Invocation is a highly effective method for setting up a direct relationship with the Tao itself.
Tao Relationship Mirrors Human Relationship
People that have difficulty with accepting invocation also typically have serious shortcomings in personal relationships. After all, when you cultivate your relationship with the Tao, you are cultivating a relationship with something that has an absolute love for you already. If you can’t create a proper relationship in a situation so strongly in your favor, you are going to have major problems setting up a human relationship.
In a human relationship, the other person isn’t starting from such a pro-you position, and is not so forgiving as the Tao about relationship clumsiness.
This is an area where, as a teacher, I see major differences between the sexes. Women very quickly accept invocation as a relationship, and see the idea as being common sense. Men don’t.
Interestingly enough, as you become skilled in invocation, your personal relationships improve. Skilled invokers are often well-liked, have numbers of good friends, and have loving relationships.
Let’s take a look at how and why invocation works.
The Rules of Taoist Invocation
As in person to person courtship, there are rules to building a relationship with the Tao. Invocation, the nuts and bolts part of the process, follows rules and is driven by a set of core principles. When you follow those rules and understand the principles, your invocation grows in its success. When you don’t, you end up alone on that spiritual Saturday night wondering why no one is calling you!
The rules for building a relationship with the Tao also apply directly to human relationships, and will give you greater relationship success.
Working with invocation rules also has the added benefit of making you more sensitive to the existence of human relationship rules and principles. You spend time looking for them. You see them. You try to get good at them. As a result, you get better at human to human relationships.
1) Start with a safe set of invocations. Ones that lay a good foundation. Ones that work regularly and allow you to learn both how you behave and how the Tao responds. The truth is you don’t know you well enough to know how you are going to behave in the invocation AND you don’t know the True Reality well or you’d be enlightened. The first invocations, and the ones that should occupy the majority of your time are these 3:
- Gratitude
- Blessing of Others and Self
- Protection
2) Karma: Karma powers invocation. The more karma you have the more potent your invocation. More info on Taoist karma.
3) Unity of Self: Invocation is the repetition of a very simple phrase or set of phrases. However, it is also all the subtleties that are attached with those phrases. Is your emotion focused behind the statement? Are you very negative and tacking on negative beliefs about invocation, yourself, or the Tao onto the statements? Is your mind scattered, and as you invoke do you become easily drawn into a distraction? That distraction becomes part of the invocation no matter what it is.
4) Repeat the thing you want, not the thing you don’t want. Effective invocation statements are simple, straightforward statements about what you are seeking or expressing.
Master Mikel Steenrod
Keeper of the Gate of Man and Heaven
(Lineage Holder of the 4 Ascendant Spheres Purity Adept School of the Tao)
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