Chapter I
Chapter 1 Working in the Navel Center
The ancient Taoists were confident that the human body and spirit could live forever. Those venerable men and women expressed this deft knowledge in the gentle poems, personal histories, social criticisms, and cryptic “how-to” formulas that comprise the five thousand volume history of Taoism known as the “Taoist Canon.” Still largely untranslated, these books--sheaves of rice paper and wood block prints--now beckon us to explore a gifted culture of unsurpassed brightness and stunning human achievement. The stories reveal that the ancients acquired and expressed such confidence only after centuries of testing and experimenting with the body’s supple energetic systems in its swirling, surrounding energy environment. Depending only on their experiences and observations, these skilled, spiritual empiricists discovered the layout of the body’s major and minor energy systems, its power sources, its “turbines,” and its “transformers.” Moreover, they knew just where to go to get the right kind of energy to feed and balance those systems so that the body might proceed in a kind of perpetual motion. Had the energy not been right at hand, those agile adepts, having mastered the universal and Earthly laws of energy and matter, could not cultivate and harvest the needed energy. Gathering the desired energy sometimes meant sitting in a certain meditation. At other times it meant swallowing a bitter brew strained from a mash of roots, bark, and assorted herbs. For more experienced Taoists, stalking a potent restorative often meant gathering all their energies and essences and shooting themselves out of their earthbound bodies on exciting foraging journeys deep into space, to the edge of the Cosmos, to a place where they might pluck the perfect blend. Whatever they did, wherever they went, the prized goal--a state of alertness--was to keep their organs free of emotional and environmental tensions and toxins, and to maintain a smooth and
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