5 Stages of My Personal Awakening

March 4, 2012 | By admin | Reply

Image - Flickr - Eddi van W.

Eric Blair
Activist Post

It’s clear that there’s a massive global awakening happening.  A time when much that has been hidden from the masses is being revealed.  And as this information is increasingly accessed, the perpetrators of lies are being exposed on a grand scale. Their sinister agenda is also coming into clear view for all to see. This awakening has been the source of motivation for starting this website and the success of many other “truth” outlets.

As the controlling elite move at warp speed to implement the final stages of their full spectrum dominance, it seems to be met with an even quicker awakening of the masses.  But this awakening seems to pass through stages. At least it did with me and many people I’m close to.  In turn, sometimes it’s difficult to gauge where the audience is in terms of their stage of awareness.

I remember when we started Activist Post over two years ago, I thought I understood enough about the agenda and the current events related to it. I felt “enough already, where are the solutions?” Since that time, we sought to expose the lies, present the agenda as it unfolds in real time, and provide some practical solutions to the best of our ability and knowledge.  But we’re always learning and progressing.

At this late stage in the game, I felt it appropriate to share the stages of my personal awakening with our audience.  By no means do I expect it to be viewed as universal guidelines that should be followed by others, but rather it’s simply a glimpse into my personal perspective in hopes of showing solidarity with people who may be struggling with the same stages.

Recognizing the Lies: I think this is probably where everyone begins.  One way or another it becomes clear that we have not been told the truth about something by the establishment, which leads to recognizing other lies.  For some it’s a profound “ah ha” moment.  However, for me, the process has been more gradual.  In the mid-1990s, I read Behold a Pale Horse which certainly opened my eyes to things I’ve never considered before like secret societies, but it failed to launch me immediately into more research. Even though, in retrospect, I’ve been gradually learning more and more over the years, it wasn’t until Obama proved to be a fraud that I fully woke up.  I’m embarrassed to have supported him in 2008, thinking Hillary Clinton and McCain were the globalist insiders and naively believing he was a genuine outsider who wanted peace.  It was only then that the true nature of the power structure presented itself to me and a tsunami of research began in earnest.  And, finally, once I took an honest look at the events of 9-11, there was no going back to the manufactured reality.

Realizing Who’s Really in Charge: This is where most people who begin their awakening seem to focus much of their energy and time investigating — as I did.  However, I’m not sure anyone really has the correct answer to who’s really in charge, as there are so many layers to investigate.  Yet, many researchers come to certain conclusions which become the source of bitter infighting between truth seekers.  I believe the controllers, whomever they may be specifically, laugh heartily at our bickering about who they are.  Once we move beyond the names and faces of people, corporations, and the institutions that all appear to be in on it, it becomes clear that it’s rather unimportant who it actually is versus the philosophy they all adhere to.  Whether the hidden hand is Freemasons or the Illuminati, or the Vatican or Zionists, doesn’t really seem to matter.  What’s important to me is that 1) there is indeed a hidden hand controlling world events, 2) it’s evidently not human compared to you and I, 3) they share a philosophy of extreme prejudicial hierarchy and a sense of entitlement over humanity and, 4) they are ruthless beyond our capacity to comprehend.  Identifying them beyond that seems like a waste of precious time and energy that could be spent on solutions, in my humble opinion.

Understanding the Agenda:  Understanding the agenda was far more important to me than identifying the puppet masters, because by understanding what they’re trying to accomplish they will eventually reveal themselves. Their agenda, as I’ve come to learn it, is no less than complete control of planet earth by consolidating political and economic power including control of all resources, and enslaving and reducing the whole of humanity by any means necessary.  And they’re using everything in their arsenal to accomplish these goals; primarily the monetary system via central and world banks, global laws via the United Nations,  aggressive military force, multinational corporations and the absolute control of information by owning the media, suppressing science and technology, and controlling education.

Finally, one of the unseen tools used to great effect by this cabal is their manipulation of our reality through fear.  In fact, there is no way they can accomplish their wickedness if we didn’t buy into manufactured fear.

Incidentally, the agenda is fairly easy to recognize in current events.  If an event is used to cause fear, division or hatred, you can bet it’s the work of the controllers.  If an event is counter to peace and personal freedom, you can bet the agenda is moving forward.  If an event seems like a massive accident (financial collapse, 9-11, etc.) you can bet it has a purpose.

In fact, if there is an event that is causing harm to people in any way, shape or form, you can bet that it’s connected to this agenda in some way.  This is because average humans, let’s call them the 99.9%, will not consciously harm others if given the choice of a peaceful way to survive and coexist.  Many may disagree and point to isolated examples of theft, rape, bullying, murder, etc. as natural human behavior.  However, I would argue that in every one of those cases, the social system designed by the architects of the above agenda is to be blamed, not the individuals.  After all, how are slaves expected to behave like humans in such a malicious and unfair system?

Nature of Reality and Solutions:  After realizing that nearly all facets of reality are based on lies controlled for a certain purpose, one may begin to wonder what the true nature of reality is.  Many seek answers in religion, science, or philosophy. Again, given the level of deception in these institutions, I’m not sure anyone can define the nature of reality as a whole.  Although there are many enlightened people presenting amazing theories, anyone claiming to know the absolute nature of reality is highly suspect in my book.  However, I feel it’s important for each of us to discover as much about the true nature of reality as possible, because that seems to be where genuine solutions can be found.

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In my case, I’ve examined all of the above; religion, science, and philosophy in pursuit of what reality is to me.  While I have intellectually believed the following for some time, I have only just begun to holistically understand it through experience.  Without getting into labels, here’s what I believe are at least some of the rules that govern the nature of reality: We, as individuals, are infinitely more powerful beings than we’ve been led to believe.  As such, we control of our own reality and, ultimately, our own destiny. This power resides in each of us as free will of our thoughts and emotions which are physical frequencies that impact the material world. I have repeatedly experienced this in my own life by, for lack of better words, thinking my reality into existence.  The bigger lesson for me has been that we all contribute to what manifests in the world around us; and changing the world truly begins with changing ourselves.

Our immense power can only be contained by fear, which paralyzes our thought processes.  Despite all the negativity in the world, there is truly nothing to fear if we control our own thoughts and ultimately our own destinies.  Even fearing death seems unwarranted, as I believe humans are bundles of intelligent energy that, by the laws of nature, cannot be created or destroyed — only transformed.  I certainly don’t want to leave this physical reality, but I’m not afraid of it.  That would be a waste of my time and energy while I’m “alive”.

The absence of fear is love.  I believe the collective reality in the world would change overnight if love replaced fear in the forefront of our thoughts.  And I think love is the secret ingredient to solve all of the seemingly complex issues of our time.  I may be wrong about all this, but experience tells me there is definitely something to it.

Forgiving the Evil Doers: Admittedly, I have not achieved this stage yet, but I firmly believe it is one of the final stages of enlightenment.  The actions by the controllers are so despicable, so inhumane, and so evil that they naturally instill hate in any decent person who sees them for what they are.  But understanding that this hate is actually something they need to continue perpetuating their sinister plot, then harboring this hate seems counterproductive if we seek to bring the desired change of peace and harmony.  Additionally, if our thoughts and actions in some small way contribute to this reality, even if by lack of action, then it seems we have to accept a certain amount of responsibility for humanity’s current predicament.

At this stage, I’m only able to feel gratitude to Obama for helping wake me up, and gratitude in general that as things progressively get worse more and more people have begun to evolve their consciousness.  I know it’s a stretch for most people to see this silver lining in the dark clouds that currently engulf us, but it seems our evolution simply must play out this way.  If it wasn’t for the increasing tyranny, the masses would still be sleeping through their human experience without even knowing they were slaves, or ever realizing their potential.  Perhaps they would eventually realize it on their own, but I doubt it.

I suppose I won’t be able to forgive them until the war is over and the good guys declare victory. Until then, I will continue to pick up my pen and fight on until peace, love, and liberty is achieved.

Read other articles by Eric Blair here.

Tao te Ching – The Nature of Polarity

March 31, 2012 | By admin | Reply

Alan Watts
Divine Tao

AT THE VERY ROOTS of Chinese thinking and feeling there lies the principle of polarity, which is not to be confused with the ideas of opposition or conflict. In the metaphors of other cultures, light is at war with darkness, life with death, good with evil, and the positive with the negative, and thus an idealism to cultivate the former and be rid of the latter flourishes throughout much of the world.

To the traditional way of Chinese thinking this is as incomprehensible as an electric, current without both positive and negative poles, for polarity is the principle that + and north and south, are different aspects of one and the same system, and that the disappearance of either one of them would be the disappearance of the system.

People who have been brought up in the aura of Christian and Hebrew aspirations find this frustrating, because it seems to deny any possibility of progress, an ideal which flows from their linear (as distinct from cyclic) view of time and history. Indeed, the whole enterprise of Western technology is “to make the world a better place” – to have pleasure without pain, wealth without poverty, and health without sickness. But, as is now becoming obvious, our violent efforts to achieve this ideal with such weapons as DDT, penicillin, nuclear energy, automotive transportation, computers, industrial farming, damming, and compelling everyone, by law, to be superficially “good and healthy” are creating more problems than they solve. We have been interfering with a complex system of relationships which we do not understand, and the more we study its details, the more it eludes -us by revealing still more details to study. As we try to comprehend and control the world it runs away -from us. Instead of chafing at this situation, a Taoist would ask what it means. What is that which always retreats when pursued? Answer: yourself. Idealists (in the moral sense of the word) regard the universe as different and separate from themselves-that is, as a system of external objects which needs to be subjugated. Taoists view the universe as the same as, or inseparable from, themselves so that Lao-tzu could say, “Without leaving my house, I know the whole universe.” This implies that the art of life is more like navigation than warfare, for what is important is to understand the winds, the tides, the currents, the seasons, and the principles of growth and decay, so that one’s actions may use them and not fight them. In this sense, the Taoist attitude is not opposed to technology per se. Indeed, the Chuang-tzu writings are full of references to crafts and skills perfected by this very principle of “going with the grain.” The point is therefore that technology is destructive only in the hands of people who do not realize that they are one and the same process as the universe. Our overspecialization in conscious attention and linear thinking has led to neglect, or ignore-ance, of the basic principles and rhythms of this process, of which the foremost is polarity.

In Chinese the two poles of cosmic energy are yang (positive) and yin (negative), and their conventional signs are — respectively — and The ideograms indicate the sunny and shady sides of a hill, fou, and they are associated with the masculine and the feminine, the firm and the yielding, the strong and the weak, the light and the dark, the rising and the falling, heaven and earth, and they are even recognized in such everyday matters as cooking as the spicy and the bland. Thus the art of life is not seen as holding to yang and banishing yin, but as keeping the two in balance, because there cannot be one without the other. When regarding them as the masculine and the feminine, the reference is not so much to male and female individuals as to characteristics which are dominant in, but not confined to, each of the two sexes. Obviously, the male has the convex penis and the female the concave vagina; and though people have regarded the former as a possession and the latter as a deprivation (Freud’s “penis envy”), any fool should be able to recognize that one cannot have the outstanding without the instanding, and that a rampant membrum virile is no good without somewhere, to put it, and vice versa. But the male individual must not neglect his female component, nor the female her male. Thus Lao-tzu says:

Knowing the male but keeping the female, one becomes a universal stream. Becoming a universal stream, one is not separated from eternal virtue.

The yang and the yin are principles, not men and women, so that there can be no true relationship between the affectedly tough male and the affectedly flimsy female.

The key to the relationship between yang and yin is called hsiang sheng, mutual arising or inseparability. As Lao-tzu puts it:

When everyone knows beauty as beautiful, there is already ugliness;

When everyone knows good as goodness, there is already evil.

“To be” and “not to be” arise mutually;

Difficult and easy are mutually realized;

Long and short are mutually contrasted;

High and low are mutually posited; …

Before and after are in mutual sequence.

They are thus like the different, but inseparable, sides of a coin, the poles of a magnet, or pulse and interval in any vibration. There is never the ultimate possibility that either one will win over the other, for they are more like lovers wrestling than enemies fighting. It is difficult in our logic to see that being and non-being are mutually generative and mutually supportive, for it is the great and imaginary terror of Western man that nothingness will be the permanent universe. We do not easily grasp the point that the void is creative, and that being comes from nonbeing as sound from silence and and light from space.

Thirty spokes unite at the wheel’s hub;

It is the center hole [literally, "from their not being"]

that makes it useful.

Shape clay into a vessel;

It is the space within that makes it useful.

Cut out doors and windows for a room;

It is the holes which make it useful.

Therefore profit comes from what is there;

Usefulness from what is not there.

I do not know if this point can really be argued in our logic, but I find it impossible to conceive any form whatsoever without relatively empty space. We ignore space just because it is uniform, as water to fish and air to birds. It is almost impossible to give intelligible descriptions of elements or dimensions which are constant in all experiences-such as consciousness, time, motion, or electricity. Yet electricity is very much here, having measurable and controllable properties. But Professor Harold A. Wilson, writing on “Electricity” in the 1947 Encyclopaedia Britannica, says:

The study of electricity to-day comprehends a vast range of phenomena, in all of which we are brought back ultimately to the fundamental conceptions of electric charge and of electric and magnetic fields. These conceptions are at present ultimates, not explained in terms of others. In the past there have been various attempts to explain them in terms of electric fluids and ethers having the properties of material bodies known to us by the study of mechanics. To-day, however, we find that the phenomena of electricity cannot be so explained, and the tendency is to explain all other phenomena in terms of electricity, taken as a fundamental thing. The question, “What is electricity?” is therefore essentially unanswerable, if by it is sought an explanation of the nature of electricity in terms of material bodies.

That, from a scientist, is pure metaphysics. Change a few words, and it would be Saint Thomas Aquinas writing about God.

Yet, as I feel it intuitively, “space” and “void” (k’ung) are very much here, and every child teases itself out of thought by trying to imagine space expanding out and out with no limit. This space is not “just nothing” as we commonly use that expression, for I cannot get away from the sense that space and my awareness of the universe are the same, and call to mind the words of the Chan (Zen) Patriarch Hui-neng, writing eleven centuries after Lao-tzu:

The capacity of mind is broad and huge, like the vast sky. Do not sit with a mind fixed on emptiness. If you do you will fall into a neutral kind of emptiness. Emptiness includes the sun, moon, stars, and planets, the great earth, mountains and rivers, all trees and grasses, bad men and good men, bad things and good things, heaven and hell; they are all in the midst of emptiness. The emptiness of human nature is also like this.

Thus the yin-yang principle is that the somethings and the nothings, the ons and the offs, the solids and the spaces, as well as the wakings and the sleepings and the alternations of existing and not existing, are mutually necessary. How, one might ask, would you know that you are alive unless you had once been dead? How can one speak of reality or is-ness except in the context of the polar apprehension of void?

Yang and yin are in some ways parallel to the (later) Buddhist view of form, se, and emptiness, k’ung-of which the Hridaya Sutra says, “That which is form is just that which is emptiness and that which is emptiness is just that which is form.” This seeming paradox is at once intelligible in terms of the idea of clarity, ch’ing, for we think of clarity at once as translucent and unobstructed space, and as form articulate in every detail-as what photographers, using finely polished lenses, call “high resolution”~-and this takes us back to what Lao-tzu said of the usefulness of doors and windows. Through perfect nothing we see perfect something. In much the same way, philosophers of the Yin-Yang School (-3rd century) saw the positive – and negative – - as aspects of fai chi, the Great Ultimate, initially represented as an empty circle, as wu chi, although chi seems to have had the original meaning of a ridgepole upon which, of course, the two sides of a roof, yang and yin, would lean.

The yin-yang principle is not, therefore, what we would ordinarily call a dualism, but rather an explicit duality expressing an implicit unity. The two principles are, as I have suggested, not opposed like the Zoroastrian Ahura Mazda and Ahriman, but in love, and it is curious that their traditional emblem is that double helix which is at once the pattern of sexual communication and of the spiral galaxies.

One yin and one yang is called the Tao-. The passionate union of yin and yang and the copulation of husband and wife is the eternal pattern of the universe. If heaven and earth did not mingle, whence would everything receive life?

The practical problem of life was not to let their wrestling match get out of hand. Only recently have the Chinese set their hearts upon some kind of utopia, but this must be understood as the necessary react-ion -to years and years of foreign exploitation, anarchy, and extreme poverty. But in the -4th -century Chuang-tzu wrote:

Thus, those who say that they would have right without its correlate, wrong, or good government without its correlate, misrule, do not apprehend the great principles of the universe, nor the nature of all creation. One might as well talk of the existence of Heaven without that of Earth, or of the negative principle without the – positive, which is clearly impossible. Yet people keep on discussing it without stop; such people must be either fools or knaves.

Both Lao-tzu (once, in ch. 42) and Chuang-tzu (many times) mention the yin-yang polarity, but there is no reference to the I Ching, or Book of Changes, in which the permutations and combinations of the two forces (liang yi) are worked out in detail, in terms of the sixty-four hexagrams of yin and yang lines. Yet the I Ching is supposed to have been the most ancient of all the Chinese classics, dating from as far back as the -2nd or even -3rd millennium, and thus to exhibit the basic patterns of Chinese thought and culture. But in that neither Lao-tzu nor Chuang-tzu mentions it, quotes it, nor uses its characteristic terminology, the.hoary antiquity and authority of this text must be called in question.10 On the other hand, since at least the -3rd century Chinese savants have commented on this work in such a way as to perfume it with their thoughts and thus to give it a philosophical profundity. Readers of the great Wilhelm translation, and especially those who use it for divination, should be aware that he has interspersed the earliest forms of the text with passages from the “Wings,” or Appendices, most of which are certainly later than -250. In other words, the Wilhelm translation gives us a true picture of the I Ching as used and understood in China in relatively modem times. But my guess is that in the -5th and -4th centuries it was circulating as an orally transmitted folk wisdom, of indeterminable antiquity, comparable to the art of reading tea-leaves or the lines on the palm of the hand. There might have been written versions of it, but they would have been of the status of the Farmer’s Almanac or popular guides to the meaning of dreams.

Thus the I Ching, as a specific text, does not appear to have influenced Taoism until after the days of Lao-tzu and Chuang tzu. Nevertheless, there is a common element in the rationale of the I Ching and early Taoist philosophy. Briefly, this element is the recognition that opposites are polar, or interdependent, and that there is something in us-which Groddeck, Freud, and Jung called “the Unconscious” – Which may be called upon for a higher wisdom than can be figured out by logic. In more up-to-date terms one might say that the labyrinth of the nervous system can integrate more variables than the scanning process of conscious attention, though this way of putting it is still a concession to the mechanistic assumptions of +19th-century science. But one uses such language mainly to stay in communication with colleagues who have not outgrown it.

The I Ching involves a method for the random sorting of milfoil twigs or coins. The twigs or the coins are thus sorted or thrown six times, with a question seriously held-in mind. Each casting results in a yin – - or yang – line, so that one builds up, from the bottom, a hexagram such as:

The hexagram is composed of two trigrams–in this case, the upper signifies fire and the lower water-and is the last of the sixty-four hexagrams. Turning to the text, one reads:

THE JUDGMENT

Before completion. Success.

‘But if the little fox, after nearly completing the crossing,

Gets his tail in the water,

There is nothing that would further.

THE IMAGE

Fire over water:

The image of the condition before transition.

Thus the superior man is careful In the differentiation of things,

So that each finds its place.”

The comment is invariably oracular, vague, and ambivalent, but a person taking it seriously will use it. like a Rorschach blot and project into it, from his “unconscious,” whatever there is in him to find in it. This is surely a way of allowing oneself to think without keeping a tight guard on one’s thoughts, whether logical or moral. The same sort of process is at work in the psychoanalytic interpretation of dreams and in eidetic vision, whereby we descry faces, forms, and pictures in the grain of wood or marble, or in the shapes of clouds. In this connection I must quote some anecdotes about Ch’an (Zen) painters of the +13th century.

About the year 1215, a Zen priest called MU Ch’i came to Hangchow, where he rebuilt a ruined monastery. By rapid swirls of ink he attempted, with undeniable success, to capture the moments of exaltation and set down the fleeting visions which he obtained from the frenzy of wine, the stupor of tea, or the vacancy of inanition. Ch’en J~Mg, about the same time, was noted for the simplicity of his life and the competence with which he fulfilled his duties as a magistrate…. Finally, he was admired for his habits of a confirmed drunkard. “He made clouds by splashing ink on his pictures. For mists he spat out water. When wrought up by wine he uttered a great shout and, seizing his hat, used it as a brush, roughly smearing his drawing; after which he finished his work with a ~ proper brush.” One of the first painters of the sect, Wang Hsia, who lived in the’ early ninth century, would perform when he was drunk real tours de force, going so far as to plunge his head into a bucket of ink and flop it over a piece of silk on which there appeared, as if by magic, lakes, trees, enchanted mountains. But none seems to have carried emancipation further, among these priests, than Ying Yu-Chien, secretary of the famous temple Ching-Tzu Si, who would take a cat-like pleasure in spattering and lacerating the sheet.

The remarks about Ch’en Jung, in particular, suggest thai these gentlemen, having spattered the silk with ink, would contemplate the mess until they could project the shapes and outlines of landscape. Thereafter they would take “the proper brush” and with a few touches bring it out for all to see.

Cases of this use of the creative un-, sub-, or superconscious are so numerous among painters (including Leonardo), physicists, mathematicians, writers, and musicians that we need not go into further examples. I am sure that the I Ching oracles are used in the same way as these painters used splashes of ink-as forms to be contemplated empty-mindedly until the hidden meaning reveals itself, in accordance with one’s own unconscious tendencies. As with astrology, the rituals and calculations of consulting the I Ching are a kind of doodling which quiets the repressive anxieties of consciousness and, with luck, allows useful insights to emerge from one’s deeper centers.

The book, therefore, is not entirely superstitious. Consider that when we are about to make decisions we usually collect as much information as we can; but often it is so ambivalent that we are reduced to tossing a coin which can say either “Yes” or “No,” “Do” or “Don’t.” Would there be some advantage to having, as it were, a coin with sixty-four sides? The hexagram, drawn above might be saying, “No, yes, no; yes, no, yes.” Also it should be noted as a curious characteristic of the I Ching that there are no absolutely good or bad hexagrams in its cyclic series.

This may be illustrated by the Taoist story of a farmer whose horse ran away. That evening the neighbors gathered to commiserate with him since this was such bad luck. He said, “May be.” The next day the horse returned, but brought with it six wild horses, and the neighbors came exclaiming at his good fortune. He said, “May be.” And then, the following day, his son tried to saddle and ride one of the wild horses, was thrown, and broke his leg. Again the neighbors came to offer their sympathy for the misfortune. He said, “May be.” The day after that, conscription officers came to the village to seize young men for the army, but because of the broken leg the farmer’s son was rejected. When the neighbors came in to say how fortunately everything had turned out, he said, “May be.”

The yin-yang view of the world is serenely cyclic. Fortune and misfortune, life and death, whether on small scale or vast, come and go everlastingly without beginning or end, and the whole system is protected from monotony by the by the fact that, in just the same way, remembering alternates with forgetting. This is the Good of good-and-bad.

Yin and Yang – Cosmic Harmony

April 21, 2012 | By admin | Reply

The Tao Bums

It was mentioned earlier that the great unification split into Yin and Yang. According to The Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu, “reversal is the movement of the Tao”. Both in the sphere of nature and human affairs, when the development of anything brings it to one extreme, a reversal to the other extreme takes place. Everything has its own negation. This is the principle of the Yin and Yang interaction in nature and human affairs.

This concept is also associated with the Book of Changes – I Ching, “When the sun has reached its meridian, it declines and when the moon has become full, it wanes.” For,” Reversal is the way of the Tao.” What is true with natural phenomena is also true in human nature. This concept had a profound influence on the behavior of many a Chinese. It is said that they remain cautious even in times of success and prosperity and hopeful even in times of failure and poverty. This doctrine of the Golden Median is based on the concept of harmony between Yin and Yang. Enough is enough, never too much. It is better to have less than to have too much. Having too much and overdoing something may be counter-productive and may run the risk of getting the opposite of what one expects.

Yin and Yang were created due to the observation of instability in nature. Yin and Yang exist for the stability of nature. For example, in the vacuum near an unstable nucleus, a Yin and Yang pair (electron -positron) was created to render stability to the area. A stable atom exists mainly due to the presence of positive protons and negative electrons. Proper balance and harmony can be maintained by an intermingling of the Yin and Yang, the moon and the sun, the Earth and the Heaven, and the transformation of all things will proceed smoothly. There is an interplay and exchange between the male and female and all things will be produced. The Yang gives the beginning and the Yin completes it.

Alienation

Yin and Yang cannot exist alone in a separate isolation. One cannot exist without the other. Yin separated from Yang or Yang separated from Yin in isolation without any interaction with each other is Alienation. Any philosophy that promotes the positive, the strong, the bright, the visible and the absolute matter and denies the negative, the weak, the dark, the invisible and the spiritual and conducts one’s life in accordance with such a philosophy, lives in a state of alienation. And any philosophy that promotes the latter and denies the former is equally alienated. So, without the combination of the Yin and Yang pair, all other mechanisms of interaction would not be possible. A system that does not tolerate the Yin and Yang contradiction suffers alienation, poverty and meaninglessness. When the alienation is out of proportion, the survival of human society is in danger. Changes are then necessary to remove the elements that cause the alienation in order to restore the dialectic of harmony.

Complimenting Aspect

Yin and Yang are two opposite elementary principles from which all phenomena are produced. This concept is associated with the Five Elements in the ancient medicine theory of the first millennium B.C. in China. Reality is a pair of opposites and a group of five elements on rotation succeeding one another each taking its turn. This concept is also present in the writings of philosopher Hsun Tzi. Opposites of Yin and Yang are complementary to each other for the formation of a stable system. Such a contradiction is necessary for the survival of any living system. Alienation on the other hand, is harmful to the survival of the system. With out the complementing aspect there will be no inheritance of genetic replication. The examples of complementing aspects of yin and yang include the paradoxes of the matter and the mind, materialism and idealism, and the biological and the spiritual. Both are parts of the unity as in a ring. There is no moral priority of one over the other, for no point in a ring is before or after any other point. Alienation is removed, but complementary aspects are preserved for the life process.

Interpenetration

Intrinsically, Yin does not exist as purely Yin, nor does Yang exist as purely Yang. There is Yin in the Yang, and Yang in the Yin. Yin and Yang do not only complement each other, they are also inside each other. Yin influences Yang not only from without but also from within. And Yang influences Yin in the same manner. This is interpenetration, another aspect of the Yin and Yang relationship. In other words there is action in inactions, strength in weakness, unity in diversity, victory in failure and life in sacrifice. In human society there is no such thing as pure socialism or pure private enterprise. There will always be private enterprise in socialism and socialism in private enterprise – society. The two will penetrate each other for stability and survival.

Transformation

Interpenetration allows the presence of Yin in the interior of Yang and Yang inside Yin. The Yin and the Yang in the interior of each half can expand or contract internally. Motion and development are associated with such activity. The two halves can transform into each other. So there are both external and internal contradictions and for that matter both external and internal interactions. The result of such transformation is the production of pluralism. Mutual production and mutual overcoming as the seasons rotate in cycles of rising and falling, which unite man and nature. All things are related. Reality is also a process of mutual transformation. But the essence of reality is always the same, the will to survive. Transformation between Yin and Yang ensures the success of the survival and meaningful life in society.

Harmony

Harmony is not static. It is a result of dynamic operation. Harmony between Yin and Yang reinforced the Doctrine of the Golden Median. In this respect, Chinese philosophy is concerned more with relationship than with substance. The universe is a well-ordered state of existence but it is also in a state of constant change and readjustment. Things are forever interfused and intermingled. The universe is a realm of perpetual activity. The activity takes the form of cycles of Yin and Yang. It is for a dynamic homeostasis for the survival of a system. Harmony does not stand still. It has a progressive direction leading to the development of morality, the stability of the society and the maturation of a civilization.

Yin Yang Doctrine within Taoism

The Yin and Yang concept is very simple. Yet it is quite difficult to understand it in a deep manner. The concept is derived from the experiences gained by practitioners engaged in the pursuit of Union with Tao. The Yin and Yang interactions that occur in our daily life lie within the logic of our common sense. The successful practice of Yin and Yang in life leads to a great state of harmony. This is the basis of good health and as such is maintained by the Qi, which is both physical and moral. The concept of Yin and Yang is thus the cornerstone of dialectics in Chinese philosophy.

The movement of Tao gives rise to Qi. The spontaneity of Qi gives rise to the interactions of Yin and Yang. Yin and Yang are the opposite expressions of the same reality. Mass and energy are the opposite expressions of the same Qi. Qi is the mass and Qi is the energy, yet Qi is also the transforming force between mass and energy. Energy is represented by Yang and mass by Yin. Yin and Yang are different and opposite; they undergo movement and transformation in the Infinite Emptiness. The union of Yin and Yang becomes harmony. This union of harmony is possible because they are opposite. It is because they are opposite that interactions take place. This is the source of interactions. The Yin and Yang concept is applied to all opposites in the universe, to substance and to motion. For motion and stillness also are intrinsic with Yin and Yang.

Thus the Infinite Emptiness is the field; Qi resting is the mass – Yin; Qi in motion is the energy, Yang; and the Qi both resting and in motion is the transforming force.

According to Lao Tzu, all things carry Yin and Yang, through the impact of the Qi, harmony is accomplished.

The Dialectics of the Qi

The Canon of Internal Medicine assigned different domains and substances to Yin and Yang. “Heaven is Yang, the Earth Yin, the Sun is Yang, the Moon Yin,” “Yin is internal to preserve Yang, Yang is external to utilize Yin.” “Water is Yin, fire is Yang.” The structural substance of life is Yin and the functional activity is Yang. “Yin and Yang are the Tao of Heaven and Earth, the principles of all things, the parents of all transformations, the origin of life and death. The interactions of Yin and Yang include the dialectic of not only the unification of opposites but also the complimenting aspect of opposites.

Yin and yang may oppose each other but also attract each other. In Chapter 46 of Canon of Internal Medicine, it is recorded that “Where there is strength, there is also weakness. Too strong is conducive to too much anger, and too weak is liable to be hurt. ” “There is Yin inside Yang, and Yang inside Yin.” The interpenetration and contradictions of Yin and Yang creates new substances and conceptual significance. There is no limit to the evolution of the Yin and Yang opposites, generating new phenomena and quality ad infinitum.

The origin of things will evolve in quantitative changes, while the limit of things will evolve in qualitative changes. From the beginning to the end of life, there will be changes and if the interactions get out of control, disorders and diseases will ensue. All the changes should lead to homeostatic harmony to ensure health.

To maintain homeostatic balance is not only a biological necessity but also a philosophical issue. The human body possesses the ability to maintain and regulate the structure and function of life unto harmony. The Five Element System is a demonstration of the Five Activating Forces operating not in a mechanical way but with mutual interactions and a feedback mechanism. It is not just a reaction of cause and effect, but with interactions resulting from the inter-relatedness of all the Five Substances in nature or the Five Activating Forces of all the internal organs and glands of the body. Cause and effect is direct, but interrelatedness also considers the indirect interactions.

Some people think that since Yin and Yang are opposites, therefore they must be hostile to each other and fight to eliminate each other. This is a philosophical blunder. If Yin and Yang fight then nature will not be in harmony and there will be chaos everywhere.

The human body does fight diseases, but the objective is to regain the Yin and Yang balance and health. Diseases and excesses are alienation and as such must be removed to restore a balance of Yin and Yang in the living system.

“Reversal is the movement of Tao.” This is the secret of life and the law of nature.

When things have gone too far to the extreme, there will be a movement of reversal. This is how the body develops defense mechanism and the physical world develops changes in order to return to the state of harmony.

The entire mechanism of the reversal is simply via the operation of Yin and Yang through the Five Element system.