Secret of the Golden Flower

For practical purposes, a distinction is made in the golden flower teaching between the "original spirit" and the "conscious spirit".

 The original spirit is the formless essence of awareness; it is unconditioned and transcends culture and history. The conscious spirit is the mind-set of feelings, thoughts, and attitudes, conditioned by personal and cultural history, bound by habit to specific forms.  In Chan Buddhism, the primal original spirit is also known as the host, while the conditioned conscious spirit is known as the guest; the original spirit is the master, and the conscious spirit is the servant. Self-delusion occurs when the servant has taken over from the master; self-enlightenment rakes place when the master is restored to autonomy in the center. The idea of two minds or two aspects of mind ... Turning the light around.

Good and bad come from your own mind. But what do you call your own mind, apart from your actions and thoughts? Where does your own mind come from? "The thinker is the mind, what is thought of is the environment. In the environment are mountains, rivers, land, buildings, people, animals, and so on.
Now turn your thought around to think of the thinking mind; are there so many things there?"
To consider the question of how the golden flower method could shed light on clues to the understanding and treatment of mood and personality disorders, it is useful to work with the Chan concept of host and guest, a simple concept corresponding to the Taoist distinction between the original spirit and the conscious spirit.

From the point of view of the host, or original spirit, everything concerned with mood and personality is in the domain of the guest. But through the process of social conditioning, the average individual comes to be centered in the guest and therefore regards it as the self. As a result the true host is concealed, and it cannot bring out its more objective and encompassing perspective on matters of mood and personality. When the guest has taken over center stage and the host is no longer in sight, the "switching" that takes place within and individual in response to psychological and environmental factors is taking place from one mood or personality to another; it does not return all the way to the source. The individual can then no longer command the capacity to switch deliberately from a subjective mood or subpersonality to an objective and impersonal state of observant mind.   Considered in this light, the ability to experience the pure self of the original mind and the capacity to return to it at will can be of fundamental significance in the psychic life of the individual. Even as the conditioned mind goes form state to state in the course of changing circumstances, the golden flower technique provides a means of searching out the host behind the scenes to gain direct input form its creative energy and inspiration.   
This host, or original spirit, can occasionally be glimpsed in the space between temporal shifts of mood or personality, but it generally takes practice to stabilize it and use it deliberately.
For application of the golden flower mind-awakening method, one of the most useful instructional devices in Chan Buddhist teaching explains the "two minds" in terms of "four relations between host and guest."  To focus them in the mind all at once, these four relations are expressed in mnemonic phrases: the guest within the guest; the host within the guest; the guest within the host; the host within the host.
    
    The guest within the guest is the state of the ordinary mind going form one mood, state or subpersonality to another, alienated from conscious contact with the host behind the scenes.
The host within the guest is the first stage of turning the light around, when contact with the original mind is established even as the individual is passing through shifting moods and personalities.      The guest within the host is a more mature level of attainment, at which the individual can enjoy free access to thought and its products, including ideas, nods,a nd personalities, without being deceived by them or bound to them.
    The host within the host is the original spirit itself, the primal source of consciousness in which is found the hidden "turning point" in which psychic liberty hinges. In one sense, conscious experience of the host within host follows realization of     The host within the guest; yet in a deeper sense the host within the host is not only at the pinnacle but even at the basis of the total experience of the golden flower practice.

One of the more dramatic examples: a young woman who was betrothed to a man she didn't love. She ran away to live with  her true lover, but eventually died. When her man returned to their hometown after her death, he found that in the experience of the people there she had been at home all the while, having taken to her sickbed shortly after her betrothal.
The girl had split souls; which one was the real one. If we say she was really at home; yet she lived with her lover; if we say she was with her lover, yet she was lying abed at home. The Chan answer is that both conditions, both "selves" were guests of a formless host. .. If you can awaken to the real one herein, you will know that leaving one state of being and entering another is like staying at an inn. This would suggest that the individual who realizes the true host can enter and exit thoughts, feelings, moods, and personalities at will being centered in the primal spirit and thus not subject to control by the contents of conditioned states of consciousness.
A parallel story form the Taoist tradition is the famous butterfly dream..  On awakening from this pleasant reverie, he found that he was no longer sure whether he was a man who had dreamed he was a butterfly, or whether he was a butterfly now dreaming he was a man.
The issue of this story is not its question of which psychic contents to identify as the self but is in the act of recalling attention to the "turning point" recalled in between states, the formless "opening" or "aperture" through which the real self of the formless host can be seen and experienced in its own purity and freedom.
There are two main objects to stopping thought in Buddhist tradition.
One is to open up space to clarify thought by distinguishing compulsive habitual thought from deliberate logical thought.
The other is to clear room for the conscious operation of nonconceptual insight.  Practioners are carefully warned to avoid becoming intoxicated by the peaceful tranquillity of thought cessation.. Chan proverb goes, "stagnant water cannot contain the coils of a dragon."

Turning the Light Around and Tuning the Breathing..reversed gazing.. reaching toward knowledge.observing mind..inner observation...focus on the center.
Two kinds of problems: oblivion and distraction. There is a device to get rid of them, which is simply to rest the mind on the breath.
The breath is one's own mind; one's own mind does the breathing. Once mind stirs, then there is energy. Energy is basically an emanation of mind. Our thoughts are very rapid; a single thought takes place in a moment, whereupon an exhalation and inhalation respond to it. Therefore inward breathing and outward breathing accompany each other like sound and echo. In a single day one breathes countless times, so has countless random thoughts. So should one have no thoughts ?  It is impossible to have no thoughts. Should one not breathe ? It is impossible not to breathe.
Nothing compares to making the affliction itself into medicine, which means to have mind and breath rest on each other. Therefore tuning the breath should be included in turning the light around.
When you sit, lower your eyelids and then establish a point of reference. Now let go. But if you let go absolutely, you may not be able to simultaneously keep your mind on listening to your breathing.
You should not allow your breath to actually be audible; just listen to its soundlessness. Then be patient and lighten up a little. The more you let go, the greater the subtlety; and the greater the subtlety, the deeper the quietude.   Eventually, after a long time, all of a sudden even the subtle will be interrupted and the true breathing will appear, whereupon the substance of mind will become perceptible. This is because when mind is subtle, breath is subtle; then mind is unified, it moves energy. When breath is subtle, mind is subtle; when energy is unified, it moves mind.
Stabilization of mind must be preceded by development of energy because the mind has no place to set to work on; so focus on energy is used a sa starting point. This is what is called the preservation of pure energy.
If the mind tends to run off, then unify it by means of the breath; if the breath tends to become rough, then yet the mind to make it fine. If you do this, how can the mind fail to stabilize?   Generally speaking, the two afflictions of oblivion and distraction just require quieting practice to continue unbroken day after day..until complete cessation and rest occur spontaneously. When you are not sitting quietly, you may be distracted without knowing it; but once you are aware if it, distraction itself becomes a mechanism for getting rid of distraction.
As for unawares oblivion and oblivion of which you become aware, there is an inconceivable distance between them. Unawares oblivion is real oblivion; oblivion that you notice is not completely oblivious. Clear light is in this.
Distraction means the spirit is racing; oblivion means the spirit is unclear. Distraction is easy to cure; oblivion is hard to heal. A distracted mind can be concentrated, and a confused mind can be set in order; but oblivion is unformed darkness, in contrast to distraction, which still has some direction. Oblivion means the lower soul is in complete control, whereas the lower soul is a lingering presence in distraction. Oblivion is ruled by pure darkness and negativity.
When you are sitting quietly, if you become drowsy, this is oblivion. Repelling oblivion is simply a matter of tuning the breath. The "breath" in this case is respiration, not the "true breathing". Nevertheless the true breathing is present within it.

Whenever you sit, you should quiet you mind and unify your energy. How is the mind quieted" the Mechanism is in the breathing, but the mind alone knows you are breathing out and in; do not let the ears hear. When you don't hear it, the breathing is fine; and when breathing is fine, the mind is clear. If you can hear it, the breathing is rough, which means the mind is cloudy. Cloudiness means oblivion, so it is natural to feel sleepy. Even so, the mind should be kept on the breathing.  It is also essential to understand that this device is not mechanical or forced. Just maintain a subtle looking and listening.
What is "looking"? It is the eyes spontaneously shining, the eyes only looking inward and not outward. Not looking outward yet being alert is inward looking; it is not that there really is such a thing as looking inward.
What is "listening"? It is the light of the ears spontaneously listening, the ears only listening inward and not outward. Not listening outward, yet being alert, is inward listening; it is not that there really is such a thing as listening inward. Listening means listening to the soundless; looking means looking at the formless.   When the eyes do not look outside and the ears do not listen outside, they are closed in and have a tendency to race around inside.
Only by inward looking and listening can you prevent this inner racing as well as oblivion in between. When you sink into oblivion and become drowsy, get up and take a walk. When your spirit has cleared, sit again.
It is best to set aside all involvements and sit quietly for a while. Eventually you will attain absorption and not become oblivious or sleepy.

When you are going to practice this doctrine, it is essential to find potential and find its opening; don't sit inside nothingness or indifference.  Even as you let go of all objects, you are alert and self-possessed. But don't get enthusiastic about attaining the experience.   This means not that you shouldn't recognize reality, but that the rhythm of reality is on the brink of existence and nonexistence. You can get it by intent that is not willful.   Even in the midst of alert awareness, you are relaxed and natural. But don't fall into the elements of the body and mind, where material and psychological illusions take charge.
If you tend to fall into a deadness when ever you go into meditation and are relatively lacking in growth and creative energy, this means you have fallen into a shadow world. Your mood is cold, your breath sinking. Once you have gone into quietude and all sorts of loose ends come to you for not apparent reason, you find you cannot turn them away if you want to, and you even feel comfortable going along with them. This is called the master becoming the servant. If this goes on long, you fall into the various roads of the realms of form and desire.

When you are practicing the contemplation of emptiness, if you still know that the totality of things cannot be destroyed, and yet do not cling to them, this includes all three contemplations.
First there is emptiness, next is the conditional; though you know things are empty, you do not destroy the totality of things but take a constructive attitude toward all events in the midst of emptiness. Once you neither destroy things nor cling to things, this is the contemplation of the center.  
When on the way of the center, you will meditate on emptiness; but you don't call it emptiness, you call it the center. When you come to the center, there isn't need to say.

When the light of essence turns into thought, then it is consciousness. When consciousness arises, the light is obscured and cannot be found. It is not that there is not light, but that the light has become consciousnes. This is what is meant by saying, "when sound moves, it does not produce sound, it produces echoes"

Chang Po-tuan..Understanding reality: a Taoist Alchemical Classic..translated by Thomas Cleary...
Liu I-ming..The Inner Teachings of Taoism..Translated by Thomas Cleary..
Liu I-ming  I Ching Mandalas.  Translated by Thomas Cleary.
Liu I-ming. Awakening to the Tao. Translated by Thomas Cleary
Immortal Sisters. Translated and edited by Thomas Cleary.
Li Daoqun. The Book of Balance and Harmony. Translated by Thomas Cleary.
Zen Essence. Translated and edited by Thomas Cleary
The Secret of the Golden Flower: A Chinese Book of Life. Translated by Thomas Cleary.
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