This is an introduction to the 'Barefoot Doctor'. He is a westernized Taoist, a man of the west who has embraced Taoism as a way of life, and his work, in my own experience is practical. His teaching is also accessible, applicable and sustainable (that was for you Tim).
This particular short article is about becoming a master of time, it's just a taster and well worth a read. His most recent book; PURE, is an exceptional pointer towards a greater reality-truth-integrity . . . and I highly recommend that you get hold of a copy.
Use this accessible link to an interview with him right now if you want to hear just how accessible, he really is!
Here goes . . .
"The higher in altitude you go, the faster your watch goes round. But it’s not just your watch. Time itself, or rather linear time actually moves relatively more quickly up in the mountains than it does down on the planes, because the denser the gravitational field, the more slowly all life-processes occur. This is an effect of warped time, as discovered by Einstein. So if I called you from a satellite phone at precisely 14.01 GMT from a high-altitude locale, say up on the 12,000 foot high plateau between the eastern and western spurs of the Andes Mountains, at Lake Titicaca in Bolivia-Peru and you answered standing at sea-level, down in Bournemouth on England’s south coast, for example, our watches would be synchronized even though time and my watch would have been turning more swiftly for me.
Which is why, if you’re keen on attaining longevity, even though you’d probably live longer at higher altitudes, it will feel about the same as living shorter at sea level so don’t rush off to get the Internet sorted in your favorite sacred mountain cave just yet.
But my actual point is, that just like the ancient Taoists always said, linear time is illusory, a mere construct devised by the Tao as an intrinsic part of the grand illusion to prevent the appearance of everything happening at the same time and thus causing the appearance of a rather large and unholy-looking mess, even though everything is really happening at the same time from the Tao’s point of view: your birth, your death, your previous lives, your future lives and everyone else’s – all of it happening here and now.
I’m not a physicist, if anything, I’m a Taoist and a Wayward Taoist at that, so won’t even attempt to furnish you with the appropriate scientific terms for this phenomenon, but I will tell you with quiet Taoist confidence, that if you ever find yourself all but overwhelmed by an implausible slew of tasks to be undertaken in a relatively short period of time, it is perfectly feasible and even advisable to stretch time in order to get everything done with ease.
The technique in Taoist ‘magic’ terms, is to befriend and make use of the decelerating effects of gravity, by first sinking your weight below your navel, then place both palms before you with but a gooseberry’s distance between them and in that space place the said time period (the next hour or two, say) then slowly pull your hands further and further away from each other, thus stretching the time period between them.
Do so with sincerity and belief and you’ll be rather amazed at how time does actually slow down, to permit ample task-achieving ease.
By the same token if you have to do something tedious you’re always at liberty to speed time up by reversing the hand gesture, but this is generally advised against as no matter how tedious a moment may be, it is nonetheless a crucial point in your life, without which there’d be a gap between the previous moment and the next one through which you’d fall straight through, and so must be cherished, appreciated and ideally, not rushed away.
Merry Monday wish: every moment of your life henceforth is such a sweet corker, anything other than full appreciation, cherishing and slow savoring from moment to moment would simply be out of the question."
Love, D
