We open the show with a discussion on how to become a practicing Taoist. Later, Dr. Carl and Tod tackle the oh-so important Tao concept of Te. The Te helps put the Tao in action, Dr. Carl discusses how you can make it work for you. We end with a brief talk on chapter four of the Tao Te Ching which helps you find your own cosmic nature.

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Episode Transcript

[00:00] [Music]

[00:30] Tod Perry: You’re listening to What’s This Tao All About? A lighthearted look at Taoism, featuring Dr. Carl Totton and Tod Perry. Carl is the founder of the Taoist Institute in North Hollywood, California. Tod Perry knows a little about Taoism and is mainly here because he owns a few microphones. Now, let’s learn: What’s This Tao All About? Welcome back to What’s This Tao All About. My name is Tod Perry and with me is Sijo, Dr. Carl Totton. We’re here at the Taoist Institute to bring you a little more discussion on the Tao Te Ching. To try to put this mysterious, magical, wonderful thing into exactly what it doesn’t want to be put into words. So, we’re gonna start out here with talking about starting out. So, people who have ventured this Chances are you’re interested in the Tao Te Ching. You’re interested in some kind of practice. Carl, how do you feel how do people start out in kind of being a practicing Taoist or what you know what I’m saying? What’s the people know how to practice like Christianity? You know you kind of go to church, you model the behaviors in the Bible. What would be the way to be a practicing I guess Taoist?

[02:00] Dr. Carl Totton: They’ll be a great answer. You know, people who have read the Tao Te Ching, they were call me, Tex me or come to see me and say, you know, my gosh, I just realized I’ve been a Taoist on my life. Because some things were just resonate within the Taoist perceptions that make sense to them. And so I think that of course, I always advise people to start with the Tao Te Ching. Because that lays The well spring from which so much richness has emerged and I think that even though people may not understand everything in there because understanding of trying and attempting to quote understand is actually part of the problem. But yet the Tao Te Ching throws you into a position of both wanting to understand while realizing the limitations of attempting to understand. And that puzzle meant captivates people. It’s fascinating. And it opens them up because you’re what is this? You have to expand the way you’re thinking or to grasp all of it or attempt to grasp it. Exactly. To try to figure out what’s this Tao All About? Right. And so people say, well the word Tao means the road or the path or the way. The way to what? Well, It’s a way to, you know, they say that the action of the Tao is always to do what to return. Yes. To revert to return to the source. What’s the source? Well, as I frequently say, you know, all of us are here in this world, in this universe, to live a meaning for life. And in order to live a meaning for life, there’s some conditions that help support living a meaning for life.

[04:00] Dr. Carl Totton: Knowledge or experience. What knowledge or experience? Well, most people at some point want to know that what they’re doing is actually something that is important in the context of who they are. So it goes back to who am I really? Where did I come from? Why am I here? Where am I going? What am I doing here? And so part of the Taoist experience is To become quiet enough and synergy enough and stably enough to begin to intuit some of these answers. Nobody can give another human being the answers to those questions. But yet, since each one of us is actually part of the field, this whole field of energy that constitutes the Tao, the answer is embedded in the experience. But it’s not in the words, it’s not, you know, it’s in, Actually having an experience, unpack that a little bit. And lived experience. But what gets in the way of lived experience? Well, most people after a while, they have a job to go to, they have bills to pay, they have responsibilities, they have kids to raise, they have to do things all the time. And in the doing of things all the time, they may have gotten away from something that internally, They might say they’re a heart’s desire, maybe they’ve always known that they were a painter or a musician or a crafts maker or a writer or whatever. Whatever at a deep level they intuit is would really bring joy and happiness and meaning to their life and harmony and harmony balance, but you have to aren’t doing it. They’re busy thinking and doing other things.

[06:00] Dr. Carl Totton: Who have gotten into a profession that they love, the demands of the profession get so specific that all the joy has left. Right, yeah. There’s no fun anymore. You know, you hear the thing. Are we having fun yet? No. We’re not having fun yet. Right. And my teacher, one of my teachers, you know what he said? Number one is fun. Number one is fun. Because if you aren’t engaged in a joyous way We’re missing something. We’re missing something. We’re so busy and we’re missing something. What is that something that we’re missing? That is what the Tao is all about. It’s getting to that something. Getting to that something. It’s different for everybody. But I am convinced that everybody has it. Why? Because everybody is part of the field. Everybody is part of the Tao. The Tao is all that is. And everything that is is what?

[07:00] Tod Perry: Which is both good and of course is brought us some problems. So to practice kind of the Tao is to keep returning to it, almost in your day, returning to that something. Returning to that field and through certain practices, whether they be meditation, contemplation, being quiet, engaging in activities where you kind of turn off your mind and go into the zone. All these things are ways to return

[07:30] Dr. Carl Totton: to the Tao. Yes. Absolutely. Absolutely. I picked something up here. Yes. The sense of being engaged, you know when you’re really engaged in something that you enjoy, how time just flies. Oh, hours can go by and it feels like five minutes. It’s time for a moment. It’s time for a moment. And it’s been recorded the show and every once in while look down to a time check to figure out, you know, to kind It’s a certain way, yang, we get absorbed in what we’re doing. Music is a wonderful way to do that. Time and literally write some of this down because the things they’re just in are ahead sometime. You know it could kind of come in one ear and go out the other. But if you actually write it down so you can kind of return to it and look at it. And what should you write down? Well, what do you really enjoy most in life? What makes you happy? What you know I said number one is fun. What’s really fun for you. Yeah

[09:00] Tod Perry: Then you can look at that and say, hmm, lmao, You’re gonna be your pro, enjoy yourself, enjoy yourself. Get the most out of it, learn and then impress on. Right. And become the dust. Right. But look forward to it. Exactly. And I find that such a revolutionary thing, especially in the realm of philosophy or religion which takes itself so seriously or everything so sacred. And the Taoism more like, get out there, engage by the ticket, take the ride, have fun

[10:00] Dr. Carl Totton: While you’re doing it and that’s what life is. And it’s so simple and it’s almost like if you were to go up to somebody and go, what’s the meaning of life or how should I be living or what should I be doing? And you go up to them and go, no, no, it’s all about having a good time. Well, that’s not serious. Right? That’s not meaningful, but it is. It’s nothing more When you feel that it just radiates from you and it’s actually contagious. And other people are going wow, why is he having so much fun? What could I do? You know, they equally have fun. Not doing what they do but finding my own path. And Taoism is about helping each individual find their own way, find their own path. Same time understanding that we’re all part of this mix. You know, we’re here to support each other. I think a lot of modern life has become very competitive. Oh yeah. People are competing for a position. Completely. Competing for property, competing for money. Look at the history of the world. It’s a competition for resources. With one group trying to take somebody else’s resources and dominate, manipulate and control other people to get it. But what I don’t know what the truth is. Ch And that has led to gross global instability in terms of the environment, in terms of the ozone, you know, in terms of the basic conditions for life are now kind of teetering in the balance. We’re poisoning the life well.

[12:30] Dr. Carl Totton: It can go either way. It can go either way. And we wanted to go the right way. And so supporting people’s consciousness to make the right decisions that will influence the people who think they are in charge, right, the politicians, the industrialists, you know, these people are supposed to be representing who the people. People really want to have fun, to live a life that’s meaningful and to have peace, to have harmony, to have balance. And if our quote leaders are not providing that and they rarely do. Then I think that’s what leads to so much unhappiness and uncertainty and a sense of being frantic in this world to dance. And the anxiety that that creates. That leads to violence and depression and you know. It leads to both internal imbalance, like you just said, you know, depression, anxiety and external imbalance, you know, calls for invasions, war, just activity, you know, I do know how to use it. I do know how to use it. I do know how to use it. I do know how to use it. I do know how to use it. I This is a struggle and is in this competition with each other from the drums. Yeah. That all is over. Is that a way to live your life? No. You want to spend the next 30, 40, 50 years just doing that? Really? I don’t think so.

[14:30] Tod Perry: The Hollywood, California. Check out the Taoistist Stute.com. See their schedule of classes including Taoist meditation, kung fu and qigong. That’s TaoistInstitute.com. Tell me if I’m wrong here. The character for day is I was reading. It means upright heart or virtue and also combined with left foot which is stepping out. So it’s finding that virtue that one discovers on the on the Tao, on the road, taking that virtue and then putting it in action. So it’s actually not just living a life that’s you know you’re returning to yourself. You’re finding your Tao but also how to put that into the world around us and how to interact with people, and interact with the environment. So it’s kind of the I feel and correct me if I’m wrong. The external practice of the Tao. The motive energy for this act of creation for putting something out there. If you will.

[16:30] Dr. Carl Totton: Not getting anything done or fixing anything or changing anything because you don’t have that energy behind it. So, could the day be kind of that animating energy behind the framework of the doubt? Exactly. Exactly. It’s that energy that allows things to become what they are. Okay. You know, often we might even know kind of what to do or how things should be done, but if we don’t have the mechanism for actually putting it into place, It doesn’t happen. So things remain in this nebulous, unresolved, unmanifested state. So it’s almost like the motivation, the creative force, the creative energy to put it out there in the world. It’s what takes it from the inside and puts it to the outside. And when the outside and the inside connect and are in harmony in balance, ooh, life is good.

[17:30] Tod Perry: That’s when you’ve kicked into the next gear. You have this returning feeling of the Tao where you say to yourself, I want to become a cook or use, in the day, is that thing that puts it into practice. It’s the correctly and with right mind and right order going out to execute this meal you’re going to.

[18:00] Dr. Carl Totton: And the activity of internally picturing, you know, the way that we live as human beings, the way that we live in a sea of images to, you know, in order to do something, you have to see it as possible. You have to have some image, but some picture of whatever it is in your mind. But if it just stays a picture in your mind, it’ll never happen. And then I think this is the key. When you’ve taken what’s inside of you, put it out there as an absolutely attainable reality and then allow that attainable reality, which at some level has already happened in a universe of infinite possibility. It’s actually already happened. And so when we take this picture from the inside and actually Find it outside and then allow that to just draw us into it. That is the day. That is how you actually created. It’s this law of attraction if you will. This law of manifestation. And that’s exactly how it works. But then, another thing is that you have to actually see it, think it as if it has already happened. That’s the key. It’s already happened. How would you feel if it’s already happened? Why’d be excited? I’d be so happy. You gotta feel that. And then how would your body feel? My body would feel really loose and strong and really intact. And when you put that mental and that emotional and that physical all together at the same time and place as you are envisioning this reality as if it’s already happened, bam, it manifests. That’s the day.

[20:00] Tod Perry: So for the people listening at home, they have, they’re kind of figuring out their way, their Tao, and then to put it into action in your mind. And obviously it’s not just wishful thinking. It’s actual action, but when you have in your mind, your desired outcome, and you begin to feel like it’s already happened. It’s going to be easier for you to go out and achieve those things, because you have that confidence, you have

[20:30] Dr. Carl Totton: Relay of life, you’ve got to baton and you’ve got that goal to hit in its fully visualized. Right. And like I said on three levels, it has to be mental, emotional and physical. Okay. All three. And no doubt, it has to be like no doubt that it’s actually real. Because it actually is real. Some are out there. It just has to manifest it real in your life experience. Yeah. Right, that step, leap of faith. But you’re not just jumping into something where you literally have no concept. You’ve taken the inside, externalized it, and then used the external picture to pull you into existence. That is the process of manifestation. One more thing, a lot of people try to do what I just said in their mind, just try to use the mental way of creating it. That does work, but unfortunately because our minds are polarized, what you create, you will also create in these unconscious something that will uncreated. And you’ll get backlash. You’ll get sabotaged somehow. However, if we go to an actual more powerful creative place, the heart, where in Chinese they say the shin, the spirit, lives in the heart. The character for the day was a bright heart or virtue. Yeah, it goes back to the heart. Because the heart unlike the brain is non-polarized. It’s a place of unity consciousness. And it’s pure. And that’s even Christian, isn’t it? The pure of heart shall see God, right? And the beatitudes, all that, right? So if we go to this pure place in the heart and create it from there, and it

[22:30] Dr. Carl Totton: It’s many times more powerful than the one that actually comes off the brain. Actually. So this is the place to actually do the creation. And so if we get in touch with our hearts desire and then let this process of manifestation emerge from there, it’ll happen. Without creating the conditions to sabotage and uncreated at the same time. The polarized brain can help itself. You know, we got right brain, left brain, four brain, back brain, to high We, we, it’s split, it’s separate and therefore we wind up splitting things into many, many different dimensions of experience and that leads to separation. Yeah. And separation is in many respects the problem. So yeah, I’ve been recently trying to kind of start my own because I work as a writer kind of during my normal when I’m not out cultivating the Tao I’m writing at a desk and I’ve been looking towards

[23:30] Tod Perry: Starting my own kind of in-home writing business where I have a bunch of different clients that I write for different things and I’m unlocking myself from the cage of having to be, you know, serve one master or whatever, even though the people work for quite wonderful but did kind of do my own thing. I’m ready for that in life. And so I’ve had this, I’ve had this thing I’ve been working on and I have moments where I think, These moments where I was about just ready to kind of step in but I feel like something’s pulling me back. There’s that weird thing where my heart has been consistent in my desire. My mind sometimes is no, you know what? Play it safe. Don’t go out there, don’t do it. And then late, it’s inconsistent. But my heart, I feel in it, has been consistent the whole way. So there’s a…

[24:30] Dr. Carl Totton: 5% of the time, the heart and mind have not been aligned. So it’s a point of keeping those things or just telling the mind shut up. Do the work. And ultimately what you just said is actually something very profound. Which is that the heart and the mind need to connect. Usually the average person is certainly here in the west, the mind is dominating most of the time. Left brain is pretty much in the boss, right? So now we’re trying to find this whole new way of existing and being getting in touch with this unified consciousness of the heart. Now, the heart has, you might say there’s two heart fields. One is the emotional heart, right? And we’re all familiar with the emotional heart, right? All the passions, the jealousy, the envy, the anger, the fear, right? That, and then we want to be coming from. There’s a deeper place in the heart that’s usually only found in certain types of meditation, by the way. That’s another reason why meditation matters. And so when we find this other place, so called sacred space of the heart, of the tiny space of the heart, it’s an actual physical place in the heart. But we actually have to move to that place and experience that as a real entity, a real It’s like the entire universe is in there. It’s where the Tao resides in every human being. And that’s where we can approach our highest nature and the highest component of all that connects all of us. Because we’re all in the same boat. We’re all in the same universe. We’re all from the El emanating from the same field. Exactly. And so if we can find that place and it’s not that difficult, you just have to know where it is and how to get there. And then turn to the Taoist Institute.

[26:30] Dr. Carl Totton: Our attention up to the brain, really to the pineal gland, if you will, and feel that connection between the heart and the brain. Now they become a single unity, a single unified field. So that the heart and the brain actually are perceiving the same way, maybe for the first time in your lives. Wow. And when you can do that, you’re home free. Wonderful. I think that’s a good place to stop with day. That was very good. I like when we can talk about these things in a non-abstract, I mean it’s abstract in a way but actual… Here are tangible things to do. It’s not just words about that aren’t connected to your personal experience and your personal practice. See everything needs to support everything else. If we’re gonna use words and that we have to, you know, unless we’re telepathic, we’re gonna have to use words right now. Understanding that the word is not the thing that we’re really trying to convey. It’s pointing, right? It’s pointing in that direction, but then we each have to find how that resonates in our own experience. And every individual, that’s your birthright, is to do that. And our job is, It’s to point that out, you know, that you have the capacity to do that. And here’s some tools that might help you. But we can’t walk the journey for you. But we can point to the fact that you have a journey and there’s a path and we will support you when you walk there. You’re not alone. You’re not alone. You’ll never walk alone. We’re all in this together and we know that.

[28:30] Tod Perry: So let’s get on to chapter 4 of the Tao Te Ching. And I think this one from my notes aligns with what we’ve been speaking. I love how, and this isn’t always intentional, how we have a topic, we’ll have a, you know, some things we discuss, in lo and behold we come to the chapter, and the chapter echoes exactly what we’ve been discussing. How about that? Yeah. How about that? Yeah.

[29:00] Dr. Carl Totton: Dr. 4 of the Tao Te Ching I think really concerns the notions of emptiness and infinity. So what does it say? Well, the Tao is an empty vessel. It is used but never filled. All unfathomable source of the 10,000 things. Now I love the 10,000 things is the metaphor for every. Everything in existence. Everything. So that was just a big number back then. Ten thousand. Right, they’re just throwing it out. That’s a lot of things. I mean, they could have said, you know, ten million or ten billion. They do go play. Whatever word you say is a five year old. A trillion. But I like how there’s that child like feeling of the Tao. There’s ten thousand. Yeah. Arbitrary. Yeah. But it’s unfathomable source of 10,000 things. You know, if you go back to the beginning, what’s our beginning as far as we know? The big bang, right? Right. Out of this big bang, everything came into manifestation, into existence. Well, what was before the big bang? Um, we don’t know. What, you know, where did everything come from? Before there was anything, what was there? Some people say there were some kind of few of the energy. We don’t know, we can only hypothesize. But in order for everything to exist, it does seem to have come from a one point, one source. From this one source, everything expanded and contracted.

[31:00] Dr. Carl Totton: Things are opening, things are closing, things are coming, things are going, things are living, things are dying. Even the biggest brightest star will live, glow, blink out eventually. And go down to a hard rock. And that’s what we are. A billion stars exploded, billions of light years ago. This is a monic energy actually went out into space and eventually, coalesced, cooled and yin and yin and yin and yin and yin and yin and yin and yin and yin and yin and yin and yin and yin and yin and yin and yin and yin and yin and yin and yin and yin and yin and yin and yin and yin and yin It is magic, it is a magic, and that’s magic. And the fact that we look like we’re the solid beings, the wall, the chair, the ground. Everything looks solid, it isn’t. It just atoms just floating around in a pool of energy, interconnected energies. Can you imagine if we all looked at each other like that? And we just saw ourselves as these balls of light energy, just glowing and all interconnected? Can you imagine without due to

[32:30] Tod Perry: That’s the truth about what we really are. Yeah, right not that I think the lie we’ve been told or we it was the great line by Yoda in the Empire Strikes Back where he says Master Yoda. Yes Master Yoda says luminous was it luminous beings are we? Yes not this crude matter. Yes. Yeah, it’s it’s amazing. Speaking the truth now if I can only have that in front of me 24 hours a day or you I’m going with my luminous piano, the wife, or you know, that piano. But it’s true. It puts things in perspective, doesn’t it? Yes. Yes. In a major way. And so he goes on to say after that, blunt the sharpness. Talk about arguing. Blunt the sharpness. Untangle the knot, right? Right. Thinking we think ourselves into knots every day, don’t we? Yes. Blunt the sharp I was reading that and I was looking at the emperors and I guess they were saying that emperors were like a Chinese idea of God or the gods that were ruling everything. And in the Tao they’re saying this unfathomable thing is from

[34:00] Dr. Carl Totton: Be on that. You know what I’m saying? It’s that. And to merge with the dust, I guess with some kind of metaphor for death and to almost dance with death. And we’re all cosmic dust. That’s what we are. It’s true. And that’s where we come from. We will return to that. Even the Christian, from ashes to ashes, from dust to dust. There’s so many parallels. I think that at the beginning people observed things and they had experiences and then they tried to codify that somehow by writing it down and then creating some type of system, some sort of structural system. To manage it, to continue to manage the information. It was primitive information management. And then add these things to make sure you adhere to it. You’ll go to hell unless you adhere to it. And the spiritual which then became religious then became the state. Very often became the state. And every state is concerned with what? Power and power. And how can you know, through manipulation, dominance or an. See so what started out as an inside as an understanding. Ending, I think is more into something else. A misunderstanding. Yes. And so I think Lao Tzu, yin, he’s always, it’s like the Tao Tzu Ching is like a mirror. It’s always in a very practical way saying, okay, take a look at yourself. Blunt the sharpness, untangle the knots, soften the glare. Because in our daily existence, we’ve got lots of knots, lots of glare.

[36:00] Dr. Carl Totton: I’m doing everything. And lots of sharpness. Sharp tongues. Oh, just to take a look at our current political debates. Oh my lord. It’s like life has become a reality TV show. I don’t know what the heck happened. I don’t know where everything went wrong. I think Lao Tzu’s way back then. He’s saying he’s illustrating how he’s going to be. All things can go wrong and pointing back to where we need to return in order to feel renewed back to the source. The source of these 10,000 things. Everything has a source. And if you can abide in the source rest in the source, it’s beautiful. It’s beautiful. Because then you feel like you’ve rediscovered yourself. You’ve found yourself. And how many people say that they want to find themselves? Blessed. I wanna find myself. I wanna figure out who am I. And then I think they struggle with that for a while and then they accept some answer, oh you’re this, you’re that. Now go to school, learn this, become that. That’s who you are, that’s what you are. And then when does that one becomes hopefully successful doing that. And then at the end, on their deathbed, people look back and they go, h

[37:30] Tod Perry: One, word of the time go and two, why did I spend all this time doing something that doesn’t and didn’t bring me joy and happiness? Isn’t this man guy? With the businessman guy you’re gonna have certain values and morals and adhere to those or you can go out and you can be the hippie guy and have these values and morals. You can be some compet- you know, you could be the- you know, there’s all these prescribed archetypes of people that- people are trying to fit themselves into. I find it to myself many times and I try to get out of that. So as we wrap up today, do we have a good solid takeaway or something that people can do to enact their day or you know. Well, there’s always so many things, it’s a matter of just trying to come up with something that’s simple and obtainable, and it’s a very good idea to do it.

[39:00] Dr. Carl Totton: So, and easy to do. If it isn’t easy people aren’t gonna do it. And so I always think it has to be easy. So, one of the meditations I like to do is to think about visualizing all of your dreams. What is your ultimate heart’s desire? Think about that as a dream. And actually see, by the way, when you go to sleep at night, With this, it’s almost like having a word at the tip of your tongue. You want to have this image of this dream of what you really want most in your life, right at the tip of your consciousness and then fall into a dream state and see where that takes you. Because one of the keys I’m convinced is to not have such a divide between our conscious and our subconscious. How do you take that down? Wow! And you can control and play within that. You can play. You talk about fun. Oh my goodness. You will be ecstatic. All night and then all day. Because ultimately you’ll come to realize it’s all a dream. Alright am I a man dreaming he’s a butterfly? Am I a butterfly dreaming he’s a man?

[41:00] Tod Perry: I think we’ll leave with that, I think that’s a perfect note to end on. See, Joe, Dr. Carl Totton, thank you so much for joining me here today. Thank you. Alright. Perion Twitter, ah, @TodAPerry. Now, don’t follow leaders and watch your parking meters.

[42:00] [Music]