How God Punish People in Taoism

In the previous article, we talked about how humans can destroy god’s world; this article will talk about how the gods can destroy people when you betray the gods and do things to offend them. I am not trying to scare you away, but you got to know the power of the gods too. In Chinese, there is a phrase – 五雷轟頂,天誅地滅. It is hard to translate, but it roughly translates to “Five thunder crashing down from above, the sky will punish, and the ground will be exterminating you.”

Five Thunder Crashing from Above

The word five thunder is a metaphor and a specific term to describe our “magic power.” The metaphor, in short, is about a big impact or disaster falling upon you. However, it is not the case with the gods’ power and Taoism.  Thunder, 雷, means the rain on top of a farm; the sky above keeps raining down its power to make something happen.  Five thunder is the five elements' powers; gold, water, wood, fire, and earth.

Gold Thunder comes; it will crash your feelings and make your feelings go wrong. Imagine you lost feeling for your wife, then you want to divorce. If you lose feeling for your career, you will quit the job. You will become demonic if you have a feeling for doing evil things. If you feel happy while doing drugs, you will drug yourself and damage your health. One of the common examples I have seen is that someone who was always faithful to the Tao will “suddenly” don’t want to cultivate and FEEL that the Tao is nothing to them. This sudden flip or “switch” is often because the Tao has already smashed you with the gold thunder.

Water Thunder comes; it will make you lose the grip on your time and impatience, and you don’t want to put time into anything. It is as if you don’t want to do anything because you fear committing. You can also be dragging, slow, dreadful, and feel like your life suddenly slowed down, like you live 30 years in a day.  We all know that time flies when you are happy, and this will be the opposite if the thunder hits you.  A common example I have seen is that people suddenly stop showing up on LINE and trying to hide away from the uppers, the Tao like they are ghosts and we are the sun.  They will suddenly not want to communicate, talk, and spend time on Tao-related things; and sometimes feel like the Tao things are taking over their “time.”

Wood Thunder comes; it will destroy your motivation and hype to do things, making you give up, discouraged, and sometimes even frustrated. When you have destructive thoughts, this thunder can push the feeling up more, pumping you and hyping you up to push you to take action and do that stupid thing, such as hitting your friend or wife and ending up causing a relationship to shatter.  The common example I have seen is that the person being hit by this thunder will lose motivation and hype about the Tao-related things, like they have no interest in it anymore. They will eventually lose the sense of value and feel that all these are nothing to them.

Fire Thunder comes; it will make you do things without thinking, especially doing things that are bad to yourself and only cause harm and not help. This thunder can also break all your success and destroy the things that have already happened. It kills all your success that came true. Maybe your client already said they are buying the house you are showing them, then this thunder kicks in, and they suddenly rejected your offer. A common example I have seen is that people will “snap” and suddenly do something to get themselves in trouble or into that position where the uppers will have to scold them, and they will often use this moment to snap and quit.

Earth thunder comes; it will destroy your ability to wait for the fruit to come in life. You will see yourself being impatient, careless, and not getting anything back after working hard.  This thunder will also crush your soul-body protection layer, making you more exposed and vulnerable to any spiritual attacks. A common example is that people will start to do nothing but sleep. They will want to hide, sleep, escape, and become useless people.

When we say “Five Thunder” crashing on someone, it’s saying using all the magic power to ruin their life. Many people mistake thunder for lightning and think it is about five strikes of lightning going down on someone from the sky. That’s hilarious; how come they cannot even understand thunder and lightning is not the same thing.

Sky Punishes

The sky refers to the gods above, the celestial court. They will punish people, and yet what is the punishment? In our Saam Law wisdom, there was a lesson from the Tao about penalty vs punishment. There is a clear difference between them.

The penalty is taking something back from you so that you can learn your lesson from the “pain.” Fining someone is a form of penalty; taking money from you gives you a strong memory of the case, and I hope you won’t do it next time because of this memory in your heart.

Punishment is about making you lose something because you have taken it from others. For example, you have wasted the time of the whole class by creating a big drama. Punishment would be to give you a detention and punish you for standing outside the classroom for 2 hours, so you also lose the time that you have taken from others.

If the gods are punishing you, it means that the gods will make you lose things until you have paid for what you have cost others to lose with your action.  For example, you have made your master heartbroken because you broke his trust. God will punish you by making you experience the same later so that others will betray you in your life, and your heart will break even more so that you can lose enough to balance your wrongdoings.

Ground Exterminate

The ground refers to the lineage.  It means that the whole lineage will destroy you and exterminate you. What do we mean by exterminating here? When we say exterminate, it means to destroy and destroy until you have nothing left.  It doesn’t mean to kill someone; it means to destroy it and break it up until it cannot be broken anymore.

The Virtue of Destruction

The gods will punish and destroy people because they are merciful and kind to nature.  If one can be that bad to the point that the gods need to kick their butt, this person can also go around and do bad things everywhere and anywhere. If you let them go, you are just being nice to the bad guys and mean to the other innocent ones. That reminds me of how the martial artist gave birth to a disciple with bad virtue. Then later, that disciple goes around and uses the skills to bully people and do bad things. If the master doesn’t clean up the mess and destroy him, it is his fault for causing the whole world to suffer. For the sake of the bigger party, the gods must not let go of the bad ones and will destroy them to ensure they don’t harm more people with their bad virtue and powers.

Also, read up on virtues such as loyalty, righteousness, benevolence, and what is evil. Stay aligned with your Tao, and you will be one of us who are constantly helping and contributing to creating the world for the gods so that the gods can create the world for us.

Ordain today and become a Taoist! Nothing is better than being a Taoist and witnessing all these by yourself!  Still not so certain? Then we welcome you to read our “First Taoism Book”!