This is one of my favorite sayings . . Everything that rises must converge.

The idea, that the truth, or truth is basically like a pyrmaid.  At the lower levels, it’s complicated and large.  As you get closer to the pure truth, it becomes smaller and simpler.

And while the truth may usually be simple, it’s almost never easy.

One of the best works on this subject is The Perennial Philosophy, by Aldous Huxley.  in TPP Huxley does a comparative analysis of the worlds religions and spiritual trends to find out what’s similar.  Comparing, rather than contrasting.

If we imagine the truth as a pyramid, at the base you have all of the worlds different religions, cosmologies, and so on.

As you move higher and higher up the pyramid, you begin to notice some striking similarities.

First, you notice that there are two parallel and slowly converging lines.

Those are the two main methodsd of spiritual enlightenment, and they can be summed up as:

1. Practice
2. Devotional Surrender

The practical schools can basically be summed up as things like Taoism, types of Shamanism, etc.

The Devotional schools are those that rather than take up the route of practice require one to competely devote and surrender oneself to a guru, a higher power, a messiah, or what have you.

In fact, for all of their differences, religions like Buddhism and Christianity belong to the same sid or line on the pyramid.

The interesting thing to not is that again - everything that rises converges.

At some pont, practice becomes devotional surrender and devotional surrender becomes practice, and the distinction is erased completely at the top of the pyramid.

Not really . . .  To bad, so sad.

Later on tonight, I will be filming two new videos for the site.

They are:

1. Understanding the Zhuang Zi
2. An Introduction To Contemporary Taoism

But, I have this gut feeling about what people really want to see.

I guess, that alot of people are probably looking to see alot of video on internal martial arts, and training at Wudang.

And it’s coming, Don’t worry. . . There will be ample opportunity to see me (happily) made a fool of. 

I also am worried that some people might not understand why I’m posting the things I’m posting in the members area right now . . .

Why I’m posting so many videos and audio about traditional Taoist writing and theory:

There are multiple reasons for this, and it’s not really an accident, or because of a lack of other material that I could present instead.

The first, is that I personally am interested in study of this material.  So, while I’m doing that, I figure I might as well go ahead and make some shareable content out of my own study.  MP3’s you can listen to while walking or driving.  Videos you can watch that will provide (at least a minimal) audio visual input to help you internalize the material better.  PDF’s to read when you’re bored.

The second reason is because I enjoy doing it.

The third reason is because I think that before we begin higher level discussions or start putting higher level material out there, it’s important to create a solid ideological foundation.

Which brings us to the fourth and main reason . . .

I believe that it’s not a good idea to talk about high level concepts or processes without making every possible effort to talk about morality, first.

There are people who do this.

More specifically, lots of people mass market material on Taoist sexual practices.

My personal feeling about this issue is that I find it to be quite irresponsible.

There are several reasons why:

• It easily encourages an attachment to lust
• I believe that high level practices without a solid moral foundation can contribute to delusions and psychological disorders (Mainly wierd Messianic delusions and/or paranoia)
•  When or If people experience any results,  or phenominalogical effects from these processes, they can easily go down a wrong path

 What I believe in, and what I’m trying to follow and share with people is orthodox Taoism.

At this point, there are hundreds of heterodox practices that are derivative of traditional Taosim.

From martial arts, to Chinese medicine, to Qigong, Feng Shui, Astrology and all sorts of other things.

All of them are good, I think.

But, peoples intentions, motivations, secret desires and hang ups aren’t always good.

Often, it seems like the reason people become involved in these practices are quite contrary to “the Tao”.

• They seek to artificially influence something.
• They want to control things rather than let them follow their natural course.
• They hope to gain something that is not theirs to begin with.

 Hucksters, Charlatans and Fakes possess attributes which can be recognized

This is not a call out.  I’m not even saying that hucksters, charlatans and fakes don’t serve their purpose or have their place within the eco-system of Taoist cultivations.

Only that they can recognized.

Questions to ask yourself:

• Is this person offering me something for “nothing”?
• Is this person offering me a shortcut to enlightenment, martial ability, sexual power, well being, etc. that doesn’t require a proportionate sacrifice of worldly interests?
• Does this person have my best interest at heart, or are they out for material gain?  Is the true value they’re providing me consistent with what they’re asking from me, materially?
• Is this persons life, life style, and behavior consistent with what they’re teaching me?
• What is my OWN motivation, and reason for doing this?  What am I really trying to pursue?  (I don’t mean the features, but the results.  Not Qigong, or Kung Fu, Or Feng Shui, but things like fame, money, power over others, helping others, health, understanding the nature of “things”, living in accord with the Tao, blowing your load 99 times in half a minute, etc.)

I am an Indiana redneck - covered in bad tattoos. 

So in saying all of that, I guess I should caveat it by saying that I’m nobody to listen to.

I am not capable to be anybody’s teacher or anything like that, because I’m just a beginner at trying to be a real person (ZhenRen)  myself, and I’m no where near even being close.

But . . .  my instinct and my spirit tell me that - before we start taking the camcorder into anybodys secret mountain caves, talking about re-directing peoples momentum into concrete walls, or seminal retention - it’s important to at least make available as much information as possible about how to be a good human, rather than just a human who’s efficient at doing this or that.

So bear with me . . . The time is VERY near when I’ll be living on WudangShan full time, and when it comes to providing you with great content related to internal martial arts, qigong, Chinese medicine, etc. - I guarantee . . . I WILL CRUSH IT.

In the meantime, bear with me while I try to get my own self in a better head space.  I encourage you to try and do the same, if that’s what you want to do. 

Today someone asked me at my Myspace Account about cultivating the Tao here in China, and about the place where I am now (Yunnan) in particular.

I was going to type this long reply to him, because I think that it’s worth explaining my thoughts on this subject, but I decided I would do it here, too because I think lots of people have these sorts of “crouching tiger” dreams about what Asia will do for them.

Upon arrival, it will probably mystify and enchant you. . .

Give it a year and you’re likely to be climbing the walls, and find yourself incredibly frustrated.

As many of you know, I’ve lived in lots of different countries here.  3 years in India.  4 years in Thailand.  A year in Korea, and now China. . .

One thing that I consistently see is people looking for this sort of mytherial “Asian” experience.  You know - The kind of stuff you see in movies, with sagely old men who reluctantly agree to show you “the way”, and bamboo forests, and lots of “spiritual” people.

 So without further Adieu, here are the top things spiritual/philisophical searchers need to know about Asia before they show up:

1.  It’s mostly corrupt in ways that you’re not accustomed to
2. The ideas that you hold dear, like the significance and value of the individual, don’t exist here for the most part
3. It’s generally dirty
4. People are generally MUCH more materialistic than in the West
5. There is no feeling of boo boo headed mysticism circling through the trees.  There is yellow dust, massive amounts of industrial pollution, and a sort of cut throat, dog eat dog selfishness that pervades almost everything

 With that being said, and with some clarity in mind - Let me tell you why Asia is awesome:

•  The social environment is terrible
• The moral quality is very low
• The environmental pollution is generally out of control
• Your limited only by your imagination in how evil you become and to what extent you surrender to your base nature if you have a bit of money

At this point, you’re probably wondering if I’ve lost the plot while you’re reading this right, or at least - “Where the hell is he going with this?” - right?

  The truth is, Asia has produced some of the highest level human beings precisely because the environment is so problematic.

Lao Tzu.  The Buddha.  Confucius.  Guru Nanak.  Ghandi . . . The list goes on and on.

In order for me to continue along this line of thought, it’s important that we be in agreement upon two basic principles:

The way to ascend in cultivation practice is to:

1. Improve your morality
2. Eliminate your attachments

Are you still with me?  Ok . . .

As a tangent ninja aside, I always tell people that I think there’s a standard of human morality . . .

Wicked, immoral people - Let’s take for example someone like Hitler, or the Cannibal Jeffrey Dahmer - As a society and as individuals we always condemn the acts of these people as being “Inhumane”.

Do we literally mean no longer human?  Or below the moral standard for humanity?  I would say so.

I’de venture to guess that at our core - that part of ourSelves which hasn’t been totally eroded by socialization - we basically understand that these people have fallen below the standards of behavior and morality to even be considered human beings any longer.

Still with me . . . ?

If we assume that the equation balances itself, or that if Yang exists so must Yin, then it stands to reason that there’s a standard at the upper level, too.

That - quite literally there is an upper level standard for human morality, and that if someone transcends that standard, and they have improved their own morality beyond that point, and have eliminated enough human attachments - We also can no longer consider this person to be a normal human.

Again:  Lao Tzu . . . The Buddha . . .  Jesus . . .  Is there a reason that we hold these, who were born in flesh and blood the same as us in such reverence?

I’d say “yeah”.

If you want to make steel, you turn up the heat

To further illustrate the point that I’m actually trying to get to, I guess it’s best to use an analogy based on Alchemy.

Let’s assume that you have a lump of iron ore.  Full of dirt, debris, all sorts of roughage, oxidized and not at all pure.

How does this dirty rock get from being a dirty rock to being high quality steel?

It has to be tempered.  You put it in a cauldron or kiln, and you burn it.

Or better yet - how does a lump of carbon become a diamond?

You guessed it.  Through a long, protracted process of being exposed to MASSIVE heat and/or physical pressure.

Out Of The Frying Pan, and Into The Fire

So that brings us back around to the original point of all of this. . . .

In *MY* experience, Asia is a great place to cultivate.  Not because there is zither music floating around on the wind the moment you walk out the door, but because if you can resist the temptations that are all around you (From “Get in my Taxi” to “Buy my book” to “F*ck My Son”) -

And if you can remain compassionate towards life around you -

And if you can resist being pulled into the consensus reality which is HIGHLY materialistic -

Then you can make real progress.

And you can probably make it more quickly than you could in another type of environment.

Plan to burn, not “chill”

So for those people who are interested in coming here for spiritual reasons - I would say that you either have to have a realistic understanding of how things are here, or you have to have the emotional resillience to deal with a big “let down” when you realize that nobody is hovering about the bamboo forests, you won’t be shooting an qi balls at the bad guys (the bad guys will be your bosses, masters, landlords, political leaders, etc.).

But if you’re ready to do that . . . And if you can resist the consensus reality in one place, and then resist it in another, and on and on until you find that you’re so outside the realm of social human “groupthink” that even if you went home you would still be a foreigner - There’s hope for you yet.

I just put up the Taoist Diet report in the members are.

It’s kind of short (about 14 pags), but I think it’s kind of interesting.

Check it out and let me know what you think!

I’m going to add the following videos tomorrow:

Wudang/Taoist Diet and nutrition

BenchMark Video (aka the watch how fat, out of shape and sloppy I am video!)

After that I’m going to focus on the Zhang San Feng video, and continuing with the Tao Te Ching video study group vids.

That’s it.

Take care everybody.

Video 3 for the Tao Te Ching study group is online inside the members area at wudangquan.com . . .

If you haven’t already joined, go ahead and do that, and leave me a comment here, or leave a video response on youtube and let me know what you think.

As a side note - I’ll be taking all of the comments from here and youtube, and will put it together as a massive Tao Te Ching Video, as well as an ebook and I’ll be giving that to everyone for free.

Also don’t forget that there are some cool gifts for people who participate in the study group:

Here’s a quick video from youtube where I talk about the free (physical products) that I’m going to give away for our members in the next week or so, and how you can claim them:

I got bored so I created a Wudang Related Lens over at squidoo.

Check it out:

Wudang Lens

So I have a ton of GREAT martial arts and Taoist related domain names, but not the time to develop them.

I’m looking for some people that have a great idea, and want to run a site, that would like to use one of these domains.

Basically, I would just give you an FTP account, and you create whatever you want.

I’m soliciting proposals for:

Analects.Org (i.e. The Analects of Confucius. Good for a site about strategy, tactics, etc.)
Combative.Org (Probably best for a site about military hand to hand combatives, or RBSD)
DynastySwords.Com (Swords? haha)
KungFuMovieDo.Com (I bought this planning to do a martial arts movie and wuxia review blog)
SpiritualMartialArts.Com (could be used a number of ways)
TaiChiJourney.Com (would be great as a blog for someone begining Tai Chi, I think)
Vajrayana.US ( could be a forum, directory, or something related to Vajrayana Buddism practitioners in the uS)
WaterBoxing.Org (This is a great domain for a subject that people are always asking about, but there’s really no authoritative site on the web at the moment - Liu He Ba Fa)

If interested, drop me a line at Jonathan [@] IamJonathan.Com

So . . .

As I mentioned a while back, I’m busy buidling the backend for Wudangquan.com.  I don’t have anything ready to show anyone yet, but when it’s ready, I think it’ll be awesome.  Totally democratic, web 2.0 style site.

One of the projects I want to complete before launching the site is an intro/promo video for WDQ.C . . .

As you might have guessed, in addition to trying to create alot of content to help older people maintain their health, I’m also trying to produce material that will be inspiring to people of my generation, and younger generations.

These days, because of the prolific trend towards MMA and so called “no holds barred’ sports fighting, we’ve creating a generation of kids who think that the martial arts are about chest-thumping, being the biggest Man-Child on the block, walking around like a roided out, ego-maniacal freak, and so on.

I want the site/magazine to expose younger people to traditional martial culture, Taoism, ethics, xinxing cultivation, and so on.

And towards that end, along with having some awesome video of applied WudangQuan, I’m looking for a GREAT song for the video.

Now, I could just throw something together with some public domain mp3 of Chinese Zither music, or something like that, but that’s not really in line with my ultimate goals for the site.

I’m looking for something more modern.

So, if you’re a musician, know someone who is, or have an idea about music for this video, please send me a mail at jonathan@iamjonathan.com and let me know about it!

Also, if you’ve got some video clips . . . Specifically training videos, application videos, old videos of great martial artists (Tai chi, Bagau, Hsing Yi, and other taoist based or influenced arts), stuff related to Taoism, ethics, warrior culture, and so on - Again . . . Please send me a mail.

As I stated in my Post On How I Blog and Run The Site, I’ll give full credit where any is due, and for anyone that contributes.

Also . . . I’m now begining to look for some writers or videographers who really would like to help out with this project.  If you’re interested, drop me a line!