suzuki and Paul Carus, 1913, Chapter 70   

"My words are very easy to understand
And very easy to put into practice.
Yet no one under heaven understands them;
No one puts them into practice.
But my words have an ancestry, my deeds have a lord;
And it is precisely because men do not understand this
That they are unable to understand me.
Few then understand me, but it is upon this very fact my value depends.
It is indeed in this sense that “the Sage wears hair-cloth on top,
But carries jade under neath his dress.”"
-  Translated by Arthur Waley, 1934, Chapter 70  

"My words are very easy to understand and very easy to put into practice;
but in all the world there is no one who can understand them and can put them into practice.
My words have a system, my actions have a governor.
Indeed, it is just because they are not understood, that men do not understand me.
Those who understand me are rare, those who pattern themselves after me are highly prized.
Thus the Saint wears hair-cloth, but carries jade in his breast."
-  Translated by Jan Julius Duyvendak, Chapter 70   



吾言甚易知, 甚易行.
天下莫能知, 莫能行.
言有宗.
事有君.
夫唯無知, 是以不我知.
知我者希.
則我者貴.
是以聖人被褐懷玉.
-  Chinese characters, Tao Te Ching, Chapter 70

wu yan shen yi zhi, shen yi xing.
tian xia mo neng zhi, mo neng xing.
yan you zong. 
shi you jun.
fu wei wu zhi, shi yi bu wo zhi.
zhi wo zhe xi. 
ze wo zhe gui.
shi yi sheng ren pi he er huai yu.
-  Pinyin Romanization, Daodejing, Chapter 70


"My words are very easily known.
They are very easily practiced.
No one in the world can fully know them,
No one in the world can fully practice them.
My words come from one Source,
My service is to one Ruler.
The Master indeed knows the Inner Kingdom,
That is why he knows the negation of self.
Few there are who know the self.
Because they know it not, they prize the self.
That is why the self-controlled man wears wool.
But in his bosom are jewels."
-  Translated by Isabella Mears, 1916, Chapter 70  

"La palabras tienen un origen; los hechos, una ley.
Mis palabras son fáciles de comprender y fáciles de seguir,
Y, sin embargo, nadie las comprende y nadie las practica.
Es la sabiduría la que impide al hombre acercarse a mi.
Son pocos los que me siguen, porque estoy más allá de toda alabanza.
Por ello el Sabio se cubre con una tela tosca, pero guarda joyas en su seno.
Conoce su valor, pero no lo ostenta. 
Se ama a sí mismo, pero no se tiene en alta estima.
Rechaza lo último y se ciñe a lo primero."
-  Translated from Chinese into English by Ch'u Ta-Kao, Translated from English into Spanish by Caridad Diaz Faes, Capitulo 70

"Words have an ancestor; deeds have a governor.
My words are very easy to know, and very easy to practise,
Yet all men in the world do not know them nor practise them.
It is because they have knowledge that they do not know me.
When those who know me are few, eventually I am beyond all praise.
Therefore the Sage wears clothes of coarse cloth but carries jewels in his bosom;
He knows himself but does not display himself;
He loves himself but does not hold himself in high esteem.
Thus he rejects the latter and takes the former.
-  Translated by Ch'u Ta-Kao, 1904, Chapter 70 

Chapter 70 of the Tao Te Ching

Chapter and Thematic Index (Concordance) to the Tao Te Ching

English Language Translators' Index

Ripening Peaches: Taoist Studies and Practices

Taoism: A Selected Reading List

 

Practicing and Learning Tai Chi Chuan

We don’t "really learn” Tai Chi by listening to, imitating, and following a live Tai chi instructor, or reading Tai Chi books, or watching Tai Chi instructional DVDs.  The “learning” comes from practicing Tai Chi, playing Tai Chi, moving by Tai chi, and feeling Tai Chi.  We move from being awkward and uncomfortable to moving gracefully, fluidly, easily, confidently, and beautifully.  Live and virtual Tai Chi instructors provide us with information and ideas about what Tai Chi has been for others and could be for us, its rich history, and provide us with a model of how a "form" might look and be realized as expressed by their body-mind.  Our instructor's "mind" set or intention is important - depending, for example, on whether they emphasize martial applications or they are a New Age energy arts dancer.  Likewise, our own progress in "learning" will depend upon our own "mind set" of intentions, dedication, toughness, the courage to go beyond our limitations and failures, and our willpower.  Learning Tai Chi is always a complex matrix of interactions, lived experiences, daily training, and accumulated muscle memories.  Less thinking and more practice, training, and doing will result in the greatest learning.  Repeated movements are the foundation for Tai Chi learning.  

"Movement is a medicine for creating change in a person's physical, emotional, and mental states."
-  Carol Welch 

"Knowing is not enough, we must apply.  Willing is not enough, we must do." 
-  Bruce Lee  

"It takes a lot of courage to release the familiar and seemingly secure, to embrace the new.  But there is no real security in what is no longer meaningful.  There is more security in the adventurous and exciting, for in movement there is life, and in change there is power."
-  Alan Cohen

Chen Style Old Frame First Form, Lao Jia Yi Lu

List of Movements

Learning the Chen Style of Tai Chi Chuan: A Journal by Mike Garofalo

P

Standard Beijing 24 Taijiquan Form

The first Taijiquan form I learned in 1986 was the Standard 24 Movement T'ai Chi Ch'uan Form in the Yang Style of T'ai Chi Ch'uan.  At that time there were no books or instructional videotapes on this popular form.  Since that time, nearly 25 years have passed.  Now there are dozens of books and instructional DVDs and webpages on the subject of the 24 Form. 

Mike Garofalo 'Playing the Pipa'

My webpage on the Standard 24 Taijiquan Form has been the most popular webpage on the Cloud Hands Website for many years. In the sidebar of this blog, you will find a quick index to this webpage.

Standard Simplified Taijiquan 24 Form.  Research by Michael P. Garofalo, M.S. This webpage includes a detailed bibliography of books, media, links, online videos, articles, and resources.  It provides a list of the 24 movement names in English, Chinese, French, German and Spanish, with citations for sources of the movement names.  It provides detailed descriptions of each movement with black and white line illustrations and  photographs.  It includes relevant quotations, notes, performance times, section breakdowns, basic Tai Chi principles, and strategies for learning the form.  The Peking (Bejing) Chinese National orthodox standard simplified 24 movement T'ai Chi Ch'uan form, created in 1956, is the most popular form practiced all around the world.  This form uses the Yang Style of Taijiquan.  Published by Green Way Research, Valley Spirit Taijiquan, Red Bluff, California:  Webpage URL:  http://www.egreenway.com/taichichuan/short.htm.  File size: 269 Kb. 

This webpage provides many good suggestions for a person learning this form on their own if there is no Tai Chi class in their area. 

The best book that I have seen on the subject is:

The Yang Taiji 24 Step Short Form: A Step by Step Guide for All Levels
By James Drewe  London, Singing Dragon Press, 2011.  382 pages, black and white photographs, charts, detailed descriptions, training tips.
 

I give information on many other fine books by other good authors on the 24 Form in my webpage: Cheng Zhao, Foen Tjoeng Lie, Eric Chaline, Le Deyin, etc.. 

My students tell me that their favorite instructional DVD on the 24 Form is:

Tai Chi - The 24 Forms
By Dr. Paul Lam


I have taught this lovely Tai Chi form to hundreds of people since 2000.  Everyone tells me how much they enjoy learning and practicing this gentle form.

I also teach and enjoy playing the Chen Style Taijiquan 18 Movement Form created by Grandmaster Chen Zhenglei. Actually, in the last year, I prefer practicing the Chen 18 Form more.  

Medicine Ball Chi Kung Exercises

Qigong, Tai Chi Chuan and physical culture enthusiasts can benefit from using a medicine ball when doing exercises.  There are many routines developed by Taijiquan and Qigong masters using a medicine ball, e.g., Yang Jwing Ming, Chen Qing Zhou, and Jiang Jian-ye.  

Medicine Ball Training and Exercises: Bibliography, Links, Resources .  Prepared by Mike Garofalo.  A general introduction to the use of medicine balls in exercise programs. 

I developed my own medicine ball routine called: Magic Pearl Qigong.

Magic Pearl Qigong, Part I, Movements 1-8 .   Instructions, Bibliography, Links, Handouts, Resources, Mythological Associations, Lore.  Prepared by Mike Garofalo. 

Magic Pearl Qigong, Part II, Movements 9-16 .   Instructions, Bibliography, Links, Handouts, Resources, Mythological Associations, Lore.  Prepared by Mike Garofalo.

The Magic Pearl Qigong can be a very vigorous physical culture routine if you increase the weight of the ball and the number of repetitions of each movement.

Patterns that Perpetuate Themselves

"We are but whirlpools in a river of ever-flowing water.  We are not stuff that abides, put patterns that perpetuate themselves."
-  Norbet Weiner, 1950

The human body is 60% water.   
The human body consists of about 60 trillion cells (6x10^13). 
There are about 60 trillion atoms in a human cell.   

"The structure of the human brain is enormously complex.  It contains about 10 billion nerve cells (neurons), which are interlinked in a vast network through 1,000 billion junctions (synapses).  The whole brain can be divided into subsections, or sub-networks, which communicate with each other in a network fashion.  All this results in intricate patterns of intertwined webs, networks of nesting within larger networks."
-  Fritjof Capra, The Web of Life: A New Scientific Understandinf of Living Systems, 1996, p. 82

"In opposition to the classical model of change as accidental (as by Aristotle) or illusory, process philosophy regards change as the cornerstone of reality—the cornerstone of the Being thought as Becoming. Modern philosophers who appeal to process rather than substance include Nietzsche, Heidegger, Charles Peirce, Alfred North Whitehead, Robert M. Pirsig, Charles Hartshorne, Arran Gare and Nicholas Rescher. In physics, Ilya Prigogine distinguishes between the "physics of being" and the "physics of becoming". Process philosophy covers not just scientific intuitions and experiences, but can be used as a conceptual bridge to facilitate discussions among religion, philosophy, and science."
-  Process Philosophy in Wikipedia

"Although people may think of their body as a fairly permanent structure, most of it is in a state of constant flux as old cells are discarded and new ones generated in their place. Each kind of tissue has its own turnover time, depending in part on the workload endured by its cells. The cells lining the stomach, as mentioned, last only five days. The red blood cells, bruised and battered after traveling nearly 1,000 miles through the maze of the body's circulatory system, last only 120 days or so on average before being dispatched to their graveyard in the spleen.  White blood cells live on average more than a year. 
The epidermis, or surface layer of the skin, is recycled every two weeks or so. The reason for the quick replacement is that "this is the body's saran wrap, and it can be easily damaged by scratching, solvents, wear and tear," said Elaine Fuchs, an expert on the skin's stem cells at the Rockefeller University.
As for the liver, the detoxifier of all the natural plant poisons and drugs that pass a person's lips, its life on the chemical-warfare front is quite short. An adult human liver probably has a turnover time of 300 to 500 days, said Markus Grompe, an expert on the liver's stem cells at the Oregon Health & Science University.
Other tissues have lifetimes measured in years, not days, but are still far from permanent. Even the bones endure nonstop makeover. The entire human skeleton is thought to be replaced every 10 years or so in adults, as twin construction crews of bone-dissolving and bone-rebuilding cells combine to remodel it.
About the only pieces of the body that last a lifetime, on present evidence, seem to be the neurons of the cerebral cortex, the inner lens cells of the eye and perhaps the muscle cells of the heart. The inner lens cells form in the embryo and then lapse into such inertness for the rest of their owner's lifetime that they dispense altogether with their nucleus and other cellular organelles."
-  Nicholas Wade, Your Body is Younger Than You Think

Complexity

Guidelines for Leading Yourself

Qualities of Self-Actualizing Persons

• Truth: honest, reality, beauty, pure, clean and unadulterated completeness
• Goodness: rightness, desirability, uprightness, benevolence, honesty
• Beauty: rightness, form, aliveness, simplicity, richness, wholeness, perfection, completion,
• Wholeness: unity, integration, tendency to oneness, interconnectedness, simplicity, organization, structure, order, not dissociated, synergy
• Dichotomy-transcendence: acceptance, resolution, integration, polarities, opposites, contradictions
• Aliveness: process, not-deadness, spontaneity, self-regulation, full-functioning
• Unique: idiosyncrasy, individuality, non comparability, novelty
• Perfection: nothing superfluous, nothing lacking, everything in its right place, just-rightness, suitability, justice
• Necessity: inevitability: it must be just that way, not changed in any slightest way
• Completion: ending, justice, fulfillment
• Justice: fairness, suitability, disinterestedness, non partiality,
• Order: lawfulness, rightness, perfectly arranged
• Simplicity: nakedness, abstract, essential skeletal, bluntness
• Richness: differentiation, complexity, intricacy, totality
• Effortlessness: ease; lack of strain, striving, or difficulty
• Playfulness: fun, joy, amusement
• Self-sufficiency: autonomy, independence, self-determining.
  -  Abraham Maslow (1908-1970), Toward a Psychology of Being, 1968
     Abraham Maslow by Dr. George Boeree, Meta-Needs
     Abraham Maslow - Wikipedia   
• 
  

Lifestyle Advice from Wise Persons

The Good Life

 

 

Still There in Heart and Soul - The Walk

"The ideal aerobic exercise is walking.  Virtually everyone can do it, almost anywhere.  You should have little difficulty elevating your heart rate into your training range on a sustained basis, and it does not put undue strain on any of your joints." 
-  Terry Grossman, M.D., Fantastic Voyage  

"If you want to know if your brain is flabby, feel your legs." 
-  Bruce Barton   

"It’s all still there in heart and soul. The walk, the hills, the sky, the solitary pain and pleasure–they will grow larger, sweeter, lovelier in the days and years to come." 
-  Edward Abbey

"Every day, in the morning or evening, or both, take a walk in a safe and peaceful environment for less than an hour.  The can be a great fountain of youth.  Choose a place to walk that has no kind of disturbance.   Walking done in a work environment and when your mind is busy is different; it is not as nutritious as the walking you do for yourself in the morning or evening in a quiet, peaceful, and safe place."
-  Master Hua-Ching Ni, Entering the Tao, 1997, p. 135  

"When we were in the woods beyond Gowbarrow Park we saw a few daffodils close to the waterside.  But as we went along there were more and yet more and at last under the boughs of the trees, we saw that there was a long belt of them along the shore, about the breadth of a county turnpike toad.  I never saw daffodils so beautiful.  They grew about the mossy stones about and about them, some rested their heads upon these stones as on a pillow for weariness and the rest tossed and reeled and danced and seemed as if they verily laughed with the wind that blew upon them over the lake."
-   Dorothy Wordsworth

Ways of Walking

Seeing, Looking, Watching

 
 

Shibashi Chi Kung

The Tai Chi Qigong Shibashi Series was created by Professor Lin Hou Sheng from China.  Part 1, 18 movements (Shi Ba Shi) was created in 1979.  Part 2, 18 movements, was created in 1988.  Four more Tai Chi Qigong 18 movement sets were created in the 1990's.  Professor Lin's best selling book, Qi Gong is the Answer to Health, was first published in 1985 in China. 
 
The movements are done slowly, gently, and deliberately.  Deep breathing is coordinated carefully with each movement sequence.  There is little or no movement of the feet.  Suitable for persons of all ages.  A number of the hand movements are similar to those used in Yang style Taijiquan.   

Tai Chi Qigong Shibashi: Bibliography, Links, Videos, Lessons, Resources. 
By Mike Garofalo.

The Theory and Practice of Taiji Qigong.  By Chris Jarmey.  North Atlantic Books, 2005.  192 pages.

Part 1, Eighteen Movements (Shibashi) Qigong, Tai Chi Qigong

1.   Awakening the Qi
2.   Opening the Chest   
3.   Painting the Rainbow
4.   Separating the Clouds
5.   Cycling the Arms
6.   Paddle a Boat 
7.   Lifting the Sun  
8.   Turn the Body and Look at the Moon  
9.   Push the Palms  
10.  Rolling Tai Ji  
11.  Lift and Spray the Water  
12.  Push the Wave  
13.  Let the Dove Free  
14.  Punching the Mud  
15.  Flying Wild Goose  
16.  Hug and Swing the Sun  
17.  Bounce the Ball  
18.  Quieting the Qi   

Faun's "Hymn to Pan"

I enjoy listening to the German folk music band called 'Faun.'  Their acoustic music emphasizes many pagan themes.  

Eden by Faun, 2011  Includes more songs in English than their other albums.   

 

Renaissance by Faun, 2005

Licht by Faun.  

Here is one selection from the Eden album called 'Hymn to Pan.'

"Listen now, Great Pan he calls us
From the green wood in his grove
'neath the waxing moon above us
Hear his clear flute sweet and low
Hear his clear flute sweet and low
Follow in the dance he's leading
Circle 'round the fire's glow
Come and drink the wine he pours us
From the tangled vines that grow
From the tangled vines that grow...

Listen now and I shall follow
Listen now and I may follow...
Out of the mid-wood's twilight
Into the meadow's dawn
Ivory limbed and brown eyed
Flashes the Faun
He skips through the copses singing
And his shadow dances along
And I know not which I should follow
Shadow or Song...
O Hunter, snare me his shadow
O Nightingale, catch me his strain
Else moonstruck with music and madness
I track him in vain

And I know not which I should follow

Shadow or Song

And I know not which I should follow

Shadow or Song ..."

-  Hymn to Pan by Faun, from the 2011 album Eden  

Neigong (Chikung, Qigong, Inner Work) Principles

"The Taoists call the science of how you develop strong energy flow or internal power neigong.  Neigong has sixteen components:


1.  Breathing methods, from the simple to the more complex.
2.  Feeling, moving, transforming, transmuting and connecting energy channels of the body. 
3.  Precise body alignments to prevent the flow of chi from being blocked or dissipated. 
4.  Dissolving physical, emotional and spiritual blockages. 
5.  Moving energy through the acupuncture meridians and other secondary channels of the body, including the energy gates.
6.  Bending and stretching the body, both from the inside and from the outside in.
7.  Opening and closing (pulsing) all parts of the body's anatomy including the joints, soft tissues, fluids, internal organs,
spine and brain as well as all the body's subtle energy channels. 
8.  Manipulating the energy of the external aura outside the body.
9.  Making circles and spirals of energy inside the body, controlling the spiraling energy currents of the body and moving chi in the body at will. 
10.  Absorbing energy into and projecting energy away from any part of the body. 
11.  Controlling all the energies of the spine. 
12.  Controlling the left and right energy channels of the body. 
13.  Controlling the central energy channel of the body.
14.  Learning to develop the capabilities and all use of the body's lower tantien.  
14.  Learning to develop the capabilities and uses of the body's upper and middle tantiens. 
15.  Connecting every part of the physical and other energetic bodies into one, unified energy."
-  Bruce Kumar Frantzis, Dragon and Tiger Qigong, 2010, xxviii   


The Chi Revolution: Harnessing the Healing Power of Your Life Force.  By Bruce Kumar Frantzis.  Berkeley, California, Blue Snake Books, 2008.  248 pages.  ISBN: 978-1583941935.  VSCL.  
 
Opening the Energy Gates of Your Body: Chi Gung for Lifelong Health (Tao of Energy Enhancement).  By Bruce Kumar Frantzis.  Illustrated by Husky Grafx.  North Atlantic Books, 1993.  Second Edition.  174 pages.  ISBN: 1556431643.  VSCL.     

Relaxing into Your Being: The Water Method of Taoist Meditation Series, Vol. 1  By Bruce Kumar Frantzis.  Fairfax, California, Clarify Press, 1998.  Reader's Edition.  208 pages.  Republished by: North Atlantic Books, 2001, ISBN: 1556434073.  VSCL. 

The Great Stillness: The Water Method of Taoist Meditation Series, Vol. 2  By Bruce Kumar Frantzis.  Berkeley, North Atlantic Books, 2001.  272 pages.  ISBN: 978-1556434082.  

Dragon Qigong


Valley Spirit Qigong 


Ripening Peaches: Taoist Studies and Practices  

Green, Green, It's Green They Say

We have enjoyed getting 5 inches of rain in the last four weeks here in the North Sacramento Valley of California.  Wild green grasses are to be seen everywhere.  Beautiful!

'Every man marvelled mightly what it should mean
That a man and his horse should be the colour green.'
-  Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, anon.
   An Irish poem translated by Caitlin Matthews

     "Through northern and western Britain, this day is the focus of many May-time customs.  These customs, banned by Parliament under the Commonwealth of the seventeenth century, were reinstated at the Restoration of monarch, when King Charles II mad his triumphal entry into London.  Know thereafter as Oak Apple Day, it is celebrated in Britain by the wearing of sprigs of green oak leaves.
     An earlier veneration was restimulated by an incident that befell Charles II when he was but a prince.  Fleeing from the parliamentarian soldiers, Charles was forced to hide in an oak tree.  But he face peering out from among the green leaves, originally in the primeval forest but now also in contemporary May-time celebrations is a much earlier one, that of the Green Man.

     This Evergreen God is one of the earliest deities.  He is represented in many summertime customs by mummers and disguisers who wear garlands of leaves and flowers or cover their bodies in greenry to ceremonially show the Green Man to the people.  He come out of the primal, all-encompassing forest that once covered the earth, dynamic and vigorous, with pulsing sap of summer in his veins.
     The Green Man is the irrepressible wildness of the world of vegetation.  He bides in the stillness of the deep forest or dances in the sun-fllled arcs of leaf-green light that filter through the branches of the tree canopy.  His name is delight, and his meaning is mysterious - a potent sexual forces that invigorates the earth at this time.  As the Evergreen God, he is likewise potent in the wintertime when he plays a riddling game at the thresholds of the year with such daring ones as Sir Gawain.
     Ask your spiritual allies to take you to meet the Green Man in meditation or soul-flight."
-  Caitlin Matthews, The Celtic Spirit: Daily Meditations for the Turning Year, Harper One, 1999, p.224.
 

Walkers Between the Worlds:  The Western Mysteries from Shaman to Magus.  By Caitlin and John Matthews.  Rochester, Vermont, Inner Traditions, 1985, 2003.  Bibliography, index, 441 pages. 

The Green Man: Quotations, Notes, Bibliography, Resources

The Month of May:  Quotes, Poems, Lore, Sayings, Garden Chores

Nature Spirits: A Glossary 

The Dazzling Presence of the All

"The first time it happened, I was in a forest in the north of France.  I must have been twenty-five or twenty-six.  I had just been hired to teach high school philosophy in a town on the edge of a canal, up in the fields near the Belgian border.  That particular evening, some friends and I had gone out for a walk in the forest we liked so much.  Night had fallen.  We were walking.  Gradually our laughter faded, and the conversation died down.  Nothing remained but our friendship, our mutual trust and shared presence, the mildness of the night air and of everything around us ....  My mind empty of thought, I was simply registering the world around me―the darkness of the underbrush, the incredible luminosity of the sky, the fair sounds of the forest (branches snapping, an occasional animal call, our own muffled steps) only making the silence more palpable.  And, then, all of sudden.... What"  Nothing: Everything!  No words, no meanings, no questions, only―a surprise.  Only―this.  A seemingly infinite happiness.  A seemingly eternal sense of peace.  Above me, the starry sky was immense, luminous and unfathomable, and within me there was nothing but the sky, of which I was a part, and the silence, and the light, like a warm hum, and a sense of joy with neither subject or object (no object other than everything, no subject other than itself).  Yes, in the darkness of that night, I contained only the dazzling presence of the All.  Peace.  Infinite peace!  Simplicity, serenity, delight."
-  André Compte-Spoonville, The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality, p.155

Spirituality and Gardening

The Ways of Walking:  Quotations, Poetry, Sayings, Lore, Facts