Podcast Transcription, Episode 3-You Are The Tao

Episode three, “You are the Tao.”

Welcome to Living the Tao, a 
spiritual podcast that explores
how ancient wisdom,
a practical perspective and deep 
truth can empower you to live 
your best life.

In this episode, Taoist Master 
Mikel Steenrod reveals that you
are already the thing that you 
are pursuing.

And the four spheres of power:
social, martial, qi and Tao.
Plus tips on the powerful 
practice of invocation.

***
Another key aspect of Taoism
is that
you are the Tao.

That's why enlightenment is 
possible.

We like to think of this huge 
separation, but the separation 
isn't huge. 

You are the thing that you are 
pursuing.

You already have it.

And that's where you end up with 
all these strange sayings in
Taoism.

The reason that they have those 
strange sayings is
because of this simple factor
here: you are the Tao.

So you are a small
container of it,
apart
from the great flow of it,
for a period of time,
and that's it.

And if you talk about the issue 
of oneness or anything like that, 

you're simply
restoring that knowledge

that you have that there. 

And by restoring knowledge, I'm 
not talking about us talking.

Us talking creates the 
potential for action.

It creates the potential for your 
"ness" to move
by restoring the knowledge. 

I mean, your "ness" has moved into 
the position so it can understand
and use that for choice.

If you
don't do that, then you might as 
well read the book,
or one of the many manuals that 
have been written.

And that's fine.

It's just not practice. 

That's why you'll
always go back,
"Well, it's the practice, it's the 
thing that you do."

The reason for it is this simple 
model here.

Now,
for the most part, if you get 
through
these three things
and these two layers right here,
you'll create for yourself
what I call the Ben Franklin 
Taoist situation:

healthy,

wealthy

and wise.

Now, the 4 Ascendant
of the 4 Ascendant Spheres,
isn't a mystery element. 

And again, the name is not designed 
to invoke mystery. 

If it was designed to invoke 
mystery, it would say something 

like, "The divine dragon eggs 
descended from the mountain, the
blah blah blah school."

And you do get that. 

But
what we have
are the four spheres, which is 
the social,
the sphere of chi,
the sphere of martial,
and
the sphere of the Tao.

These are spheres of power
and basically the rule of 
spheres is this,

"While
a superior sphere..."

So the higher the number, the 
more superior it is,

"...Can destroy
or override the power of any 
preceding sphere,
it (that capability) does not give you power in 
that sphere.”

So martial,
actually, this should be flipped 
around.

I was starting to draw the
4 component model of qi gong.

So
let's flip that around...

Martial

Qi.

No matter what we do within 
society or what group we try to
establish, or rule system
we try to establish, as history 
has shown us many, many times,
Martial can always destroy it.

It doesn't matter. 

All you need is Genghis Khan
and a spear, a bow and arrow and a 
sword, or the modern equivalent
of it. 

Does not matter what is 
accomplished socially.  It can be overturned
by Martial.

Qi can overturn Martial.

It is just poorly understood
nowadays.  The very reason that 
chi gung developed in the way it did,
are the way we have chi gung now, 
is that
many of the things that truly 
power chi gung practice have been 
removed from practice and set 
aside
so that it could not be easily or 
universally used.

When it is fully used, it is 
vastly more powerful
than anything that can occur 
within the martial sphere.

And that is something to keep in 
mind. 

But for the most part, within the 
current structure of the mind
is difficult to achieve.

The spiritual
can destroy any of these 
preceding things. 

But the thing to keep in mind is 
that there are limitations.

Having great power within the Tao
does not give you any power
within the social.  Not at all.

It simply gives you the power to 
destroy it.

Not to change it

Not to have power within it.  Not 
to do any of those things.

And it's the same thing with 
Martial and Social.

And in fact, when Martial tries 
to have power in Social, you
always end up with these really 
inefficient,
really decrepit governmental 
systems,
really bad social systems that 
pop up. 

The reason Martial can't have 
any power in Social.  It's just the rules.

Now, can it destroy it? 

Yes? 

Can it override it? 

Yes? 

Or can it have any power in it? 

No. 

Any time you try to mix it, it 
ends up with something
that's just ineffective.

In the same thing for any of 
these other things here (diagram reference to 3 Level Method)
The reason that this is important 
is these six practices
can give you power in the areas, 
really, that make you healthier, 
make you
happy.

It gives you some health,
it will give you some wealth, 
because you'll gain expertise 
within the social. 

The fact is that our most 
successful people know positive 
power extremely well. 

Wealthy people who make their 
wealth know it. 

They write about it all the time. 

They write about it as being a 
foundation of their practice.

It's
not a mystery.  It's well known. 
It's ground in as a behavior that
is essential for success in the 
things that you pursue.

And

hygiene also helps in there. 

You know,
if you want health, well, you 
know, have some calm and some 
positive power. 

I can actually start pulling out 
studies that show you, very
deliberately that that changes 
your health. 

Straight out.

The more negative you are, the 
more likely you are to have disease.

The less likely you are to live a 
long time. 

Probably the less likely are you 
want to live a long time.

And wise,
if you have some of these things (practices),
you can watch the world,
and from there comes wisdom.

You can see the flow of things 
and talk to other people about it.

And they will wonder how you have 
mastered such great things.

Say, I just look at stuff
and that's the way it goes.

And so as you look at stuff, you 
can tell people about things. 

And so they regard you as being 
wise.

That's why I say that the first 
two levels (spheres) will pretty much give
you everything that you want.

If you want to pursue wealth and 
use that, because it is a
foundation of society. 

That's not forget that.

As we start going into the other 
three, we can sit back,

"Well, you know, that doesn't 
provide you with blah blah blah."

Yeah, it's well known that that 
doesn't provide you. 

Just take a look. 

It has nothing to do with the 
sphere of Tao.

So wealth and Tao, those are 
independent things.

It has to do with the sphere of 
social. 

So if you have goals that are in 
the social, you need to make sure 
you're working goals that are in 
the social.

Different sets of practices.

And so as we deal with these, we 
can really sit back and go, well, 
you know,
I'm spending a huge amount of 
time doing these things here,
but I'm not really spending any 
time over here that's why I have 
a deficit in these areas.

Now, Martial we're just kind of 
setting aside for now.

But it's a factor that should be 
considered. 

Because the reason exists, for 
example, the clan, consider three 
things absolutely essential...

that you engage in trade. 

So issues of wealth.

That you maintain
the standing capacity to use 
force,

because otherwise people will 
take away the things that you get 
from trade.

And lastly that you have 
spiritual development,
because otherwise you will simply 
erupt in your own warfare and 
destroy yourself.

And so those are major factors.

The other thing is, let's say, we 
take these two things here,
and we look at,
once a human do during the day, 
whether the three basic human 
acts you only do three things,
you manage your relationships,
you manage your resources,
and you engage in personal 
development.

If you're shy of even one of 
these things,
you will be unhappy, because you 
are not doing the things that a 
human does.

Now you can do more or less or 
different ways of the same thing, 
but you have to handle those 
three things. 

Now sometimes it'll be easier to 
do one or the other,
but you kind of need those things.

So if you have these skills here, 
these start to become easy. 

And you might sit back and go, 
"Well, you know, that Tao thing is great,
and it's given me a lot, but I 
like it just fine here,"
and I'm perfectly fine with that.

Most of the unhappiness we have
human wide is the failure to 
address really basic
human need in these areas (the managements).

We're not talking about I mean, 
you could go about and just give 
people food and water, so they're 
not really worried in shelter 
and about resources,
but then you'll just leave them 
with problems in relationships.

And in fact, giving them the 
stuff might in fact create the 
problem in the relationship.

And
the issue of personal development.

I've been in plenty of situations 
that I deliberately set up for 
myself, where I had nothing to do 
but train for years at a time. 

That's actually what I spent 
large amounts of my 20s doing.

And let me tell you, after a 
certain amount of time engaged in 
personal development,
you want to do something else.

Doesn't matter who you are, 
you're just sitting there going,

"Man, I got six more months of this."

Let me tell you, if you're living 
in a closet or meditating in a 
closet for three months, you 
start sitting there going,
“Maybe i'll go out tonight and go 
drinking.”

And really there's no, there's no 
greater illustration of those 
three demands
upon you as you go through.

They have to be addressed in some 
way, because there are a lot of 
different ways we can go here. 

Invocation
--it's current equivalent,
and what it's often treated as--is 
prayer.

However,
what are you praying to?

Yourself?

You are theTao.

That's the nature of invocation.

So make sure to set up a picture 
of yourself with some candles,
offer it something you really 
enjoy,
and then get to it.  With 
invocation,
this is really one of those areas 
that a lot of times, mystery is
assigned, but as you start to 
understand it. 

And, you know, there have been 
even times where I've sat back 
and kind of been tempted to add 
some mysterious things to it, 
because it's so simple.

It's like, oh, yeah, well, it's 
hugely effective, but it's kind 
of boring. 

So I'm going to just add stuff to 
it.

Invocation,

this is a foundational element. 

This is where you are actually 
laying the groundwork
for
your relationship,
with the Tao.

For those of you that are on the 
more monkly pathway,
it is essential because it points 
you out to the lineage.

Probably the only major 
differentiation in practice
is your choice of goals
--between a monk and a non monk--
is your choice of goals,
and whether or not you have a 
lineage affiliation.

And
we've discussed lineage before,
but basically
in a nutshell,
assuming linear time,
remember, Taoists think that time 
is nonlinear, buy we'll start off
with a linear time model.

Ah,

what happens is that,
as the line of practice spans 
through history,
it is believed by Buddhist 
by Taoists, maybe by Hindus, that
if you affiliate yourself with a 
lineage,
it becomes easier to pursue 
enlightenment,
because you gain the momentum of 
force of prior practitioners
through time to assist you in 
doing something.  

In non linear time,
this is really easy
to think about, because
all those practitioners,
at every single moment in their 
lives,
still exist,
as does the future.

So the people that come after you 
are already there doing the 
things that they're going to do. 

It's freaky to think about, 
because the first misinterpretation
of this is that that means that 
everything is fixed. 

It's not fixed.

Everything, in fact, is in a 
state of change. 

It just doesn't occur relative to 
time.

So don't think about that. 

But basically
what that means is that you get 
to hang out with everybody that is
hanging out, or has come before.

To do that,
you have to get yourself into a 
position
where you get invited to the party.

That's basically it.

So you're going to go to the not 
hammering the foot party.

You got your party book, and it's 
like, yeah, like what those guys 

are doing (flips through imaginary book).

Oh, that was the wrong one.

You walk up to the door and they 
go, "What's the password?"

"Yeah, get out of here."

So, basically,
a lineage is composed of a cycle 
of holders, the cycle of holders, 
are magnification points of the 
lineage.

Anybody can become a holder.

Now, this depends on the lineage. 

So I can't talk for Buddhist 
lineages. 

And such.

Or even most Taoist lineages.

The Soons (clan) use a very old system.

And it's basically believed that 
once you are fully affiliated 
with the lineage and capable of 
embodying or representing any 
portion of the teachings, you 
become a magnification point of 
it. 

And there can be more than one.

And also, you don't need to 
become a lineage holder to become enlightened.

It's a different thing.

Enlightened
people may or may not participate 
in that aspect of the lineage.

Lineage holders, for the 4 
Ascendants contain multiple pathways
to the same place.

They're essential,
...See, I'm talking about myself in the third person...

They're essential because they 
allow different types of people 
to achieve the same goal.

That's the function of a lineage 
holder.

Some people have an inherent 
capacity to absorb multiple pathways.

I am one of those people. 

It's very easy for me to do
about fifty years of training in 
three years.

It was freakish, but it was easy.

Now that's what a holder is. 

They hold that information.

So that's why lineage holders 
have the formal title. 

Within 4 Ascendant it's a Keeper of 
the Gate of Man and Heaven.  (Master Steenrod misspoke here.  The generalized title is "Keeper")

That's specifically what their 
job is in the cycle of things.

Now, affiliation with a lineage 
generally occurs through a 
holder, a currently existing 
holder. 

And by using the invocations,
and basically, at some point, 
what I say is that
"Maybe you should pay attention to 
this person," and that creates an
affiliation with the lineage.

And so I'll do that, some magical 
stuff, I'll sacrifice your 
chicken, and I'll dance around a 
little bit, I'll drive backwards 
in a VW bug,
and then you'll be affiliated 
with the lineage.

Actually, most of it's your work,
and just association,
and then gradually becoming 
recognized. 

The big.

So that's kind of the background 
theory. 

The big reason to
progress within the lineage is
all holders....

So if you're at the holder level, 
have access to the knowledge of 
all other holders.

That's precisely why the lineage 
is believed to exist.

And the lineage
has some power behind it.

And so you gain,
for Buddhists, who gain the 
karmic value of all those who 
came before and are empowered, 
that's what the Buddhist 
empowerment ceremonies are for, 
to achieve those ends. 

So it's easier, and that's the 
big function behind it. 

It just gets easier.

***
We hope you're enjoying this 
episode of Living the Tao, a
spiritual podcast.

If you're looking for more 
resources on Taoism, please

visit
thetaoismforthemodernworld.com. 

Now back to the program.

***

Invocation is usually the 
repetition
of a phrase
or an act
over a period of time.

It sounds like a lot of things 
can be an invocation. 

Yes, that is true.

One of the first invocations to 
start with
is the invocation of gratitude.

Now, what you really have to do 
to get lineage affiliation
is you have to get out of the 
nursery. 

The karmic nursery that's your 
first objective.

And won't go over that in just a 
minute.

But the invocation of gratitude 
is basically like when you're 
dealing with a little kid
and you give them something,
unless they've been taught to say 
thank you, they don't say thank 
you. 

Do they?

Not at all.

In fact, they're not grateful for 
anything. 

They simply assume that it is 
their right within the domain of humans 
to have all such things delivered 
unto them.

Invocation of gratitude is you 
dealing with yourself.

As you're basically saying...

I am grateful for blah blah blah.

I'm grateful for my chair.

I'm grateful for the ability to 
sit here. 

I am grateful for
my ability to interact with all 
of you. 

I'm grateful that you showed up. 

Now, gratitude and thankfulness 
are two different things. 

There are a lot of things I am 
not thankful,
but I am grateful for.

I'm grateful for the challenges 
that I have faced.

I'm grateful even for the things 
that I have failed to do or lost, 
because they created new pathways 
for me that I was able to use.

However, I didn't like any of 
that. 

So keep that in mind. 

I'm not really very thankful for 
that.

It's like, yeah, I'm really 
thankful for you repeatedly 
kicking me in the head. 

I'm grateful for
having the opportunity to 
overcome your kicks to my head. 

I'm grateful for
different stuff like that.

And this changes
the way you interact, both with 
yourself and your environment. 

It really does. 

It's not a fictional change. 

It is a deliberate and steady 
change forward.

And the only way to find that is 
by going through the gratitudes.

And initially, you might sit 
there, well, how can I possibly 
go through gratitudes for blah blah blah
amount of time?

So what times have I given 
everybody? Fifteen minutes to 
start with. 

Initially, when you hear that 
it's like, wow.

How can I be grateful for fifteen 
minutes?

Let me ask you something.

How can you not be grateful for 
fifteen minutes?

And as you go, farther and 
farther, you increase your 
gratitude periods. 

In fact, if you want to become a 
specialist,
there's a specific specialty of 
Taoism called an invoker.

And what you do is, you practice 
invocations.

You practice them over and over 
again. 

And in fact, people can pay you 
to do those invocations.

So they come on up and is like, I 
would like you to be grateful for 
me for
two days. 

And then you just start going 
through, and you run gratitudes 
for that person
in the attempt to sway their 
karma, because
they didn't want to do it 
themselves. 

You can pay somebody else's 
karmic debt.

You have to be cautious when you 
do it, is that there are three
levels of blessing.

At the third level of blessing, 
you are intruding
in the flow of things on behalf 
of somebody else.

The vast majority of people that 
would market that or sell that, 
even in old temple practice, 
can't do it. 

So basically, they'll go through 
the ritual of the invocation and
such, but they don't have the 
karma to pull it off,
but taking on somebody else's 
karma....

You have to be careful of such a 
thing, because
you're really dealing with, like, 
the fundamental flow of things 
then. 

So
you can end up royally screwed, 
to put it in Taoist terms.

So you had to be careful of such 
a thing.

Yes, you can do it.

So by invocation of gratitude,
really sets you up into a 
position of
dealing with yourself
and realizing
where you are in the balance of 
your life.

In part, if you're sitting there 
and you're going, I really just 
can't be grateful for
this situation here, or this 
thing that's going on there, or 
that. 

The thing you have to ask 
yourself is, "why is that in your life?"

Why do you have something in your 
life you can't be grateful for? 

Now I'm not saying thankful for, 
why do you have that thing there?

Why are you wasting your precious 
days on such a thing?

And ultimately,
the reason that mind of clarity 
becomes vastly more difficult is 
that when we jump up in that 
stage,
is that
you have to address
the limitation of your time,
meaning that if you're building a 
life that is based around 
knowledge of you not dying,

ah,

you're not going to live very 
well.

You have to sit back and simply 
accept you have this much time.

It is spent one way or the other.

And

I need to create a life strategy 
that allows me to take that into consideration.

And one thing, and you don't 
start off with this, but one 
thing that ultimately you end up 
with past mind of clarity, is an 
intimate knowledge of your own 
death. 

You feel it tick along, and you 
get comfortable.

Once you get to that point, it 
becomes almost impossible to 
threaten you. 

It becomes impossible to take 
things away from you. 

All sorts of things become 
impossible because you just sit 
back and go,

"Well, that's going to happen 
anyways."

And you have a simple acceptance 
of it as you go along.

Acceptance really initially...
We sit back and we go--
and I can tell you, personally, I 
don't know about yourselves, I
had a huge resistance to it 
because I thought it was the 
acceptance of defeat.

And as my...
Soon pointed out to me, my 
primary teacher, you're the most
stubborn person I've ever trained 
in my life.

And that's quite a statement from 
him, across various warriors, 
across all these things, is like, 
you know, there was even a Monty
Python reference.

You're that guy in Monty python 
where, you know, they cut off his
legs, it cut off his arms, and 
he's just a head, you're still fighting.

And which was great in some ways, 
but it was also horrible in other 
ways. 

And the reason for that is 
because that basic element of I 

was unwilling to accept 
acceptance,
because I thought it was a 
weakness,
and then eventually rolled around 
to, well, you know, I just have 
to accept this. 

And once I did that, I found out 
it was a massive strength,
which
is one of the reasons probably 
that I spent so much time harping 
on the nature of acceptance.

It's really easy to jam yourself 
up with the thought of it being 
weakness.

Really easy, because it's an 
illusion of the social mind. 

And only when you get to the point
that you sit back and go, 'My god, 
that's just tremendously
powerful."

I can change all sorts of things,
now that I've accepted this.

It's, 
its own strange power.

So invocation of gratitude,
basically, you start off, you 
work short periods, about fifteen minutes.

You just sit there and work it 
for a period of time and build 
out. 

And it's really very strange as 
to the power that it has,
both in changing you and 
releasing you from your own 
history and moving you actually 
more into acceptance. 

It also instantly starts to 
create positive frame, because 
you start sitting back going, "Oh 
yeah, yeah. I guess there are all those 
things that I can be grateful for," 
and you just keep working 
your way through.

As an interesting side note,
people enjoy being around you 
more.

And it's a simple practice. 

Anybody can do it. 

And if you're looking a lot of 
times, when we go through the 
first two layers of those six 
components,
we can sit back and go, well,
I want something small and 
concrete that I can do, which is
perfectly reasonable.

To certain part, though...

So if you're working with 
positive power, how do you 
concretely do that? 

Well, you just do it, and you 
start accomplishing more and more 
of it.

The 
other element is that the 
invocations
are good because they're easy.
Meaning that there are small,
controlled events that you can do 
and that have real results
to them.

And so it's very useful for that 
reason.

Now, the other standard starting 
invocation is the invocation of insight.

Believe it or not,
you will have insight if you have 
some of the,
you need a little bit of the 
other parts.

You can have insight just by 
asking for it.

Remember, you're the Tao.

So you just ask for it's like, I 
would like more insight.

I would like an insight into 
blah blah blah.

But put in fifteen minutes and so. 

And you can just let that free 
flow too. 

You just say, here, I would like 
insights into the way that the 
universe is built. 

I would like insights into blah
bluh blah blah blah.

But be careful of what you 
ask for an insight into, because
you will likely get it,
and then you'll go,
"I would like an insight into why 
I wanted that insight,"
because now I don't want it so 
much. 

I'm grateful for having had it.

But....

The last common invocation that's 
taught here
is an inheritance
from the "Buffy, the Vampire Slayer" days.

It's called the invocation of 
repulsion.

And this is one that we haven't 
really gone over, so we'll go 
over it as it is, because it'll
verge over into our general
area for the karmic models.

The invocation of repulsion is a 
repulsion of evil,
and that's really what it is.

Without a huge amount of 
explanation,
what I would say to you is that 
all you really have to do is do
the repetition and see what 
happens.

And

the first,

well let's do something that's 
easily done.

So remember, for this one,

actually, this one is actually 
quite commonly practiced in China 
in different forms.

But basically
let's say you have a doorway,
and you want to make sure that no 
bad people pass through your doorway.

What you do is you basically go, 
"No bad people will pass through
this doorway."

No bad people will pass through 
the doorway. 

No bad people will pass through 
the doorway. 

No bad people will pass through 
the doorway. 

No bad people will pass 
through the doorway. 4 hours
later, No bad people will pass 
it.

Well, this is actually one of the 
standard things that an invoker 
is paid for. 

Yes, the invoker says it for four 
hours, and that's what you're 
paying the guy for. 

You're paying him for 
extremely refined
and extremely
experienced invocation of the 
same thing, which does make a 
serious difference. 

So as you progress to your 
gratitudes, the gratitudes you 
have will be much more powerful 
than the gratitude you start off 
with. 

Like anything else. 

Reps.

But basic....

So if you want to engage this

ah,

if you think about it, if you can 
invoke insight,
why can't you invoke repulsion?

You're dealing with
other things that are within the 
Tao, that are also made up
of the Tao.

Basically, what you're saying is, 
you're putting the note up, say, 
and don't pass through this 
doorway.

Now, can they pass through that 
doorway? 

Might they go on some place else? 

More than likely.

Ah, if you put it in really, 
really big letters that flash 
neon at them when they come up,
more and more likely.

If it says, hey, if you walk 
through this door, I want to zap
you with electricity.

Ah, more and more likely. 

So the bigger your words, the 
stronger it is, the more 
repulsive effect that you have. 

This is a traditional element for 
both Taoist and Chinese culture.

So if you want to enter into the 
traditional element, you can very 
easily do this. 

And this will have a strange 
effect. 

Just as gratitude and insight does.

***

Thank you.