When considering relaxation and rectification both, let’s remember that we are not a single coherent entity, but instead a lively festival of worms, protozoa, molds, amoeba, bacteria, virus, and fungi—all cooperating over the course of our lifespan so as to simply survive. In fact, only 43 percent of the cells in our bodies are human! Each of the billions of organisms living within us has a role to play, and many are absolutely essential to the life of the host. Recent research into the wide-ranging importance of the flora and fauna in our gut is an example of how we are reordering our understanding of what it means to be human and what it means to be alive. More research into the genetic variability of this microbiome will likely lead to breakthrough treatments for a wide range of diseases. In the meantime, why not turn our meditative attention to the divine cacophony of tiny agendas, all being exercised upon our will and our well-being, so as to better understand who and what we really are? We can do this by experimenting with our microbiome through the use of food and supplements, but in seeking profound growth and change, it wouldn’t hurt to mentally ask for permission and assistance from all the little beings who make us who we are.
The Way We Feel
We must often yield so as to gain greater understanding and ultimately triumph; sometimes, on the way to both relaxation and rectification, it’s to our advantage to sometimes invest in loss, meaning give up some ground to gain some later or accept the loss of a battle the better to win the war. We must be willing to let go of people and things and ideas. We must never directly fight force with force, but rather spiral around obstacles. To see spiral movement in action, one has only to look through a good telescope and see what happened when the detritus from exploding stars and the rushing material of creation crashed together eons ago, leaving us spiral galaxies. It also happens that spiraling is the most effective way to move liquid through a solid matrix, which is why authentic tai chi is remarkably effective in aiding the circulation of blood and lymph through our body’s matrix of soft tissue and bone. The spiral, in short, is nature’s way of managing conflict.
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Letting go is simultaneously the easiest and most difficult thing in the world to do. Easy, because it is simple, effortless, and natural; difficult because grasping is inherent in our lifestyle. We are commanded by corrosive religious traditions that tell us we are imperfect and must constantly strive to be godly or even worthy. This manipulative and twisted lie causes us to prize obstinacy and obedience over sensitivity, and to collide with difficult people and situations rather than circumnavigate them. If we are to evolve to the next stage of consciousness, we must relax, quit struggling, and accept ourselves as microcosmically flawed but macrocosmically perfect.
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It is often hard to relax when we feel assaulted by daily stresses and pressures. These forces arise from a limited and often negative life narrative, one we have learned the way we learned language and customs and culture. The narrative is at best the partial truth about ourselves and our lives. Our planet is only a tiny speck in the cosmos and yet, even here, we miss so very much because of the limitations of our eyes, ears, noses, fingertips, and tongues. Lacking sonar, for example, we cannot detect bugs on the fly in a dark cave the way a bat can. We cannot feel the water column above us the way a deep-sea lamprey does, nor sense the electrical discharges of prey after the fashion of sharks, skates, and rays. We will never hear songs sent our way through thousands of miles of water by our cetacean kin. We will never hear the ultra-low-frequency vibrations of other elephants in our herd. Despite the revelations brought to scientists by computers, sensors, telescopes, and microscopes, on a daily basis most of us remain oblivious to the larger workings of the cosmos. Accepting how little we perceive of our world and how little we can therefore understand of it, we can abide in a place of wonder and respect for the world rather than attempting to dominate it.
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We don’t all look like supermodels, think like geniuses, earn like moguls, own like sheiks, and rule like kings. Thinking that we do, indeed, thinking that we should, distances us from the bitter struggle that is life for billions of people around the globe. So distant, we become lost to greed and self-importance. We become graspers, forever discontented with what we do and what we have. This creates stress, which precludes relaxation. Let’s get real: Each of us does indeed have our place and our role in the world, but beyond rights and freedoms and the meeting of our biological needs, we don’t deserve a thing! The idea that we deserve anything at all is obnoxious, New Age, politically-correct puffery, and comes at a high price to those around us. It is high time we abandoned self-congratulatory narcissism. Instead, let’s frankly appraise our achievements and contributions in the context of a world flattened by globalization and imperiled by thoughtless human domination. When regarding ourselves, let’s focus on compassion and community instead of on gratification, self-aggrandizement, and excess. In this way, we rectify ourselves, and restore harmony and balance to a world badly in need of both.
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Energetic exchange is the overarching principle of all human interaction, and there is far more energy in feelings than there is in facts. The sooner we accept emotions to be more powerful (not better or more important) than facts, the sooner we will achieve beneficent government, realistic and effective politics, and a frank understanding of what makes us tick. This represents a move away from the doomed, rational way we try and define ourselves, towards the hot, wet, feeling creatures we actually are, passions and insecurities and ambitions and all. The trick is to judge ourselves less, because we are not the machines some would portray us to be, but rather to accept that we are creatures born of an organic planet and living in an unpredictable and often dangerous world. Rectification is organic; it is not the stuff of stiff, sci-fi cyborgs. When we embrace our own emotional irrationality during the setting of policy and the charting of courses, we actually cleave most closely to nature, finding balance, and relieving our changeable selves of the burdens of unrealistic, rigid, and unchanging strictures and rules.
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If our culture has one defining characteristic, that characteristic is anger. Americans have the dubious distinction of being amongst the angriest people on earth. Anger doesn’t just lead us to kill each other, it also kills each and every one of us. We see the evidence every day. High blood pressure, blown arteries, refluxing digestive systems, insomnia, and more. How can the wealthiest and most privileged society in human history be so angry? The first answer is the sense of entitlement we get from media messages about material abundance and excess: the gap between our lives and the lives we see on television, in movies, and on billboards. The second is the unequal distribution of wealth, healthcare, and education, and the opportunity gaps across racial and socioeconomic divides. The third answer is an all-pervasive lack of awareness of our own good fortune. A dose of reality can lead to gratitude, and gratitude is the best antidote to our individual and collective rage. Grateful, we can begin to relax. Relaxed, we can begin to rectify. Rectifying, we can channel anger into energy for positive action.
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It is long past time to erase the stigma of mental illness. Advances in science and medicine have demonstrated that depression, schizophrenia, and substance abuse are diseases every bit as organic as Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s. We should no more discriminate against someone with a broken mind than we would against someone with a broken leg. The cure to mental illness starts with compassion and forbearance on the part of the patient’s family, then proceeds to placing the highest priority on their care. Compassion is a key element of the awakened, rectified life.
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While there is a definite role for certain traditional hallucinogens—particularly those from the shamanic tradition—in advancing the growth of consciousness, the dark side of hallucinogens is a bad trip, enduring psychosis, or worse. While Daoists have traditionally availed themselves of nature’s toolkit for the maintenance of health and the expansion of consciousness, these days the most popular Daoist methods for achieving these goals are meditation and qigong under the guidance of a qualified master. Too, psychotropic drugs are so widely abused these days and, when abused, can so ravage families and communities, that their use must be weighed carefully against their risks. Addiction is a personal and public health issue. As part of a compassionate society, addiction-avoidance education, ongoing