Our physical body is innocent. Because pure consciousness has stepped itself down into the physical dimension it needs a way to interact with the denser slower-moving physical world, hence 5 senses that work together, 5 aspects of your Soul.

Most Indian, Buddhist, or Christian traditions see ego as something bad. Ego must surrender its personal will and body desires (seen as evil) to the greater self (seen as good) then one can become the will of God or Enlightened, free of Ego

Taoists consider this very strange as they consider the 5 soul forces as untrained consciousness. Ego cannot be killed as it is consciousness itself. But this limited aspect of consciousness your soul needs to grow up and learn through the limitation of physical form.

In my experience, we literally grow our soul through digesting physical experiences here.

In many ways, it’s fairly easy to open your third eye and crown and identify with the greater self. But it has a very interesting issue and one I’m seeing a lot on my travels. Seekers can have these amazing experiences in high states of meditation, they often attend a workshop on ascension or something that helps the attendees stop identifying with the physical and the group energy initiates a high peak experience.

Often these high peak experiences disappear after a few days or even after a night’s sleep. Why is that?

For me its because we don’t have an integrated neutral soul that can hold the higher frequencies here in the slow vibrating physical world.  There is a basic core tension between our neutral higher self and our sexed body. It’s only by growing an androgynous energy body an integrated soul that we can resolve this core tension.

Also, I notice people think of high states of consciousness as somehow above them and “Up There” as apposed to being deeper dimensions within oneself. This one understanding alone starts to ground you.

In Taoist Inner Alchemy we develop the energy soul body to be the middle ground the container in our physical body for these higher states of consciousness so we can root and ground them into our daily life.

Here is a simple metaphor for that. Have you ever noticed one of those very dry cleaning clothes under your sink, that’s been sitting there for months or years? You try to make it wet the water seems to not stick to the very dry cloth because they are to different, one very wet one very dry. If the cloth is already slightly wet there is a more easy connection between the two extremes.

Think of the different frequencies of human consciousness like that, we have an immortal spirit in our deepest dimension. a faint spark of oneness and unconditional love.that is neutral and we also have a sexed physical body. These two aspects are so very different in vibration that they have difficulty truly communicating let alone integrating and functioning as one.

Spirit is a very fast vibration, physical life is a very slow vibration so different that its hard for them to interact. The soul body or we can call it the energy body is the middle ground.

If we can educate these 5 soul forces of our energy body to first integrate and function as one, and then turn our souls attention back into the deeper dimensions of the original spirit without neglecting or rejecting the souls important role in managing the slower vibration of physical life and applying its will creatively in the outer dimensions.

The first step in Taoist Inner Alchemy is to fuse the 5 soul forces into one functioning whole.

For many years I studied with an Indian master and I noticed I was very attached to the high states that I experienced in chanting and meditation but when my experience of the physical world got more challenging I noticed I was longing to return to those higher states.

The physical boy is totally innocent please contemplate that, our personality is part of consciousness it can not be destroyed. But it can learn and evolve and learn to marry heaven and earth.

Human beings are between Heaven and Earth, I believe it’s our human dharma to merge these two cosmic forces and contribute a totally unique expression of that here in the world. This is the wild card in everyone’s life, human will or intention.

The most subtle aspect of this is our thinking, thinking is actually in my experience a creative act of self will,  whatever we think, we get to create. This is why when we think negative we feel negative. Ever wonder why on some days you think positive and other days negative?  Or you can have a combination of negative and positive thoughts in any one moment? 5 Shen theory really goes into this deeply. Fusion of the 5 elements or 5 phases is a Taoist inner alchemy approach that is designed to integrate your soul team or family.