Workshop Segment Six
Refining Essence to Transmute it into Breath.
The three phases of Taoist Inner Alchemy that follow laying the foundations, refining essence to transmute it into breath, refining breath to transmute it into spirit, and refining spirit to return to emptiness, each deal with one of the three treasures, essence, breath, and spirit. The completion of laying the foundations is recognised as the independent fullness of essence in the lower cinnabar field, the belly, of breath in the middle cinnabar field, the chest, and of spirit in the upper cinnabar field, the head.
Refining essence to transmute it into breath is a process of alchemy that transforms the essence in the lower cinnabar field to breath, so that the lower cinnabar field becomes resolved, refined, and conscious. The essence of the lower cinnabar field becomes breath.
Refining breath to transmute it into spirit is a process of alchemy that transforms the combined breath of the lower and middle cinnabar fields to spirit. The breath of the lower and middle cinnabar fields become spirit.
Refining spirit to return to emptiness is a process of alchemy that allows the combined spirit of the lower, middle, and upper cinnabar fields to relax into emptiness.
From the Human Design perspective there are also a number of phases of development. The first phase is an initiation into the primary process of inverting the course by embracing strategy and authority and engaging with the unwinding of conditioned aspects of the not-self. As this progresses, we become more and more responsive to the intelligence of our bodies as we become free of habits of mind that have been incorrectly involved in establishing what is truth and where one's life should move. Behavioural acting out according to habitual conditioned aspects of consciousness decreases.
The second phase is one where we add a nutritional practice with the intention of making the body strong and stable enough to comfortably carry more and more refined vibrations of consciousness. Along with this we engage with grasping the body's right alignment with environment, so that we can live according to the body's attunement to an environment that supports and aids development.
In the third phase of development we bring attention to unhooking from a pattern of seeing aspects of environment that keep us engaged with conditioned characteristics, and we unhook from habitual patterns of motivation that draw us to think in terms of conditioned characteristics.
In the fourth phase of development we become aware of and resolve many additional subtle aspects of conditioning.
The first and second phases of development from the Human Design perspective will have been initiated during the two segments devoted to laying the foundations and will continue to develop through this and ensuing segments.
In this segment we will address refining essence to transmute it into breath, and from the Human Design perspective we will address unhooking from habitual patterns of seeing aspects of environment that keep us engaged with conditioned characteristics.
At the beginning of this alchemical process essence is in its postcelestial state. This means that it is impulsively active without one's conscious presence in the activity. This is experienced as energy for passion and pleasure that needs to be discharged in order to return to a state empty of charge. The alchemical process engages with containing and in a sense cooking the postcelestial essence so that one becomes capable of being full of the refined precelestial aspect of essence without the need to experience discomfort or the desire for discharge. During the alchemical process the yang barrier behind the belly opens and breath is released and rises to nourish and merge with the postcelestial breath in the middle cinnabar field.
We each in our postcelestial reality find ourselves living out a habit of viewing life through a particular filter. The characteristics of this filter are set down at birth. There are altogether six possible pairs of filters and each of the six polarise with one other of the six. When we have enough awareness to track our habitual viewing we are able to release the grasp on the habitual view and drop over to the view at the other polarity. This is an extended process of freeing ourselves from a habitual pattern of living that underpins reversing out of the postcelestial condition of consciousness and enables a significant part of the return to precelestial consciousness.