Taoism
Flowing with Nature brings health, happiness, and longevity.
Taoism has been likened to our "original spirituality," what we did as hunter-gatherers, before there were mosques and synagogues. It's how we attune with Nature––slowly with harmony and awareness. Taoism adds "Long Summer" to create five seasons to the cycle of Nature, rather than four. Why?
The Sacred Number Five
Five is a sacred and mystical number, particularly in how it relates to human beings. Using our arms, legs and head, we point in five directions like a pentagram. We have five fingers and toes, five senses and therefore five sensory organs. We also have five major internal organs, according to TCM.
The Chinese pentatonic scale–black notes on the piano–consists of five tones, instead of eight, to align with these organs and natural rhythms. The number 5 is mathematically unique in that, while there are infinite prime numbers that end in all the other odd digits (1, 3, 7 and 9), there is only one that ends in 5–and that is the number 5, itself.
The Five Elements Philosophy
In alchemical terms, Taoist philosophy breaks down nature into five elements, metal, wood, water, fire, earth, which combine to form everything in the visible universe. Rocks, for example, are combinations of earth and metal. Trees comprise of wood and water.
The Generative Cycle
The five elements interact with one another in specific ways, either constructively or destructively. In the generative cycle:
It's a circular cycle, like the season, that never ends.
The Destructive Cycle
Conversely, the five elements also have a destructive cycle as follows:
The Human Pentagram
Here's where the ontology gets interesting. Mapped out in their destructive cycle, the five elements create a pentagram–the symbol of man, meaning we are at the center of this vortex.
Depending on how we act, either in attunement and harmony with Nature or at odds with her, we will be contributing to the generating cycle or the one that destroys.
Nature's Ever-Whirling Merry-Go-Round
The natural world is constantly in flux: evolving, growing, creating new life, destroying what is no longer needed, helping it rot and decompose, so it can nourish the next generation.
Nature's ever-whirling merry-go-round can be dizzying if we resist it.
Conversely, it is wondrous and amazing when we go with the flow.
Constant Flow
Finding Our Ground
The best way to find our ground–one place of perfect stillness and calm–is at the very center of the wheel, where we can watch all the passing phenomena, without getting caught up in them.
It's like the eye of the storm; the only place that remains quiet.
We can get there by simply closing our eyes.
"We are at the center of this vortex. Depending on how we act, either in attunement and harmony with Nature or at odds with her, we will be contributing to the generating cycle or the one that destroys."
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