& THE MAP TO DESTINY PART 5 THE MYSTICAL CHI CYCLE The most common thing I hear is ‘I don’t know who I am’ or ‘I’m nobody’. Society is responsible for the


construction of the self. This keeps therapists in business and will do for a long time because, from the Daoist perspective, the chi of society is toxic. It creates an ‘acquired’ version of yourself.


by Jost Sauer


THE DOORBELL CHIMES, you open the door and a mysterious messenger hands you a scroll sealed with a luminous shimmering wax. As you unroll it, fiery words flicker and leap from the page, forming an invitation to an imperial luncheon. The messenger takes your hand and within seconds you are ascending through the heavens. The mystical Kunlun mountains materialise out of the clouds and perched on the highest gleaming peak is a golden palace. As you glide towards it, a set of massive jewel-studded doors swing open to reveal interior treasures; precious silks and jades and richness that takes your breath away. The messenger guides you to a banquet table, laden with fragrant foods; steaming rice that hisses ‘chi’, brilliantly-coloured succulent vegetables, meats that melt in your mouth. And there is the emperor, seated in all his shining benevolence, radiating wisdom and love and ready to reveal the secrets of your soul, but you check your phone for messages and ask if a sandwich to go is a possibility, as you’re in a bit of a hurry. There’s something wrong with that


picture but, from the mystical chi-cycle perspective, this is what most of us do every day at lunchtime by working through, eating on the run or worse still, skipping lunch entirely. ‘Skip’ is far too frivolous a word in this context because lunch is another mystical ‘make or break’ phase of the day. A destiny gateway is before you and it’s critical to pass through this one so that the rest of the day works for you rather than against you. Cosmic yang has been slowly building throughout the morning and by lunchtime this has peaked. The cosmic switch has now been thrown over to yin, and if you consciously acknowledge this, sit back, let go of business and ‘doing’ and have a warm nourishing meal, the gateway opens. Your internal mystical processes continue smoothly, you are on track to destiny and a step closer to finding your cosmic


18 march 2014


self. See, yang is expansion, it rises, and if your actions have been aligned so far – a breathing and chi practice, followed with a nourishing breakfast and four hours of working purposefully – information about your cosmic self has risen with the yang. Sitting back now allows you to become consciously aware of this and to experience a profound sense of peace. Energetically, the qualities of your


small intestine are prominent now and your task is to ‘digest’. Digest and absorb both food and the awareness of your real mystical nature. But, because lunchtime is the most yang


time of the day, and often the busiest part of the day and we are all addicted to yang (go, go, go) and unaligned, we all want to keep moving. We can’t stop, we don’t want to stop, we don’t have the time or space to sit down or we are so wound-up that we can’t even eat, let alone digest. So we ‘skip’ lunch or grab something on the go. But blow-off lunch and you are going against the flow, you are ‘dissing’ the emperor, and the divine consciousness of your organs can’t escort you to the palace, or set the table or serve you up your internal treasures. The system breaks down, there’s chaos in the mystical catering department, the awareness of your cosmic self gets returned to the cosmic kitchen, untouched, and everything is now in place for a health and/or identity crisis. I’ve been a therapist for decades now,


and the most common thing I hear is ‘I don’t know who I am’ or ‘I’m nobody’. In our culture society is responsible for the construction of the self. This keeps therapists in business and will do for a long, long time because, from the Daoist perspective, the chi of society is toxic. It creates an ‘acquired’ version of yourself. This is the opposite of cosmic because you end up identifying yourself by your profession or belongings, or how others perceive you, and this is the road to misery. We don’t come from society, we come from Dao. The mystical gateways


allow the Dao to come through to us, they return us to source. So the solution to not knowing who you are or feeling you are nobody, is to align your daily activities with the chi-cycle and let the chi of Dao bring your cosmic self forward. You need to make a conscious effort


to build chi too, as you need strong chi for a strong sense of identity. What you eat for lunch is a critical part of this because certain foods, sandwiches for example, are chi vampires. They feed your acquired self and contribute to a life of misery and confusion. This might sound a bit dramatic, but have a sandwich for lunch and before long you’ll be craving something, like a sugar hit or a snooze, to counter the imbalances the sandwich created. Snoozing and snacking are small things but they set up lots of other small imbalances that keep you on the surface, and keep you seeking yourself via physical experiences. This contributes to an ever-more unaligned lifestyle and loss of identity, but also to the big pathologies such as heart disease. If you eat incorrectly and/or work


through lunch you’ll stay in yang mode, you’ll be out of alignment, that mystical destiny gateway slams shut in your face, and now you are on your own. You’ll be building momentum that will get increasingly difficult to stop so you can’t wind down at the end of the day, you can’t sleep, you spin further off-centre, lose contact with who you are and all sorts of symptoms arise. In my rehab I treat plenty of people who have been told that they are ‘alcoholics’ and diseased because they have to drink several bottles of wine every night. But all of these clients have unaligned lifestyles. They get up and straight into work, skip breakfast, grab a sandwich or skip lunch and work late. Yang runs out-of-control and they end up needing the alcohol to be able to switch over from a yang to a yin state – otherwise sleep is impossible. Instead of focusing on giving up the


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