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Taoist meditation: Moving toward harmony

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“Life is always changing, the point of balance in our circumstances is always changing. The challenge of meditating with the Tao is to be aware of this continuous flux, and make appropriate adjustments in your consciousness and action to keep in balance”.

Dear Integral Meditators,

Taoist and Qi gong meditation was the first formal meditation practice that I had. To this day I still use the principles of it daily. The article below outlines one of those principles, that of harmony and balance.

In the spirit of harmony,

Toby


Taoist meditation: Moving toward harmony 

One way Taoist meditation could be defined is being focused on ‘finding balance and harmony between polarized, opposing forces’. These forces can be categorized as either

  • Yin – Feminine, receptive
  • Or Yang – Active, dynamic

One point of interest here is that a person or thing is not fixed in their yin or yang nature. Something is always yin or yang IN RELATION TO something else.
For example: I may be a yin, quiet, introverted person in relation to my crazy, party animal brother, but I may relatively speaking be a yang, sociable talkative person in relation to my solitude-loving sister.
Life is always changing, the point of balance in our circumstances is always changing. The challenge of meditating with the Tao is to be aware of this continuous flux, and make appropriate adjustments in your consciousness and action to “stay in the Tao”, or keep in balance.
For example: In the morning I may be behind in my work, so I have to focus on being very active and dynamic before lunch. After lunch I may have caught up on my work, but my body is tired, so I need to slow down, rest and recuperate.
From this definition we can understand that Taoist meditation (and I think we could expand that to meditation in general) is not an entirely passive activity, but a way of coming back into balance, coming back into the middle, and avoiding the extreme/imbalanced expressions of either yin or yang.

A Practical Question for daily practice:
A basic question that we need to ask ourselves is “Where is my optimal point of balance right now, and what actions can I take to reconnect to that balance to the greatest degree possible?”
Try asking yourself this question once in the morning, once in the afternoon and once in the evening for a week. see where it takes you….

Article © Toby Ouvry 2019, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com   


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