"the way" --- the way of nature and of the universe, or path of natural reality. It also refers to a way in which we can open our minds to learn more about the world, our spiritual paths, and ourselves.

All spiritual paths ultimately lead to truth. Taoism is both a philosophy and a technology for seeking and finding the truths of humanity, nature, and the universe.

The ancient Taoist sages believed we were born to be immortal. We become mortal by draining ourselves of chi through engaging in excessive sexual activity, indulging in negative emotions, and depending on material sources to supply our life force.

Taoist practices teach us to conserve the physical energy so that it will no longer scatter and deplete as a result of our worldly interactions.

Healing the physical body: becoming like a child to return to the original source
Set specific goals to learn how to heal yourself, how to love yourself, and how to love others.

Stopping energy leakage through conservation and recycling
Learn how to seal the nine openings when they are not in use, that simple act of conservation will save an immense amount of energy.

Activating the abdominal brain
Empty the mind...Fill the belly. Let go of judgments, suspicions, and incessant repetitive thought processes.

Transforming negative energy into virtues: opening the heart
The heart is the seat of love, joy, and happiness. Open the heart and connect with unlimited universal love, improving daily interactions and providing a vehicle for the virtues.

Cultivating the yang stage, marrying the light: greater Kan and Li enlightenment
Merge with the light of the Tao, we must awaken and nourish the awareness that we are in truth children of the light. Once we have fully grown the spirit body, it will be the same frequency as the light of the Tao and can be come one with it.

Manifesting the rainbow body: the greatest enlightenment of Kan and Li
Transfer all physical essence into the immortal body. When all material elements are transformed into chi, what remains is the rainbow body.

Sealing the five senses: the congress of heaven and earth, the reunion of heaven and man
A master can transcend death entirely. May take from eighty to a few hundred years to complete this stage of practice. The final goal of ascending into heaven in broad daylight. There are records in Chinese history of thousands of immortals who reached this level of daylight ascension in the presence of many witnesses. In the bible, Elijah and Moses also accomplished this feat. In the final stage of this practice, the adept can unite the immortal spirit body, the energy body and the physical body or separate them at will. It is then that the human being knows full and complete freedom as an immortal, and no world is a boundary.

Taoist cosmology

Ancient Taoism is rooted in deep observation of naturally occurring universal processes and their effects upon human beings. Newtonian physics of the west understands these processes as the mechanics of cause and effect. Taoism understands them as the interactions of a vast sea of energy that is constantly creating and recreating the universe in infinite ways. Most religions and esoteric systems study these processes (the ways of God) through scriptures and practices based upon immaterial. Taoism studies both the material and immaterial aspects of nature and the universe in the belief that the immaterial is both the source for the material and the product of it. In other words, physical and nonphysical processes are sources for each other.

THE VOID: OUR ORIGINAL SOURCE
Through observing nature and the effects of energy within the human body, the ancient Taoists were able to trace the universal energy back to its point of origin. Upon developing an empirical approach with which to contact the source of observable phenomena, they established the concept of the primordial void as the point of departure for all creation. This void, which was given the name Wu Chi, is depicted as an empty circle in traditional Taoist art because it is beyond human description. For energy to begin generating the effects and forms of nature and the universe, something had to stir within the Wu Chi. The first stirring created the division between the material and the immaterial, as all th processes of the universe began at this time.
Taoists refer to the first observable variations of the universal force, which emanates from the Wu Chi, as yin and yang. These two qualities of this force can be understood as the positive and negative poles of the primordail energy. Yin and yang are inseperable tendencies of all energy, and it is impossible to have one without the other. Their interactions are the root of all universal action.
The theory of yin and yang is expressed in a symbol --- one of the most simple and sublim of all symbols --- that illustrates the way nature and the universe interact. The circle that encompases the symbol represents the Tao, the undiffernetiated whole, the universe, ultimate reality. Yin describes the feminine, the contracting, the dark, deep side of nature, and yang describes the masculine, projective, electric, light surface side of nature. Yin and yang are not two seperate states, but an interwoven aspect of one. Just as day cannot exist without night, or male without female, yin and yang are opposite, co-existing elements of the same universal substance. They are interwoven and continuous processes of decaying and becoming. Yin and yang describe a changing, dynamic picture of reality.

Taoist Sayings

Therefore the sage puts his own person last, and yet itis found in the foremost place;
he treats his person as if itwere foreign to him, and yet that person is preserved.
Is itnot because he has no personal and private ends, thattherefore such ends are realised?

It is better to leave a vessel unfilled, than to attempttocarry it when it is full.
If you keep feeling a point that hasbeen sharpened, the point cannot long preserve its
sharpness.

(The Tao) produces (all things) and nourishes them; itproduces them and does not
claim them as its own; it doesall, and yet does not boast of it; it presides over all, and yet
does not control them.This is what is called 'The mysteriousQuality' (of the Tao).

Its upper part is not bright, and its lower part is notobscure. Ceaseless in its action,
it yet cannot be named, and then it again returns and becomes nothing.
This is called the Form of the Formless, and the Semblance of the Invisible;

Favour and disgrace would seem equally to be feared;honour and great calamity,
to be regarded as personalconditions (of the same kind). What is meant by
speaking thus of favour and disgrace? Disgrace is being in a low position (after the
enjoyment of favour). The getting that (favour) leads to theapprehension (of losing it),
and the losing it leads to the fearof (still greater calamity): - this is what is meant by
saying that favour and disgrace would seem equally to be feared.

The grandest forms of active forceFrom Tao come, their only source.
Who can of Tao the nature tell?Our sight it flies, our touch as well.
Eluding sight, eluding touch,The forms of things all in it crouch;
Eluding touch, eluding sight,There are their semblances, all right.
Profound it is, dark and obscure;

He is freefrom self-display, and therefore he shines; from self-assertion,
and therefore he is distinguished; from self-boasting, and therefore his
merit is acknowledged; fromself-complacency, and therefore he acquires
superiority. It isbecause he is thus free from striving that therefore no one
inthe world is able to strive with him.

There was something undefined and complete, coming into existence
before Heaven and Earth. How still it was and formless, standing alone,
and undergoing no change, reaching everywhere and in no danger
(of being exhausted)! It may be regarded as the Mother of all things.

Scholars of the highest class, when they hear about theTao, earnestly
carry it into practice. Scholars of the middleclass, when they have heard
about it, seem now to keep itand now to lose it.Scholars of the lowest class,
when they have heard aboutit, laugh greatly at it. If it were not (thus) laughed
at, itwould not be fit to be the Tao.