The day you become a Taoist, you get ordained, and you should know what that means. Ordained means submitting your life to the Tao so the Tao can care for you. When the Tao does that, you need to have trust, faith and determination for the Tao, not give up, and follow the Tao’s guidance and teachings to overcome any hurdles in life. You have rules to follow, such as the five virtues, the ten commandments, etc. These seem like simple things to you initially because they are righteous, logical, make much sense to a " normal " person and are positive about their Tao. As they cultivate, the challenges come, the hurdles show up, and now they will not be as strong as before. This is when your Tao Soul can be challenged, sick or dead. We have three souls, not three “things” but three categories of soul energies. Neutral, negative and positive. Your neutral soul helps you to stay focused in life and be “alive.” Your negative soul helps you to think and ponder, while the positive soul helps you to move and do things. As Taoists, we have our Tao Soul on top of that. It’s called the 道魂, which is born when we ordain. This soul is like the “Taoist life force” inside us. When the Tao soul is sick, your focus, knowledge and even actions as a Taoist will go wrong. When the Tao soul dies, you will quit and give up being a Taoist. The Tao soul is very important and needs to be cultivated to get stronger so that when hurdles and challenges come, you won’t be knocked out easily when hurdles and challenges come. How to tell if your Tao Soul is sick? It’s very simple; the Tao Soul is like our normal soul (Three souls). Observe the three factors of your Tao side and see how you are doing compared to when you were good or just ordained etc. The first factor is your focus and direction as a Taoist. Are you seeing the clarity and having the will to “stay alive” as a Taoist? I am not talking about suicide but more like if you don’t want to stay alive as a Taoist, you will want to quit the religion. Some people sometimes want to quit, which is the Tao Soul’s neutral energy decreasing. If your neutral soul energy is doing good, you should be very happy being a Taoist, wanting to continue and focused on your direction and end goal as a Taoist. The second factor is the negative side, which means do you feel like learning? Do you have the desire to absorb and intake the teachings? If your negative soul energy is down, you would want to “take a break” from learning or even feel like any information to you is “too much,” while a healthy Taoist would only be HAPPY seeing all the knowledge is there for them. It’s like going to a buffet; who would not be happy seeing so many good foods there waiting to be eaten? Only the sick people would complain about “too many foods.” The third factor is the positive side, which means you want to do the things a Taoist does. We do our ceremonies on the 1st and 15th; we attend weekly classes and our daily altar rituals. One day your Tao Soul is sick, and you will suddenly want to stop doing these things; you will feel that it is “too much” and “exhausting” to do them. Some people even stop burning incense because it is “too much to do.” Let me tell you here if a Taoist can skip burning incense to their gods at the altar and go out for grocery shopping first the first thing in the day, that Taoist is already very sick in the Tao Soul; no way I can tolerate myself treating my god with that little respect like it is nothing. Even your dog needs you to feed them food before you go out, and you can skip your god? Oh, mine, what kind of Taoist can do such a thing? The “health” will go downhill when the Tao soul is sick. I am not talking about your physical health, but your Tao health, and when the health is down to a certain point, your Tao life will die, and you will be giving up, withdrawing, and quitting or just “suicide” as a Taoist. This is very dangerous because that’s not just the end. You know you were once a Taoist and once got magic power inside; these things will become the “juice” that the evil spirits want to loot from you. That means you will become a hot target with no power to protect yourself, and spiritual attacks will follow very soon – without you being able to even sense or defend yourself from them. You will think this is normal and that nothing is “a problem” because you have already lost the ability to sense spiritual issues. Then even if you get sick, have bad luck, or even have other problems, you will render it all “normal problems,” It is just “part of life.” It’s scary when a Taoist fails their Tao-journey. As we say, water can help a boat to go forward; it can also crash a boat too. What is the medicine for those who are sick with their Tao soul? Go back to the basics! Five virtues, ten commandments, reading the scriptures, teachings, and even some blog posts on the website about hurdles, virtues and those basic theories. The most important thing you should focus on is the HEART, and virtue is your medicine. When virtue fails, everything follows. Return to the basic virtue and learn to accept your wrongs, acknowledge the problem, and ask for help. Ask for the teachings and ask your master for help, follow the instructions and cultivate, ask for God’s forgiveness, and correct yourself. Once you start doing these things, your Tao soul will recover as you truly put your faith into the Tao again. It’s not the dead end, but you could make it a dead end if you refuse to dip yourself back into the soup of virtue. Virtue is important, and I have seen many people lose their virtues when their Tao soul is sick. Even with words like appreciate, respectfully, or whatever nice words, their actions turn disgusting, virtueless, rude and even offensive. At the same time, they will not even realize how bad they have turned because they are sick in their Tao soul, and sickness has already blinded them from seeing the truth in reality. Once the Tao soul dies, the evil energy overtakes the heart, and the heart then goes into another “mode,” which transforms their personality and character into “something else,” which is what they call their “new normal.” The Celestial Medic Deity’s power is very helpful for fixing the Tao Soul; you can always embrace his powers to get your Tao Soul back on track. Read the book with its spell, prayers, fu heads etc. Read the Celestial Medic Scripture book too! Most importantly, return to the basics and reread the virtues and commandments. Once you align yourself with the Tao again, recovery is just around the corner. Review the basic stuff, re-read about the three ordains and twelve wishes, or even the doctrines. Treasures are all there in the "newbie" section!
