The introduction to golden flowe

A distillation of the inner psychoactive elements in  ancient spiritual classics, it describes a natual way to mental freedom practiced in chaina for many centuries.

symbolizes the quintessence of the paths of buddhism and taoism. Gold stands for light, the light of the mind itself; awakenning of the real self and its hidden potential.

In taoist terms, the first goal of the Way is to restore the god-given spirit and become a self realized human being.In buddihist terms, a realized human being is someone conscious of the original mind, or the real self, as it is in its spontaneous natural state, independent of environmental conditioning.

The original spirit is also called the celestial mind, or the natural mind. A mode of awareness subtler and more direct than thought or imagination. It is central to the blossoming of the mind.

Using neither idea nor image, it is a process of getting right to the root source of  awareness itself.

The aim of the exercise is to free the mind from arbitrary and unnecessary limitations imposed upon it by habitual fixation. With this liberation, the conscious individual becomes a "partner of creation" rather than a prisioner of creation.

The experience is likened to light in the sky, a sky of awareness vaster than images, thoughts, and feelings, an unimpeded space containing everthing without being filled. Thus it opens up an avenue to an endless  source of intuition, creativity, and inspiration. once this power of avakening has been developed, it can be renewed and deepened without limit.

It involves no imagery or thought, It is remote only in the sense that it is a use to attention generally unfamiliar to the mind habituated to imagination and thinking.

The great sages saw the interrelation of mind and energy and skillfully set up an expedient for the benefit of people of later times. 

An alchemical text says, "The hen embrace the eggs, always mentally listening". These are the finest instructions. The way a hen can give life to an egg is through warm energy, warm energy can only warm the shell and cannot penetrate the inside, so she mentally conducts the energy inward. That "listening" is single-minded concentration. When the mind enters, the energy enters; with warm energy, the birth take place.

Therefore even though the mother hen goes out from time to time, she is always listening, and the concentration of her spirit is never interrupted. Since the concentration of the spirit is never interrupted, then the warm energy is also uninterrupted day and night so the spirit comes alive.

The life of the spirit comes from the prior death of the mind. If people can kill the mind, the original comes alive. Killing thee mind does not mean quietism, it means undivided concentration. Buddha said, "Place the mind on one point, and everything can be done"

If the mind tends to run off, then unify it by means of thee breath; if the breath tends to become rough, then use the mind to make it fine. If you do this, how can the mind fail to stabilize.

Generally speaking, thee two afflictions of oblivion and distraction just require quieting practice to continue unbroken day after day util  complete cessation and rest occur spontaneously. When you are not sitting quietly, you may be distracted without knowing it; but once you aware of it, distraction itself

 becomes a mechanism for getting rid of distraction.