Taoism

Giving It A Go

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Part of my larger meditative/spiritual practice is to ensure my development and explorations are on “all levels.” There’s breathing, there’s mysticism, and sometimes there’s just having a healthy meal. At one point in earlier 2026 I was thinking about how I aligned with people since social interactions are so important to us. I mean yes I worked to play a role in society, help people, etc., but I wanted a way to evaluate it.

I wanted a touchstone to provide a quick way to evaluate my behaviors and choices. A kind of exercise/health routine for the social soul as it were. Fortunately the choice was obvious.

I picked the Five Virtues from various Chinese practices. Since I had heard of them due to my interest in Taoism, I had some vague familiarity. Since they were part of the larger idea of the Five Elements that pervaded a great deal of Chinese thoughts, I had references. Thus each day I’d reflect on Truthfulness, Righteousness, Wisdom, Benevolence, and Order. And, yes I’ve seen different translations and takes on them, so I took a go at finding the best take I could.

(I should note these are also part of Traditional Chinese Medicine. Though I think TCM as a whole has virtues, many a cure or treatment has not been scientifically validated and some are disproven or questionable.)

What I did was take a look at myself, go “I need a quick checklist for my social roles,” grabbed something I was vaguely familiar with, and ran with it. That was it.

Now that may seem a little sudden, perhaps even shallow to just sort of go “gonna use that method of ethical thought” and take off with it. I mean these are deep social principles, these are Virtues with historical significance and baggage. Can I take thousands of years of thought and just go for it?

Actually, yes I can.

The key thing here is that I had to start somewhere. I wanted to find a way to look at my ethics and social interactions. I didn’t want to kick the tires on a bunch of methods, I wanted to start. The point in fact was not to find the best (if that is possible). The point was to get going so I start thinking and work things out over time.

And thus I took something that I knew I could start with and had sources on. In time I learned more, read arguments, found some interesting opinions, and looked at many a conflicting set of thoughts. I also found plenty of shallow or entry-level takes. But also I got thinking and thinking about myself and making changes in my life.

I looked at other works on ethics and compared them. I thought about the arguments among Taoists and Confucians over if Truthfulness was core or Benevolence was (guess who I sided with). Throughout it all I kept asking about myself, my behavior, my principles – and yes, I got up to some wild and weird comparisons because I’m me.

Did it “work?” Well, yes in that I feel I have a way to think about myself and what I do. Will this be the way I evaluate myself for the rest of my life? I have no idea, but I got going and I’m pretty sure I’m a better person.

That’s something to remember in all our spiritual and ethical and mystical practices – you have to get going. Maybe it’s slow or it’s fast. Maybe there’s some study or you come out hot out of the gate. But you have to actually get to doing it so you can learn and do and be better.

You might even find out you’re wrong about a choice. I might decide there’s a better way to map my ethics than picking up what I had lying around. But I got moving and that’s what matters in our practices to be more of who we are and can be.

–Xenofact

Sexual Metaphors Across The Centuries

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As a person interested in Taoism, it doesn’t take much to run into some practices and statements of a rather sexual nature. Sometimes it’s tame metaphors. Sometimes it’s hanging weights from your genitals to straighten your spine. Sometimes it’s someone writing a passive-aggressive dis about another Taoist being a huge pervert. Taoism’s diverse history has everything, including a lot of sex stuff.

One thing that I had noticed in my readings over the years was talk about “intimate union” in meditative practices – and ones that are clearly not sexual. Often it’s about joining forces, the various elements of one’s being together, sense and essence, spirit and energy, etc. Sometimes it’s simple, sometimes it’s elaborate.

(And yes, these sexual-but-not-sexual metaphors have clearly been taken as sexual in history. Taoism has also used mercury as a metaphor and it didn’t stop people from poisoning themselves.)

These sexual metaphors had often passed me by. Yes, perhaps I am “joining sense and essence” in an intimate embrace like a couple or something, but that’s just a metaphor, right? Perhaps the Metal Man takes his rightful place with his spouse. Sexual metaphors I just kind of passed by, probably because our own culture uses them.

But in time, I began to see how useful such metaphors were.

In my meditations, the “unity” of forces is a large part of the practice Breath meditation has mind resting on an ever-refining breath in partnership. My energy work is about mind resting on energy as it flows through the body. But such unities can easily be broken as any meditator knows – sometimes the mind doesn’t rest on breath (or energy) but rests on itself resting on breath (or energy). You know how it is when you’re doing the thing but also sort of knowing you’re doing the thing and it just falls apart.

I came to realize that meditating, the mind rests on something – for example, a slow and even breath. The mind sets its intent to be there with the breath, the breath ever slow and evening, and that’s its only priority. In many ways it surrenders itself completely to the breath by being there with it while the breath is there just being itself.

Then I got all those sexual metaphors because that’s perfect.

Intimate metaphors are a great metaphor for meditation practices. They capture the closeness, the surrender, the passion of connection. I’d written them off as trite and simplistic, but they were the opposite – the use of sexual or romantic metaphor fit meditation very well. I got it.

Meditation is an intimacy – as are other such practices. Sometimes you need to go to something visceral – like sex and romance – to communicate such things. Perhaps it has to be carefully phrased or used, perhaps people will get it wrong, but it fits.

I also think this is a good reminder that when reading metaphors and symbolism to remember they are oft written by people who are not you in times that are not your own. Our reactions to them are not the ones that the writers of the past expected or even considered. You have to learn to listen across the centuries.

–Xenofact

Head Full of Ghosts

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If you’ve done any form of meditation or therapy you know about those complexes in your mind. The fears, the obsessions, the habits that take over so much of our life, probably more than we want to admit.

It’s like having a head full of ghosts.

These aren’t the cool ghosts either. There’s no dramatic revelations of the past or lineage. They aren’t some vital spirits directing us to a better life after three disparate visions. None of these ghosts is delivering useful advice. Not a single one resembles Patrick Swayze.

Honestly, these ghosts in our head, these habits and neuroses, are boring and pathetic.

They’re mechanical and repetitive. They run on tracks burrowed into our mind, clockwork-clicking along whatever path set out by our past experiences. They are powerful, they are annoying, but they’re also not that interesting or unique. The reruns of the soul.

They’re often quite pathetic. A bad experience here, a grudge there, something we didn’t acknowledge in the past. Even the horrible ones are sad, the results of our bad choices or the cruelty of others. There’s something invalid about them, and we fear, about ourselves.

They’re damaging. They hurt us, obsess us, misdirect us, but not in any cool way. They’re often stupidly self-destructive – of ourselves and even themselves. They negate themselves yet always resurrect.

But worse of all these Ghosts, these complexes and obsessions of the past are so empty.

There’s nothing to them. No acknowledgement of reality, even when reality triggers them. They don’t grow. They aren’t relevant even if perhaps they once had reason to exist. When we acknowledge them, their shallowness is stunning. Here we are, people, and we have to share our head with these phantoms.

It’s humiliating. These mechanical, harmful, phantasms drive so much of our life and don’t deserve to. I once read someone discussing the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism, and decided to translate what is usually interpreted as craving as humiliation, and I get that.

I find looking at this emptiness, this voidness of our complexes helps me deal with them. When you see their shallowness and pointlessness, you can overcome them. Not necessarily by great exertion or cultivation (though it may help) but by just seeing through them and deciding to move on.

They seem to shrink when you do that. Probably because your attention and ignorance was the only thing keeping them going.

–Xenofact