Nourishing the Spirit 02

#deathpractice2024 series part two

Trying out a slightly new format for things.

Table of Contents

1. Intro to an Empirical Animism

2. Breathing & Awareness Practices

   2a: Spirit(s), Soul & Shen - NOT THE SAME!
   2b: The concept of Shen
   2c: Dao-ifying Neuroscience: aka THE PRACTICES (for premium subscribers)

Housekeeping

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1. Introduction to an Empirical Animism

One of the major issues with disseminating this kind of information is that it will inevitably conflict with the Protestant-theism/Christian-secularism that the west has indoctrinated us into. The ways that this weird worldview has obscured nature and the natural rhythms from our perception. This is why i often say that the long road home (to die well) is a process of decolonizing perception, decolonizing the senses.

Because we perceive based on our senses and sensations, but colonization and its associated worldviews has garbled the communication between our “mind” and our “body” & our “self” and “nature”, which is just another way of saying the same things. That we have not learned properly. Our learning has been taken from us, and replaced by some thing else, some thing that serves a different master. That master wants to satiate its unending hunger, and so each of us consumes to excess.

Too much food (calories), too much content. Too much information, too much data. Too much everything (except real nourishment). The western pop-science calls this a dopamine thing, but that idea is part of the larger half-baked ideology that reduces complexity into “parts”, Lego bricks that we point at and blame. “SEE?! THE DOPAMINES MADE ME DO IT!”

Daoist/Confucian cosmology is not theist. It is empirical. The “gods” that we see in it are representations of principles of nature, not really “gods” the way westerners view gods. I need to unpack this a bit before we get to the practices in this section of the series.

1. The first thing to recognize is that this world is made of spirits and some of those spirits claim to be gods. This understanding of the world as an ecosystem of seen and unseen forces/beings is also not theistic and doesn’t require belief to function. It is empirical.

2. The second thing is to realize that anyone who claims that this or that god is the best god has a vested interest in ruling/dominating others alongside that god. Otherwise, no one would make these claims. There is an agenda baked in and it’s not even very well hidden.

3. The third thing to realize is that all complex things are made up of many spirits. These spirits are nature itself, as are we, and all nature follows the cycle of the elements through time. We see this seasonal cycle appear in every aspect of reality, from the smallest and shortest, to the biggest and longest. (The elemental cycle of daoism/confucianism is the wuxing 5 element cycle. More on that later, it’s really not super important right now, just understand you can’t escape this cycle, and trying to do so creates much of the issues we face as a species.)

4. The fourth thing is that all of these spirits and elementals are predicated on the phenomena of yinyang, the two seeming opposite forces of reality which are always becoming each other and never separate whatsoever. There is no real, absolute yin and no real, absolute yang, it’s all relative to the context. Yin births and becomes yang, (representative of winter birthing spring) which matures and declines (representing summer becoming autumn). These “two” underline everything in the cycles of time, which appear as the 5 elements, which appear as the 60 animals, so on and so forth into all the varied wisdom sciences and mantic arts. Complex, yes, but also simple, if we can get as close to the root of our experience as possible!
   
   The other great realization of this yinyang phenomena is that there is no beginning and no ending. This means there is no God that created everything or “BIG BANG” (the god of scientism LOL) that started the universe. This helps to unravel the theism baked into our perception of Time. Even when we say that yin birthed yang, this is not “the beginning” of some kind of linear timeline of the universe.

5. The fifth thing is that we do not want to base social policy or medicine on belief or theism. Because that is not empirical or compassionate. To really understand this, we will each of us have to detangle where theism and belief are already present in our ideologies, such as with the modern secular belief in scientism, which puts forth a medicine based on beliefs and not empiricism, even as it proclaims to be the most empirical system of medicine ever in history. We will also have to see how socio-political policies are often based on theistic beliefs and not empiricism, which goes back to the addiction to dominate others based on unprovable ideologies rooted in “my god is the best god and everyone else is underneath me and my god”. If you think you have somehow escaped this, this is exactly how the ancestral and societal ghosts have possessed you. (Remember that ghosts are weak, they are stories, echoes, that repeat with very little agency, which is why they possess humans. Read the #ghostschool101 posts for more clarity on ghosts and possession.)

   
   You also need to understand that personal fantasies, mythologies and visionary experiences also fall into this theism category, especially when you think you have discovered an absolute truth about reality. All of this psychic and oracular phenomena still needs to be held within an overall system that is empirical and natural. We can use the symbolic data from dreams and visions, but only when we have a system that helps us discern those symbols, feelings and sensations.

With these 5 beginning understandings, we can begin to use the (so-called) body, the mind, the senses to unravel the chain of events and behaviors that have led us to be out of balance with nature and the natural cycles of time. My goal here is to simplify and condense the sheer amount of data necessary to begin to decolonize the body/senses/mind/perception. Otherwise, i will have just given you more junk data to store in your awareness that will either “compete” with your theism or become co-opted by your theism. Neither competition nor co-optation is the point here.

Eventually the spirits that make up your body, your organs and your ancestral qi will align with “right story/view”, but even if that doesn’t happen in this life, it may happen in the process of death, and if it doesn’t happen in the process of death, it will eventually happen as even ghosts have a shelf life and eventually dissolve back into the great chaos of pure potential that generates yinyang.

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2. Breathing & Awareness Practices

2a: Spirit(s), Soul & Shen - NOT THE SAME!

Author’s note: This is not meant as a comprehensive explanation of all the various kinds of breathing available. That is a lifetime of study and practice and i believe that we do not all need to be “breath athletes” in order to live according to our fate. Again, my attempt is to curate the most useful, expedient information which can immediately be put into practice. Practices that have nearly immediate benefits and that also accumulate over time. I had wanted to jump into the Walking practices but felt that there needed to be more based on the previous section which outlined Yawning.

To talk about Spirit (after all, the title of this deathpractice2024 series is “nourishing the spirit”) we have to deconstruct that word a bit and its western meanings. I know, i know… more philosophy mumbo-jumbo before we get to the supposed “main event”. Well, View teachings are the most important, because, as i said to recent commenter:

“in nondual traditions, of which my work is influenced by, the view is more important than the method. the method can be misused with the wrong view, and with the right view, any method might work, because of the correct view.

this way of learning is not easy for many people, but it is more sane and natural. to examine and re-perceive perception itself, to see the stories being generated in real time, and not feeding them, which can lead to forgetting and non-self-referencing.

to really train this without harm, requires animist relating. so if i just "give you the methods" and you fuck yourself up... that karma comes back to me, even though you screwed up. that's how real relating works in a sense.”

Spirit etymologically speaking, in the western languages, relates to breath.

For example,

Spirit: Middle English: from Anglo-Norman French, from Latin spiritus ‘breath, spirit’, from spirare ‘breathe’.

Inspire means: Middle English enspire, from Old French inspirer, from Latin inspirare ‘breathe or blow into’ from in- ‘into’ + spirare ‘breathe’. The word was originally used of a divine or supernatural being, in the sense ‘impart a truth or idea to someone’.

Conspire: late Middle English: from Old French conspirer, from Latin conspirare ‘agree, plot’, from con- ‘together with’ + spirare ‘breathe’.

From this we get the term Conspiracy.

Respire: late Middle English: from Old French respirer or Latin respirare ‘breathe out’, from re- ‘again’ + spirare ‘breathe’.

from this we get Respiration: The action of breathing in modern medical terms.

Expire: late Middle English: from Old French expirer, from Latin exspirare ‘breathe out’, from ex- ‘out’ + spirare ‘breathe’.

-spir-, root. -spir- comes from Latin, where it has the meaning "breathe; have a longing for.'' This meaning is found in such words as: aspire, conspire, expire, inspire, perspire, respiration, respiratory, respire, spiracle, spirit, transpire.

In modern western theist terms, the word spirit is often equated to the concept of a Soul, a quasi-immortal entity which has a memory, self and/or personhood/personality which doesn’t change, and which transmigrates from incarnation to incarnation, or from one “dimension” of existence to another. This concept of a Soul in the west is related to the Hindu concept of an Atman - Can refer to body, mind or soul, depending on context, but usually indicates the soul that is reborn. A Hindu word that means 'soul or spirit'. Essentially, it refers to the real person inside an individual. the spiritual life principle of the universe, especially when regarded as inherent in the real self of the individual. A person's soul.

I have said all of this in order to make this claim: In Daoism/Confucianism there is no concept of a Soul as outlined above. It simply does not exist in the original cosmology.

Therefore, when daoists/confucianists speak of spirit, what the eff are they speaking about?

This is what i think. *

*Based on my teachers and my own experiences. I am still learning, and these topics are vast and have great political consequence. I am not trying to define these things in order to dominate, but inherently, talking about these things —medicine, healing, and living with nature— is political. Nations have risen and fallen based on their versions of these things. My goals are not in accordance with every other person’s or nation’s goals. We all have agendas, after all.

2b: The concept of Shen

Author’s note: I will, undoubtedly, skip over various facets of these concepts in order to talk about Shen for the purposes of this article.

Jing plus Qi = Shen

Jing: The precedent which seeks its recreation. The essence “inside” the reproductive fluids which appears as “something” which replicates itself through combining. What we “get” from the ancestors. The pre-heaven base of incarnation. Stored in the marrow, kidneys and reproductive system of a person after conception/birth. That which gives us form-space-matter (yin) that is/will be animated by qi (yang).

Qi: Time-movement, the inherent act of movement in space-form that appears as time. Qi is not a “substance”. Yet, it can appear as blood, blood which inherently moves and wants to move. I sometimes refer to qi as “Time-movement-blood”. The term “sea of qi” can be referred to as “sea of blood”. Are we the form (yin, matter, space) or are we what moves that form (yang, energy, time)? Answer: ???

Shen: Radiance. The “heart-mind”. The combined relational effect of the 5 organ spirits. The “light” produced by the relationship of the multiple spirits residing in and as the body and “housed” within the organs. Housed does not mean trapped or bound, just as you sometimes leave your house, certain organ spirits leave the body/organ and return, etc. Shen is “the radiance-presence (post-heaven) which can manifest its innate origin (pre-heaven)”.

This may seem then, that this “shen” is the same as the western theistic soul or the hindu atman, and colloquially, there may be no need to differentiate.

However, when we reflect on what the concept of a soul means in the west, even amongst new-agers who proclaim to not be part of the Abrahamic, monotheistic traditions, we can see that the concept of a singular best-ever sky-daddy/mommy god who “created the universe” is entwined with the “irrefutable wisdom of scientism which totally isn’t superstitious or biased” and the notion of an “immortal, unique soul that retains personal preferences after death” and the modern, colonialist concept of an “individual self who follows and believes in the righteous accuracy of their own unique conscience”.

(Yes, these are the things i think about. No, I don’t really recommend it.)

So, in order to respect the concept/existence of Shen on its own accord, not entangled with the above run-on sentence, we have to imagine a “soul that is not a soul”. A natural phenomenon that somewhat maybe overlaps with the western/theistic concept of a soul but also does not at all adhere to any of the extreme theistic definitions of said soul-concept. These definitions including but not limited to “an immortal individualistic self-god with special preferences and internal logics that determine right from wrong and good from evil based on beliefs and fantasies that cannot be proven empirically”.

OK BRO WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH BREATHING

Simply, when we work with those fundamental process that we cannot escape (breathing, eating/digestion process, movement, sleeping) we can regulate and integrate all of the qualities and natures of the spirits residing in the organs, in such a way as to make more apparent the radiance-presence of the heart-mind, which is Shen, which is the Spirit named in the title “Nourishing The Spirit”.

By doing so, by integrating with the natural cycles inside and outside the body — through more correctly breathing, eating, moving and sleeping — the radiance-nature of the Shen is less obstructed.

This allows the Shen to help us tune our behaviors — to radiate, harmonize and adapt to the current situation — in ways that are exorcistic, compassionate, generous and vitalizing according to our specific fate, constitution and relational environment.

2c. Dao-ifying Neuroscience: aka THE PRACTICES

Author’s note: Today I will add some commentary to some of Mark Waldman’s best practices based on his research and understanding of Network Neuroscience. I find Marks’ work valuable because it appears to be headed to the same place from a different angle. In that, how does the western worldview return to the source? How does scientism return to its origin which would exorcise it from its need to theologize/deify the biases in the western practice of the scientific method?