Taiyin and Yangming in Covid-19

On my recent appearance on the awesome Rune Soup podcast, which you can access HERE. we closed with a consideration of what Covid might be communicating to us. I think that might be where, in the state of consciousness that I now realizing I was channelling, the real transmission goes into effect. It does seem that it resonated with folks, and it also segued into the reflection upon what kind of practitioner I urge people to seek out. That circles around again to an old trope that I have championed for years; I think the defining characteristic of a practitioner who purports to be classically-oriented pivots around her relationship to the texts, but not just as canonical documents. It depends upon striving to be an upper-level physician, and recognizing that the texts are channels into that state of awareness. The upper level physician, in turn, is characterized as one who sees into the unseen. This is also illuminated by that saying that with regards to Shen one sees it as if clouds have parted- the sage alone sees it. So, by constellating these few statements together, we see that the two poles of focusing on the classical texts (for me that includes: Yi Jing, Nei Jing, Dao de Jing, Huainanzi, Zhuangzi, Shang Han Za Bing Lun) and seeing the unseen must be related. That is, that rather than seeing the texts as just canonical they are recognized as the very means by which one peers into the unseen. That has been my experience. The Shang Han Lun seized me, and not the other way around.

After the interview aired, I took a few minutes to think about my assertion regarding the Earth and Metal, Taiyin and Yangming patterns that I described. My friend Ross Rosen rightly pointed out that this is reflected in the Shen-Hammer Pulse Diagnosis quality that we call Flooding Excess. The sensation of this quality, which can be felt over the whole pulse, as a wave form, or in a single position, is a powerful sensation that surges above the superficial Qi-Depth before dropping away from the fingers suddenly and precipitously. If we consider the gesture of this sensation, then it represents an impulse that overwhelms the body’s ability to contain it, and also exceeds the capacity of the Yangming function to close and descend the peak expression of Yang. For this reason, it as as closely associated with manic episodes as it is with infections. Consider, how deeply we could unpack those two correlations. In particular, what it would imply for our understanding of mania if we view its management as restoring the function of closure, and containment, and not clearing fire, or purging yangming. It seems to me that it then opens a path for us to also consider that we can observe a 60/40 split between terrain theory and germ theory, as well as providing a window into holding the virus as both a potentially deadly objective phenomena, and a semiotic intensity reflecting a wider, cultural and social meaning. That is just the type of thinking that I was alluding to throughout the whole interview, and which is ultimately well summed up in Gordon White’s phrase: Big Table Animism.

Taiyin is often represented as Earth, and Yangming is often represented as Metal. Within the Taiyin we have the Lung and Spleen, and within the Yangming the Stomach and Large Intestine. However, when viewed through the lens of 5 Phases, the Lung and Large Intestine are metal, and the Stomach and Spleen represent Earth. All of these assertions are correct simultaneously. That web of interrelationship can be visualized: imagine yourself standing at the intersection of all of those systems as they auto-poietically unfold into relationship: if you do so we will have discovered Chinese medicine channel theory, because that is what the channels really even am. Next imagine those channels as essentially fugitive lines-of-flight expressed as time interacting with awareness, and awareness dynamically interpenetrating the external environment all the way to the furthest reaches of the cosmos. And at the same time, a gestural mirror of all those factors perceived as the cosmos simultaneously flowing back into the Self though concentric circles of climate, terrain, history, society, culture, family, genetics, lifestyle, and physiology. Germ theory seems a bit quaint in the context, but not wrong or non-existent by any means. And for that matter, imagine washing your hands with the awareness of the act’s cosmic dimensions. Like I said, Medicine is applied philosophy and Magic is applied cosmology. And oftentimes, the lines between medicine and magic are, well, expressions of the same emptiness.

The formulas that I have prescribed most for treating suspected and confirmed cases of Covid-19 have been Chai Hu Gui Zhi Gan Jiang Tang, combined with elements of Wei Jing Tang and Xiao Xian Xiong Tang. There were others, but iterations of this combination were common. One way I could expand those formulas is to say that CHGZGJT is a Shaoyang-Taiyang-Taiyin remedy, Wei Jing Tang is a Taiyin Lung Abscess formula, yet related to Yangming due to its anti-inflammatory qualities, and XXXT is found in the Taiyang chapter, but describes a state of chest-bind with heat, and phlegm. So, although I was describing the cultural and socio-political circumstances that I see at play (as well as the climactic factors described with great eloquence by my colleague Bryan McMahon HERE) it does turn out, upon reflection that my assertion was not off-base even if totally spontaneous and stream-of-consciousness.

In essence I described a state in which a compromised Earth, with nutrition deficits, and processed foods playing a key role, as well as the breakdown of social community or family connections around food, and the irrepressible onslaught of the Industrial Growth economy (think of Elon Musk’s recent exploded rocket launch, and just how many of those satellites need to be launched to further the establishment of 5G networks) as a concurrent and long-term factor, and then the effect of these two impacts exploring the point of contact between the systems in the Lungs of those who are most compromised either from the decline of aging or the ravages of atmospheric environmental pollution.

Now let’s look at that dynamic through the lens of consciousness. Doctor Hammer associates the Lung as Metal with the capacity for metanoia, and the ability to invest the self with the authority and autonomy of evolution, while at the same time awakening more and more complex, nuanced and inclusive awarenesses of the responsibilities that inhere in freedom, and the extension of that same opportunity in a just and equitable framework for greater and greater circles of connection- all the way from prison abolition to a Gaian cosmo-centric holism. Only through gaining access to the substantial reality of this evolution within the embodied state of Earth can we ever hope to have a stable instantiation of that freedom. And this will be predicated on deeply nourishing the ties that bind us together in family and community through initiatives like mutual aid and direct representation at local and bioregional levels. And within that katabasis, it will take a leap of consciousness, as Gebser would describe it, to realize in increasing manifestation the dawn of a consciousness that returns to encompass the Water of our being within the entirety of its expression, just as the Kidney is held to be the root that contains the whole scope of our life force, yet governs the transition between Life and Death at each moment, as individuals, and as All-that-is.

Benchmarks of the Aperspectival Consciousness in Action

What follows is a selection from Jean Gebser’s Ever-Present Origin. It is a passage that I return to again and again as I try to understand how the intimations of a transformation of consciousness might be actualized. It is nothing short of radical.

The whole, integrity, transparency (diaphaneity), the spiritual (the diaphainon), the supersession of ego, the realization of timelessness, the realization of temporicity, the realization of the concept of time, the realization of time-freedom (the achronon), the disruption of the merely systematic, the incursion of dynamics, the recognition of energy, the mastery of movement, the fourth dimension, the supersession of patriarchy, the renunciation of dominance and power, the acquisition of intensity, clarity (instead of mere wakefulness), and the transformation of the creative inceptual basis” (Gebser, 361-362).

Jueyin: physical and nonphysical expressions through time

I understand the Jueyin Conformation to be the deepest strata of the six channels, yet since it closes the Yin sphere, it also gives birth to the pivot of Shaoyang, allowing the first manifestations of Yang to begin taking expression.  Because it is still a Yin sphere however, I also conceive of Jueyin as having a closer relationship to the material body.  Through the association of the Liver and the Pericardium, I understand that it is related to the circulation of blood, and the physical means for that circulation, and further how this affects Tendons and the capacity for movement.  In terms of the cognitive or behavioral style, and an analysis of initial insults to Jueyin I also consider the Liver as a Wood expression and the Pericardium as an expression of Fire.  So I will assume, peering through the lens of DRRBF, that in some manner there was an inhibition of the free-flowing expression of Wood growth, and question whether this also has some bearing on the world of relationships.  Introducing the fire phase, I will consider whether there is something in the patient’s relationship to her father that might have influenced these phases of development.  In this case, I learned that the patient’s father was a “strict disciplinarian” who held very high expectations of conformity to his dictates.  This was even humorously expressed as extending to growing up eating the same breakfast of muesli every day: a practice the patient still follows.  The effect of such an inhibition is visited upon the realm of the Jueyin Liver, because the inherent drive of the Liver and Jueyin sphere to encourage and initiate new growth, as well as to meet resistance flexibly and smoothly is directly countered by authoritarian relations. Later in life, as circulation and Yang naturally diminish, and a lifetime of over-exercise takes effect, the vulnerability present in this sphere of physiology becomes a problem, and thus chronic knee pain develops.  The fact that this symptom effectively inhibits movement recapitulates the inhibited expression of the chthonic, contrary self that the patient experienced growing up.  It can also be taken as a message from the body, that rest and retreat from a lifetime of exercise are in order at this phase of life, and is a call to withdraw from the rigidified sense of self into a more flexible and easygoing posture.  By placing this symptom in an enlarged context that takes into account the whole of a patient’s experience, I am also helping to pry open a window into a world of fuller meaning and correspondence.  And it is through guiding a patient to have a felt sense of meaning in relation to a symptom, that one creates a dramatic shift in the emotional realm.  Since we hold as an axiom that both physiology and pathology move from the unseen realms into the manifest world, it behooves one to create conditions in which the patient can understand these unseen influences, and through assigning meaning to them render the pernicious aspects of them moot. Likewise, in the more rarefied realm of emotions and behavior, I will expect a newfound freedom to manifest in the patient’s experience.   When we examine the contents of the formula Dang Gui Si Ni Tang, if we look through all of these lenses simultaneously, we can see why it can yield these results in both the physical and non-physical realms.  

Water

A shift of awareness.  A gasp of depth. Descent of an inky dark, and then within, a light that shines through the darkness visible.  A light that is no less the dark, the dark no lighter than nothing, a nothing become something, an interior light enfolding itself, the dark of a mirror, a reflection of dark, sudden liquid glass, slow sands charmed into shape, folded into form, catching an image like a net, cracking anew to light, scattered gems, slivers cast wide, Doppler drops of saltwater streaming past like siphoned tears.   

An interpretation of Chai Hu Gui Zhi Gan Jiang Tang

CHGZGJT appears in only one line in the Taiyang chapter: Line 147. It reads: When cold damage has lasted 5 or 6 days, sweating has been promoted and then precipitation (purging) has been used, there is fullness in the chest and rib side and mild bind, inhibited urination, thirst without retching, sweating only from the head, alternating cold and heat, and heart vexation, it means that the disease has not yet resolved, therefore Chai Hu Gui Zhi Gan Jiang Tang governs. So, as Liu Lihong once said to me: in every patient I want to understand the state of Yang. That's the first concern: in this pattern, there has been an outward movement of the Yang, as well as a downward movement of the Yang- both resulting in depletion, and accumulation. In terms of emotion, promotion of sweating is broadly speaking an impulse to the Taiyang and the autonomic nervous system- so a response to fear produces a similar gesture. Purging depletes yang and substance from the earth, so I might think about aspects of the Earth such as: bonding, nourishment, the ability to take in and express minimally egocentric unconditional love. Physically this has moved Dampness from Taiyin to the Rib side- so the substance has moved into the Shaoyang or Wood realm- meaning that at the level of ministerial fire there is a dampening effect. The Wood wants to move up and out expansively and freely- so that which inhibits one's capacity to initiate free expression, or self-expression, or even decisiveness and goal-directed behavior is inhibited by a protective psycho-bio-film comprised of Taiyin damp. The Shaoyang emerges like the Sun rising above the horizon, and it longs for Noon, and ultimately even midnight, and the hour of the wolf (Liver hours). So, most immediately Shaoyang longs for Taiyang expression- so the Gui Zhi component is about the movement in the chest- and in this case the same quality of fullness is present-- and not just fullness but a complex of hot and cold and damp, as the ministerial fire tries again and again to move. Anything that stagnates the ministerial fire will give rise to heat signs, and stagnant heat in the chest (or in the Heart, Taiyang within Yang) gives rise to heart vexation. And there you have it: this is even one of the lines that explicitly mentions vexation. The bottom line is that something from outside has gained purchase internally, and hot and cold have entangled with dampness, and all of it is an attempt to adapt to the conditions. That is, the dampness is trying to protect the system. That could be equally true of being subject to emotional abuse, or a virus, or cold damage proper. And what I have found is that there is often both an internalization of negativity, and a suppression of righteous anger. So I view it as a positive sign if anger appears after administering this formula. And, in cases of Gu-like phenomena, I have also seen clear Shaoyang symptoms arise from giving it. The next step is to clear it from Shaoyang with XCHT, and then CHGZT, and then GZT. So, I might paraphrase Liu Lihong and say I want to know the state of freedom of this patient. I want to promote a state in which a person can express herself free from any compulsion from without, and free from any compulsion within.

A selection from "Apparitions of the Aperspectival"

It is the simple shining forth of essence, a necessarily overflowing primal water of spiritual depth that in its ineffability always exceeds the grasp of the mental-rational desire for closure, and category. Confounding, as Bergson states: “it is of the essence of reasoning to shut us up in the circle of the given” and “Reason, reasoning on its powers, will never succeed in extending them” (Bergson, Creative Evolution, 202). If the spiritual is the diaphainon, and the transparency is diaphaneity, then the quality of the spiritual is its diaphaneity (EPO, 361): not only light illuminating darkness, nor day’s dawning cleaving the night, but: Darkness visible via a light within, or like the classical Chinese term for the ineffable, or mysterious: Xuan is described in the first dictionary, the Shuo Wen Jie Zi: Black, but with the color of cinnabar, this is mystery. “for now I see as through a glass darkly but then I shall see face to face” – time freedom is the visage of awareness, turned to the enveloping wholeness of the incipient face of life-affirming judgment- the etheric body of the conscience as a state of sensory knowledge. Tomberg, in Meditations on the Tarot says: “in the passing beyond the intellect it is a matter of choosing between the decision to replace the intellect once and for all with the breath from above and the decision to place the intellect in the active service of this breath” (MotT, 604). In the moment that transparency illuminates itself as a transcending quality of space, that brightens the hitherto dark unknowable depth of slipping beyond contact with the mental-rational, it is the quality of its light and clarity that enlivens the coniunctio oppositorum of “discursive intellectuality and illuminative spirituality; or in other words, it is the alchemical work of the union of human wisdom, which is folly in the eyes of God, with divine wisdom which is folly in the eyes of man, in such a way that the result …is a single wisdom which understands both that which is above and that which is below. “ 

Direction emerges- ascent and descent- and where light is an emanation, the concretion of time emerging as direction gathers as a generation of being- and the integral cognition of generation is simultaneously present: ascent takes the form of rising up towards heaven and descent moving towards earth, as immediate waves of resonant vibration- prayer rising and revelation descending, “complete a circle which contracts and concentrates to become a point where the ascent and descent are simultaneous and coincide” (MotT, 607). Providing direction to the directionless, yet allowing the directionless to exist within all directions perceived as vascularizing intensities of simultaneous and luminous presence: “if we perceive history in this way, it becomes integral” (EPO, 192). That is to say: I invite history to include both direction and the directionless, divested of temporality and its sequential nature. On this I make the whole of duration an altar, and on it will resurrect the mutations of the ever-present origin as an offering: “a-mension is the presence of Origin” (EPO, 179)- upon which the light shining from a pewter chalice becomes a cobbler’s emergence into the spontaneous, spherical poiesis of the cosmos, sophio-poeisis, or Poeisophia: demanding a sophiology. 

Qiological Podcast with Michael Max

Some thoughts on the Hun and Po

"Life is known by its roots in the world of spirits, and by what is nearest to the spirits...the spiritual, psychic, intellectual, mental and emotional world" (Larré, 14).  

The Argument- from Ling Shu Chapter 8:

Virtue->Breaths->Essences->Spirits: this sequences establishes two trajectories.  One is Yang to Yin, transforming to Yin to Yang.  The other is: One (Heaven/Virtue), Two (HeavenEarth, Qi), Three (Essence), Ten Thousand Things (Spirits).  

Hun->Po->Heart->Intent->Will->Thought->Reflection->Knowing-How.  

It is clear that the unfolding of these lines describes the manifestation of a human being.  What also occurs to me is that the same dynamic applies to how a single thought becomes manifest.  And also that the development of any condition ("pathology") could be described in a similar light: even something as innocuous as a physical trauma or an external environmental influence.  All of it thus derives from a form of fixed idea.  An injury is a physically fixed idea.  And if this is the case, then one can identify that specific place, and essentially unwind the very tissue itself back into a state where the process-arising-out-of and disappearing-back-into can be enacted anew as a manifestation of the freely flowing creative movement of Heaven instantiated in form.  

Thoughts on temporicity

• Each channel system represents a different register of time, and a different world
• One must interact with each channel appropriately according to its temporicity
• Depth is really an expression of temporicity (viz. Shaoyin vs. Jueyin)
• All references to time in classical texts are highly symbolic
• Flow and movement are intrinsic to temporicity (and also define "Channels")
• Bi 痺 is thus stopped time.
• Movement precedes and implies direction.
• Direction precedes space. 

Thoughts this morning

• Humans have evolved with the capacity for trance and other altered states of consciousness.
• Trance is the aspect of consciousness most amenable to spiritual experience.
• There is an anthropomorphic element to most eidetic or visionary experience.
• Meditation and Ritual are expressions of skillful means to enter trance states/samadhi.
• Phenomenology (and the practical elaboration of this theory via Eugene Gendlin's Focusing), are avenues to explore and examine these states via embodied experience.
• Hypnotic trance is not counter to "genuine" spiritual experience- instead it is our evolved capacity for receptivity to spirits, which are imaginal, or aesthetic yet autonomous phenomena.  Not all trance states are necessarily spiritual in nature.
• Entrainment and Heart Rate Variability coherence are means by which the state of the healer impacts the state of the patient.
• Yoshio Manaka's elaboration of the X-signal system can be applied in terms of this coherence, and information transfer.
• There is ample evidence that the activity of consciousness has the potential to dramatically influence physical, material expression, and this may include optimal gene expression or what is understood as Jing in Chinese medical terminology. 
• Such influence is non-rational and communicated via sign, symbol, and metaphor through the interaction of the mind, and its physical receptors (including the nervous system, endocrine system, and organic tissue). This is an aspect of what I term physiosemiotics.
• As everything has semiotic potential, then objects can be employed to create states of coherence.
• Mental states also have the capacity to produce material effects and influence matter, even to the point of generating (what we think of as) objects. 
• In fact, mental and material are not two, but in reality only two sides of one: not yin and yang, but yin/yang.  It is a matter, not of seeing yin and yang, but rather seeing through yin/yang.
• These effects provide the means for change, development, and evolution.
• If we apply developmental and evolutionary models such as espoused by Sri Aurobindo and Jean Gebser, then further human evolutionary potential is probable. 
• The evolution of consciousness, driven by states of trance or samadhi, is an inherent aspect of the material world (including but not limited to human bodies) and its potential further evolution.
• It is of critical importance for the trance/samadhi state to be integrated into daily, waking, active consciousness.
• Given that the material world is itself an expression of that same consciousness (which can be termed Dharmakaya, or Sachchidananda), and that the activity of this consciousness is expressed through signs in more-or-less material manifestations, then consciousness expresses itself through recognizable patterns both internally and externally. 
• These patterns are fruitfully approached through the lens of Yin/Yang and the Three Yin/Three Yang of the Six Conformations.