One result of this is that after many months or years of dedicated practice, many students and teachers become identified with a self-image of attainment. The mental structure of the ego assumes an identity, albeit in this instance a spiritual identity, that superficially replaces the ordinary, more pedestrian, material ego or self. This is a particular danger in any teaching, but especially in those practices that emphasize the manipulation of Qi or Prana in the form of ascending or descending channels or meridians such as Conception and Governing vessels and the Thrusting Channel (Ch¹ung Mo), or focus on energizing specific centers or Chakras in the body as in some of the classic and modern interpretations of the Indian Yogic systems. Perhaps even more disturbing is the common phenomena of energy imbalances that often arise in practitioners of these forms. The level and quality of energy suddenly awakened in these practices is not easily integrated into the student¹s body/mind in daily life and may result in mental, emotional or physical disturbances. This has sometimes been described as the Kundalini syndrome within the tradition of Yoga or "Running Fire" by Oriental medicine.

To be fair, it should also be pointed out that there are some teachers of the Taoist arts who warn that the mental manipulation of internal energies, channels, etc. is a dead-end. Their emphasis, beyond embodying desired attributes of virtue and morality, is to simply rest awareness in the body, initially in the lower Dantian, and allow the process of cultivation to proceed naturally and effortlessly. In their understanding, not only is this approach more consistent with principles of Wu Wei, it is also safer both physically and spiritually.

Wu Chi (emptiness) & Wu Wei (effortlessness)

The central paradox of Taoism - summarized succinctly in the first verse of Tao Te Ching, begins with the warning:

"The Way that can be spoken of is not the constant way."5 It is no accident that one of the central sources of Taoist wisdom should state this proviso at the outset. Fundamentally, what the Tao Te Ching tells us is that the Tao cannot be explained or fully described by the intellect. The unrefined intellectual or discursive mind, i.e. the categorizing mind based on past memory and future expectation, cannot by its very nature ³grasp² the essentially ungraspable Tao. From the perspective of the Tao Te Ching, the mind and language itself, i.e., mental and linguistic forms, even refined forms of spiritual ideas and ideals, can only point to that which is beyond the mind. They can never fully describe this realm of being since it is the very source or basis from which the mind and all other forms of life derive. In this sense, mind, language, the very basis of thought, can only describe itself and other forms, including the subtle forms of energy.

Another way of understanding this particular spiritual conundrum is within classical Taoist ontology. This philosophical framework describes Wu Chi, the nameless, formless Void and source of the Tao, as the source of the dual forms of Yin and Yang in all of their countless permutations. This play of opposites in turn gives rise to the Five Elements or Five Energetic Phases, and these, in turn, lead to the forms of life in all of its infinite manifestations. And yet, at the end of the day, so to speak, all phenomena naturally and easily return to the source, the un-manifested Wu Chi. Return to Wu Chi is essentially the model for all Taoist cultivation methods.

If we transpose this "warning"- the inherent limitations of the mind's capacity to describe the Tao- to the conventional practice of Qigong or Neigong, we may rightfully ask the question: how can techniques or forms that work with energies of Yin and Yang, lead to the formless or the Tao? Or, to put it another way, how can the practice of progressively refined technique, no matter how subtle and sophisticated, lead to that which is by its very nature beyond any technique? Can any progressive practice of self-development, whether it is Qigong, Neigong, including the complex formulas of Inner Alchemy, lead through time to that which is essentially selfless, formless, timeless and eternal? On the surface this seems