Living the Tao-A Spiritual Podcast
Episode 001: Taoist Podcast Transcription
Tap into timeless wisdom for a more balanced, fulfilling life. Taoist Master Mikel Steenrod brings you ancient teachings made practical for today’s world. Whether you’re searching for inner calm, spiritual direction, or clarity in daily challenges, each episode offers simple, profound insights to guide your personal journey.
Designed for newcomers and seasoned spiritual seekers alike, these monthly episodes help you slow down, reflect, and live with greater purpose. New episodes drop every first Friday of the month.
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In this episode, Taoist Master Mikel Steenrod explores The Three Traditions of Taoism, Six actions toward tao mind, and how to experience insight by developing your “Ness.”
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This episode has been transcribed and can be found here: https://www.the-taoism-for-modern-world.com/episode-1-enlightenment-is-the-natural-state-of-humans/
A Summary of the Transcript
The Three Traditions of Taoism
The Taoist school we’re working out of is part of an enlightenment spiritual tradition from China. Taoism is significantly different from Western religions and most Eastern religions. It consists of three classifications of practice:
The Hermit Tradition
Originally, Taoism was a system of one shaman training another for spiritual combat. Early Taoists were like “Buffy the Vampire Slayers” of the world—unstoppable warriors trained in an elite system. Over time, this became the hermit school tradition: a teacher on a mountain with one or two students.The Mystery School Tradition
These schools functioned like modern research institutes with a handful of lead teachers and 12–20 students, sometimes up to a few hundred. Practices were diverse, and unification was neither expected nor ideal. Mystery schools often aligned with specific forms of Taoist practice.The Temple Tradition
This tradition emerged to teach Taoism to larger groups. It was not always focused on achieving enlightenment. Many pursued power, knowledge, or a comfortable lifestyle. In temples, enlightenment was often reserved for a small portion of practitioners, while others achieved a spiritual lifestyle.
The 4 Ascendant Purity Adept School
Our focus is on the 4 Ascendant Purity Adept School of the Tao, a mystery school tradition aligned with the Soon clan. This lineage contains hundreds of Taoist systems collected over 1,500 years. Taoism is primarily taught through oral tradition and practice, emphasizing human-created methods to pursue enlightenment while staying sane.
Enlightenment: A Return to the Natural State
Enlightenment is not an artificial state but the natural state of humans. Taoist practice views enlightenment as:
Definable and Attainable
It’s not an abstract mystery but a return to where you’re supposed to be.Measurable
Taoism includes methods for achieving and assessing enlightenment, emphasizing its attainability for those who genuinely pursue it.
Social Mind vs. Tao Mind
Humans are born with a representation of the world, known as the social mind, shaped by societal influences and filled with inaccuracies.
The goal of enlightenment is to transform the social mind into the Tao mind, a more accurate picture of the Greater Tao. This transition occurs through:
- Insights: Moments of clarity when you perceive the Tao directly.
- Gradual Adjustment: Practice exposes the social mind to the Tao, creating opportunities for transformation.
Insight and its Role in Enlightenment
Insights are not rare; they are frequent and attainable. However, rapid exposure to insights can be overwhelming. Practice is designed to:
Facilitate Exposure
Creating opportunities to experience the Tao mind.Build Tolerance
Gradually adjusting to the transformative process of enlightenment.
What Does Enlightenment Look Like?
Different spiritual traditions define enlightenment uniquely. In the Taoist 4 Ascendant Purity Adept School:
Enlightenment Means Independence
Once your primary teacher is the Tao, you no longer need human teachers to make progress.Not Omniscience or Omnipotence
Enlightenment brings greater power through karma, not unlimited knowledge or ability.
The Path to Enlightenment: Developing “Ness”
The journey begins with achieving a mind of clarity, where your thoughts align with reality. This requires cultivating six foundational principles:
- Hygiene
- Positive Power
- Calm
- Acceptance
- Stillness
- Invocation
These tools help you develop “ness,” a state of reasonable and realistic thought essential for enlightenment.
Predictability and the Role of Insight
Human behavior and events are largely predictable. Tools like the I Ching reveal these patterns. Insight moves your ness closer to enlightenment by fostering a realistic and familiar perception of the world.
Key Idea: Insight is not magical—it’s a natural part of aligning your mind with the Tao.
Final Thoughts: Your Journey to Enlightenment
Pursuing enlightenment is a personal decision. Most goals in life can be achieved by mastering the foundational principles. However, for those who choose to go further, enlightenment is a process of embracing insight, refining your “ness,” and learning directly from the Tao.
Episode 1: Enlightenment is the Natural State of Humans–Full Transcript
Welcome to Living the Tao—A Spiritual Podcast
Exploring how ancient wisdom, a practical perspective, and deep truth can empower you to live your best life. In this episode, Taoist Master Mikel Steenrod explores the three traditions of Taoism, six actions toward Tao, and how to experience insight by developing your “nesses.”
Introduction to Taoism and Its Traditions
So, the Taoist school we’re working out of, if we sit back and remember, Taoism is an enlightenment spiritual tradition from China– it’s significantly different than Western spiritual religions, as are most of the Eastern religions. But basically, we’re looking at three classifications of practice in Taoism:
One’s the hermit tradition. One is the mystery school tradition. The other is the temple tradition. And these are the orders, basically, that they emerged in.
Origins of the Hermit Tradition
Daoism was originally, whatever form it happened to have taken, was a system of one shaman training another shaman for basically spiritual combat. That was the earliest function of Daoism as it came through. So, as I’ve said before, and I’ll probably say a few more times before the reference gets too old, the early Taoists were the “Buffy, the Vampire Slayers” of the world. That’s why they existed. They were trained to be basically unstoppable warriors.
However, it was an elite system, and it’s still elite, to a certain extent, designed for one person to train another person or two other people. This became the hermit school tradition. So the dude living on the mountain, taking one or two students–that’s the old hermit school.
The Mystery School Tradition
The mystery school tradition…. The best modern analogy I can give you for this is that it’s like a modern research institute. Basically, you had a handful of lead teachers anywhere from…like two to ten. Sometimes they got larger, but when you started getting much larger than that, you started really verging over into the temple school tradition that would teach many students.
So you might have anywheres from a dozen for some reason. The number twenty was significant. And student taking for Mystery Schools, you might go from just one or two, I mean, a dozen to twenty, up to a couple hundred. Usually Mystery Schools were aligned around specific forms of practice. So Taoist practice has never been unified, and that’s something to keep in mind, it probably should never be unified, because it really represents different Schools of practice as you go through.
And it doesn’t become a matter of superiority of one school over the other, unless you’re comparing things that are apples and apples. A lot of times people are comparing apples and oranges, and that doesn’t make any sense at all.
The Temple Tradition
Now, as time went on, the temple tradition emerged basically so that more people could be taught Daoism. And also, of course, not all Taoists are focused on achieving enlightenment, which is actually the actual outcome of it. There’s a large amount of Taoism that is built around the pursuit of power, with the pursuit of knowledge. And of course, the pursuit of political power.
And you start entering into that process when we start going into the temple process over here. So you get a really wide range of things. And you also have people that really just enjoy the temple lifestyle, which sounds odd, but compared to spending your day out in the field, or compare it to spending your day at war, or compare it to spending your day carving something? And suddenly the lifestyle of a monk… not so bad. You have to sweep some stuff, and then you spend a lot of time meditating. Not too bad of a lifestyle.
But it’s well understood in temple practice that only a small portion of that population is going to set out to achieve great enlightenment. As they come through, most are simply going to achieve a spiritual lifestyle, which is a perfectly acceptable goal. Again, it’s not a matter of your one being bad or the other being good.
The 4 Ascendant Purity Adept School
Now, lately, what we’ve been focusing on are the steps necessary to move forward in personal spiritual progress. And what that precisely means, the 4 Ascendant school, which is the school that I’m a lineage holder of, (writes on board) I don’t know, the Chinese, but more the Korean, but from what I’ve heard, is much, much shorter than the English. (English) is a lot bigger. So this is the 4 Ascendant Purity Adept School of the Tao. This is a mystery school system.
Mystery Schools were aligned across clan lines. And this is the school for the Soon clan and the people that are affiliated with that particular clan. This (the 4AS) has certain advantages, because it actually contains within it, probably hundreds of complete other Taoist schools.
And the reason for that is simple. All the major Taoist lines were pretty much terminated at the Communist revolution. And so the only things that remain are small fragmented lines or small fragmented lineages that come through. However, the Soons are collectors of lineages, and have been doing so for about 1500 years. So they contain complete traditions, are in complete systems of study that other Schools don’t necessarily have anymore.
Taoism is Taught Through Practice and Oral Tradition
The thing to keep in mind, and any of you can talk at any time, is that Taoism is taught largely through oral tradition and through practice. So you have those two major factors.
Now we’re looking at basically chasing the big enchilada with the thought that you may not want to pursue the big enchilada. You’ll find that out as you go along.
Enlightenment: The Natural State
And so if we look at this concept of enlightenment, there are a couple of things that I want to mention about this before we get too far into the discussion of it. Enlightenment– One, is the natural state of humans. The process of enlightenment is returning the mind back to its natural state. It is not an artificial state. It is what you are actually supposed to be, and that’s a major factor.
It’s not some sort of elaborate back flip into achieving understanding. It’s actually where you’re supposed to be and what you’re supposed to do. That’s one of the fundamental concepts for Taoist practice, when it comes down to that. Enlightenment is the return to a natural state.
Misinterpretations of Enlightenment
Now, that can be misinterpreted in all sorts of ways, so we’ll add a couple things to it. The other thing is that it is definable. It’s attainable. Believe it or not, it’s even measurable in some ways.
And the reason I mention all of this is that we like to oftentimes place religion into this mystery, out-of-bounds place, where a select few will achieve the ends that go there. This is the basic rule for achieving enlightenment: If you really want to achieve enlightenment, you’re going to achieve enlightenment. That’s the rule for it.
The Practicality of Taoist Methods
Taoism is a collection of human methods, and that’s very well understood–methods created by humans to increase the chance of you becoming enlightened and staying sane in the process. Taoism also does something else, and that is what you do after you become enlightened. And so it has an entire system that’s built for that, primarily because it is capable of generating very good numbers of people converting to becoming enlightened.
Now, as we go through this process, we sit back– And so, strangely enough, the mystery school tradition for this is that it’s not a mystery. And as an interesting contrast of terms, it’s not something that’s out of bounds, and it’s not something that you should not pursue because, or actively pursue, because then you wouldn’t be humble. Does that make sense?
Sometimes religions place the pursuit of truth, or stating the pursuit of truth, as outside of your bounds, because then you wouldn’t be humble in pursuing your truth. Enlightenment says, or Taoism says, “It’s yours anyways, you might as well get it.”
Enlightenment as a Measurable Goal
And that’s the basic statement of enlightenment. Now, as soon as something becomes real, it becomes definable. It also becomes attainable. It’s attainable by the vast majority of people that set out to do it.
And interestingly enough, if it’s definable, it’s also measurable. And a lot of things have gone into doing that over time. Enlightenment is a strong enough process where it can be tested and where there are specific cutoffs for its performance.
The Importance of Definition in Religion
Now, if we go back to our early model– the reason I’m mentioning this is that no matter what religious end you end up pursuing, these factors should be involved.
If you have a religion that can only exist outside of definition, outside of attainability, and outside of being measurable, there’s a problem in that, because what good is it doing you?
Now it may be that you have the wrong measure, maybe that you have the wrong definition. It may be that you’re doing the wrong thing to attain it. But if you look at your whole population for any given religious system, how many people can realistically, that want to, can realistically achieve the goal of that spiritual study?
If that’s like, two out of 20,000, you need to sit back and take a look at that. If it’s 20,000 people that want that goal, if it’s…10,000—50% that’s not too bad. Somewhere along the line, you have to make your own personal cutoff and go, well, what can be done here?
Understanding Tao and Tao Mind
So basically, we have this big reality, outside initially, that we call the Tao or the Tao mind, which is the thing from which all things are constructed. We can get into the nature of Tao, or things like that, wherever today’s conversation happens to go.
But Tao and Tao mind are the words that are used simultaneously (as synonyms) in practice. There’s no differentiation created between those two factors. What you are born with is a representation.
Well, you’re not actually born with it. What you are given after birth is a representation of the world. That representation is called social mind.
Social Mind and its Flaws
Part of your study, as you go through, and that’s your personal study. That’s not the study of the things I say. That’s you studying practice, you moving through things, is coming to really understand what this thing is, as you go along.
But basically, you have a representation in your head of the world called social mind. The problem with that representation is that it’s not hugely accurate. It is filled with flaws. It believes that there are pink elephants when there are none.
So you spend all your time watering pink elephants, herding them around, and in fact, they don’t exist. And that’s a major source of trouble because, of course, you’re frittering away your resources. You’re shaping yourself for a world that’s not actually there.
The Consequences of Social Mind
And whenever you do that, that creates unhappiness. Because you are so much at odds with the way that true reality is. Your choices become powerless as a result, and you’re not capable of achieving the things that you want, or of even wanting things that exist.
Exposing Social Mind to the Tao
The objective of enlightenment training is to change this representation in your head to something called Tao mind, with a little t, which is basically a more accurate picture of the Greater Tao–of the Tao around and through us as we pass through.
The way you get from social mind to Tao mind is to expose the social mind to the Tao straightaway. Those create moments of insight, periods where you go surprised gasp and suddenly you understand something for a moment, and then you forget it.
Well, you didn’t forget it. The system adjusted. Once it incorporates it, then you forget whatever it was initially. But those are where you have those brilliant flashes of insight. That insight is you simply perceiving the Tao as it is for a certain period of time.
Insights and Their Role in Practice
I’m going to say something that can be revolutionary at times of practice (given perceptions of practice): “Insights are not limited. They’re not rare.” You can enter into a constant state of insight to the point where it’s hugely annoying.
What happens is that, if you’re getting off on a tangent (from an excess of insight), you’re not really going to be harmed by it, because all that you’re going to do is generate more social mind. You’re already there (dominated by social mind).
So it’s like, you know, you’re in a leaky boat, and some water splashes into your leaky boat. It’s not enough to sink you. It’s just a matter of if you were scooping water out, and now a couple more cups are inside of it.
Adjusting to Tao Mind
And initially, it can be difficult. But what happens is that there is a definite change in the way that Tao mind functions.
The other thing that happens is that you can place this up against reality, meaning that if the Tao mind that you’re forming is more true, you have greater access to the Tao, and you also accumulate more karmic power faster. And those are real factors that have definite and measurable consequences in your life.
So as we expose ourselves to the Tao mind over here, we have an insight. And that insight is really processing and the opportunity to move your social mind more towards Tao mind. If this occurs too rapidly, it can be destructive.
Practice and Gradual Transformation
So that’s something to keep in mind. And a lot of practice is really designed to create opportunities to be exposed to the Tao mind (aka Tao when with a capital T) and also tolerate the process of exposure.
And so you go through both opening the door (to the other side) and standing what you can see on the other side. As you get good with that, you gradually move yourself into the Tao mind.
Enlightenment: A Word for Outsiders
Now, for some of you that have been here before, you’ll have heard me say that enlightenment is a word that’s used by outsiders, and it really is.
It’s not something, after a certain point of practice, you even really use the word for, because it’s just a general term. As you start getting into practice, you begin to realize that there are all these factors inside of it, and that enlightenment was just this big word that people use to describe the end state for people over here (pointing to a group illustratively).
Enlightenment Varies Across Traditions
Now, what it usually is, is—keep this in mind—the definition of enlightenment varies by the system and the spiritual tradition that you’re in. So the Hindu concept of enlightenment is different than the Buddhist concept of enlightenment, which is different than the Taoist concept of enlightenment.
There’s not a complete overlap between those things. There is partial overlap between those things.
Hindu enlightenment is more about achieving oneness with the external universe. And they have a very specific way of talking about that.
Taoist Enlightenment: A Specific Definition
Now, if you really think about it, what is enlightenment in the Taoist concept? Well, you’re getting an accurate representation of the true universe. You’re achieving oneness with the universe. And so there are overlaps between those as you go along.
Now, basically, the definition for the enlightenment border (i.e., boundary) in the 4 Ascendant is, “Your primary teacher is the Tao. Humans are no longer necessary.”
And that’s a strange definition to be created, but basically it’s the one that’s there. It means that your interactions with the Tao are designed to directly educate you. And you have the ability to directly interact with the Tao.
Moving Beyond Human Teachers
Once that’s done, you are outside of the human world. Because of that, you are considered enlightened. That’s their very specific definition that they’ve come up with across 1500 years.
It’s like, “Yeah, all the weird stuff that’s associated with the enlightened people, it happens after they stop needing their human teacher.”
Now, you might still consult with your human teacher, you might still get feedback from them, but you no longer need them for forward progress.
Enlightenment Does Not Guarantee Omniscience
And that’s something else to keep in mind–at no point does enlightenment guarantee either omniscience or omnipotence. You do vastly gain more power, but that’s largely because of karma, not because of just more perception and more capacity.
You also gain those things, but it’s not the reason for it.
Pathways to Spiritual Progress
Ok, any questions about this? Good, everybody go and get enlightened.
Now, actually, we’ll start off on a simple, usable series of pathways to move yourself forward. For last month, we dealt with the issue of acceptance when we were dealing with the first three levels of spiritual attainment.
Before we go into this, remember that the majority of things that you want from life are going to come out of doing the first two layers. And that’s ok, because you really don’t know how far you want to go until you start going through the process.
And then you’ll sit back and go, “Yes, I want to do this particular thing.”
The Three Levels of Spiritual Attainment
Part of pursuing monkliness for something—the 4 Ascendant doesn’t actually have monks, because it’s not a temple tradition—but I’ll outline the typical titles for you today.
But basically, the definitions of these layers…. Your object, if you’re really seeking to become fully enlightened, and you may not be, it may just be an appealing concept to you right now. As you go through the process, you’ll make the decision.
That’s the big thing to keep in mind. What you’re really setting out to do is achieve this thing called mind of clarity. That’s where in temple, you would be basically crossing over from being a novice monk to being a monk once you’ve acquired mind of clarity.
The First Two Levels: Building the Foundation
(Please refer to the article on the Three Level Method for the illustration.)
These first two levels: What do we have here? We have hygiene. We have positive power. And these (words) are modern words for the same (ancient) things.
If you were to pull out the old books, I can go through and point out exactly what they’re talking about when it comes to these terms. Hygiene, positive power, calm. Up here we have acceptance, stillness, and invocation.
Most of the things you want within life will come from working with these first six ideas as you come through, and gradually integrate them into yourself.
Developing “Ness”
Now as you go along, these will continue to get stronger. Even after mind of clarity, you don’t abandon these things, because really, after mind of clarity, you realize what type of tools they are and what they’re really designed to do for you.
And initially, these are designed to get your brain into the right spot. What do I mean by getting into the right spot?
This is a concept, I guess we’ve actually started to quote some of our own terms, of ness. And it’s that reasonableness of thought that falls into ness.
Predictability and the Future
Now, what that (i.e. -ness) means is that, for the most part, you recognize the thoughts that you’re going to have as coming from you. It comes out of a combination of your past experience, how you perceive the world, the choices you’ve made, or what we call pack as we go along.
And it’s that familiarity that determines what thought you’re going to have, and basically what you’re going to do.
Interestingly enough, this also leads to a side factor, and that will become perhaps a target of conversation today. And that is, the future is largely predictable:
And you gamble on the future being largely predictable every single day. You don’t gamble on the fact that all a genetically reared Tyrannosaurus Rex might go running down the street right now, as you’re heading towards your car.
I Ching and Predictability
So you anticipate that the future is, for the most part, 99 percent of the time, going to be completely predictable. And you know, it will be, you know the thoughts you’re basically going to think, you know the things that you’re basically going to do, and you know the things that you’re largely going to encounter.
It’s only a small amount of time that you’re going to enter into anything that you can consider random. And that amount of randomness disappears as your awareness increases.
So most of what we view as being unpredictable disappears. And a large part of it is predictable. And that’s where I Ching comes in. So I Ching basically says that people and events move in predictable phases.
Why “Ness” is Important for Enlightenment
Now, why is “ness” important for enlightenment? For one simple reason, unless you’re currently in the position where you can sit back and conceive of the world as an enlightened person does, you cannot become enlightened.
Your objective is to move yourself into a position where those thoughts are realistic.
Insight and Enlightenment
Ah, and so this “Ness,” this compliment, or this combination that’s really you, where those thoughts can be familiar and realistic to you, that’s what has to move.
How do we move that? Using this over here (insight). That’s what it boils down to. In a nutshell, insight is not magical. We oftentimes think of it as being magical. We oftentimes think it’s this rare thing.
But it’s not. All you have to do is move your ness to a position where insight is possible and frequent to you. And then you have to want to keep it there. Because you may not want to.
We hope you’ve enjoyed this episode of Living the Tao—A Spiritual Podcast.