Your Body is Sacred: 3 Ways to Practice Embodied Spirituality

 

By Aletheia Luna

Guest writer for Wake Up World

Since the very beginning of all religious and spiritual drive, there has been a deep prejudice against the body.

The body has been called carnal, worldly, lustful, sinful, and illusory. At best, it has been thought of as mere dust, at worst, it has been thought of as a doorway to the devil himself.

What’s worse is that when the body has been celebrated (such as in many neo-tantric practices), it has been fetishised and in some ways objectified.

There’s no doubt about it: we’ve had a weird relationship with the body as a species.

On one hand, we either condemn it and try to subjugate it – on the other hand, we indulge it to the extreme. We tend to swing from one side to the other, never seeming to find a middle ground.

Thankfully, times are changing. We’re sick of treating our bodies as flesh suits to be ascetically denied or endlessly satiated. Instead, we’re beginning to understand and respect our bodies’ wisdom, intelligence, and profound connection to the truth of reality.

We’re starting to see that the body is a sacred doorway to the Soul and the sacred wild Spirit of Existence. 

But as always, seeing our bodies as sacred is not easy. There are layers upon layers of inherited beliefs, prejudice, and wounds that obscure our ability to see clearly. Not only that, but modern spirituality – with its tendency to emphasize disembodied “transcendence” – can make it extra hard for us to come into a healthy relationship with our bodies. This is why embodied spirituality is so desperately needed.

What is Embodied Spirituality?

Embodied spirituality refers to a lived experience of spirituality that is grounded in the body. When we embrace embodied spirituality, we come out of our minds and back into our bodies: into that which is visceral, instinctual, and deeply felt through the senses. We see that the body isn’t just a temple of the Divine, but a living expression of Spirit. As such, the body becomes a source of tremendous wisdom and insight: a doorway to the present moment. Not only do we see the body as sacred, but we see it as a microcosm of the macrocosm – it becomes a path to both the transcendent and immanent nature of the Divine.

Your Body is a Storehouse of Trauma 

As psychiatrist Bessel Van Der Kolk writes in his book The Body Keeps Score:

The body keeps the score: … the memory of trauma is encoded in the viscera, in heartbreaking and gut-wrenching emotions, in autoimmune disorders and skeletal/muscular problems

Renowned psychologist and trauma-expert Peter Levine goes on to write:

Traumatic symptoms not only affect our emotional and mental states, but our physical health as well.

And as psychotherapists C. Zweig and S. Wolf write:

We may forget an abuse, but the body does not. Like shock absorbers, our bodies absorb the wear and tear of emotional experience. We may defend against it, but our bodies take the heat. And slowly, over years, the patterns of stress and trauma accumulate. Inevitably, if we do not become conscious of the shadows lodged in our muscles and cells, they begin to tell their tales. 

As we can see, body and mind are not separate. Whatever painful experiences we undergo in life are stored within our bodies as trauma. This trauma manifests as muscle tension, mysterious aches and pains, ‘body armoring’ and holding patterns, autoimmune disorders, and endless other illnesses.

Without unpacking, exploring, and releasing what’s within our bodies, we remain frozen and unable to move forward. This is the first reason why developing a friendly approach to our bodies is crucial – it is a core element of spiritual healing and transformation.

Your Body is a Gateway to Spiritual Wisdom

Our bodies are also a storehouse of great wisdom.

As the great German philosopher Nietzsche once wrote:

There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy.

And as Buddha once said:

The body is anchored in the here and now while the mind travels into the past and future.”

Although at a core level, we aren’t defined by our physical blood and bones, our bodies are an undeniably powerful gateway to the present moment. Not only do they anchor us into the Eternal Now (hence why many meditation techniques focus on the breath and body), but they are also insanely accurate truth-detectors. They help us to both tune-into what is true and real, on a visceral felt-level, and what is false.

Indeed, our bodies are great and multi-layered gifts. They carry an intelligence that predates the mind and an intuition that is directly aligned with the Soul.

As mythopoetic author and psychologist Marion Woodman writes,

This is your body, your greatest gift, pregnant with wisdom you do not hear, grief you thought was forgotten, and joy you have never known.

There is so much potential for healing, revelation, integration, and regenerative grounding on offer when we honor the body; when we practice embodied spirituality.

But … where do we start?

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Connecting the Dots Between Covid-19 and the Not-So-Great Reset [VIDEOS]

 

ER Editor: This article does indeed attempt to connect the dots, but it also does so by connecting back to the Swine Flu pandemic, so-called, of 2009, in which Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg played a key role, just as he has tried to do this time around, but with heavy MSM censorship.

We remind readers of the attack Wodarg, in conjunction with former Pfizer CEO Dr. Mike Yeadon, has made on the current vaccine trials, delineating clearly what the medical risks may be of the Pfizer vaccine and others, and why they should be stopped. See Dr. Wodarg and Dr. Yeadon Request a Stop of ALL Corona Vaccination Studies, Call to SIGN THE PETITION.

JOHN SLEGERS

You may have heard of the “Great Reset” by now. Maybe you’ve learned about it from one of these articles in Time Magazine. Maybe you’ve learned about it from this silly BBC hit piece. Maybe you’ve learned about it from this op ed in Forbes. Or maybe your “crazy conspiracy theorist” uncle forwarded you one of the many videos on Youtube that mentions this topic. But what exactly is the “Great Reset”? Who is behind it? Why is there such a buzz surrounding it? And how does this relate to Covid-19? The purpose of this article is to help you answer these questions.

The launch of the “Great Reset” campaign

As I’m writing this article, it’s exactly 6 months since the “Great Reset” campaign was launched. Since 3 June 2020, the website of Charles, Prince of Wales, would contain a section titled “The Great Reset”, which contains the following statements :

Today, through HRH’s Sustainable Markets Initiative and the World Economic Forum, The Prince of Wales launched a new global initiative, The Great Reset.

For over fifty years, His Royal Highness has promoted action for a sustainable future to ensure that the natural assets can endure for future generations.

In January 2020, The Prince launched his Sustainable Markets Initiative at Davos, which calls on communities, businesses, investors and consumers to take the urgent and practical steps required to transition to more sustainable practices.

The Great Reset, which was launched during a virtual roundtable today, aims to rebuild, redesign, reinvigorate and rebalance our world. It has been designed to ensure businesses and communities ‘build back better’ by putting sustainable business practices at the heart of their operations as they begin to recover from the coronavirus pandemic.

 On that same day, Klaus Schwab, the founder of the World Economic Forum (WEF), published the following on the WEF website :

There are many reasons to pursue a Great Reset, but the most urgent is COVID-19. Having already led to hundreds of thousands of deaths, the pandemic represents one of the worst public-health crises in recent history. And, with casualties still mounting in many parts of the world, it is far from over.

This will have serious long-term consequences for economic growth, public debt, employment, and human wellbeing. According to the Financial Times, global government debt has already reached its highest level in peacetime. Moreover, unemployment is skyrocketing in many countries: in the US, for example, one in four workers have filed for unemployment since mid-March, with new weekly claims far above historic highs. The International Monetary Fund expects the world economy to shrink by 3% this year — a downgrade of 6.3 percentage points in just four months. (ER: All CREATED by the co-ordinated over-reactions of our governments!)

All of this will exacerbate the climate and social crises that were already underway. Some countries have already used the COVID-19 crisis as an excuse to weaken environmental protections and enforcement. And frustrations over social ills like rising inequality — US billionaires’ combined wealth has increased during the crisis — are intensifying.

[…]

The Great Reset agenda would have three main components. The first would steer the market toward fairer outcomes. To this end, governments should improve coordination (for example, in tax, regulatory, and fiscal policy), upgrade trade arrangements, and create the conditions for a “stakeholder economy.” At a time of diminishing tax bases and soaring public debt, governments have a powerful incentive to pursue such action.

Moreover, governments should implement long-overdue reforms that promote more equitable outcomes. Depending on the country, these may include changes to wealth taxes, the withdrawal of fossil-fuel subsidies, and new rules governing intellectual property, trade, and competition.

The second component of a Great Reset agenda would ensure that investments advance shared goals, such as equality and sustainability. Here, the large-scale spending programs that many governments are implementing represent a major opportunity for progress. The European Commission, for one, has unveiled plans for a €750 billion ($826 billion) recovery fund. The US, China, and Japan also have ambitious economic-stimulus plans.

Rather than using these funds, as well as investments from private entities and pension funds, to fill cracks in the old system, we should use them to create a new one that is more resilient, equitable, and sustainable in the long run. This means, for example, building “green” urban infrastructure and creating incentives for industries to improve their track record on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) metrics.

The third and final priority of a Great Reset agenda is to harness the innovations of the Fourth Industrial Revolution to support the public good, especially by addressing health and social challenges. During the COVID-19 crisis, companies, universities, and others have joined forces to develop diagnostics, therapeutics, and possible vaccines; establish testing centers; create mechanisms for tracing infections; and deliver telemedicine. Imagine what could be possible if similar concerted efforts were made in every sector.

The COVID-19 crisis is affecting every facet of people’s lives in every corner of the world. But tragedy need not be its only legacy. On the contrary, the pandemic represents a rare but narrow window of opportunity to reflect, reimagine, and reset our world to create a healthier, more equitable, and more prosperous future.

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Psychiatrist Blows the Whistle on Pandemic Fearmongering

 

November 29, 2020 by Derek Knauss

From Dr. Joseph Mercola’s website:

Story at-a-glance

• There’s an entire school of research within public health on how to frighten people, known as “fear appeal”
• Fear appeal is based on the premise that to successfully implement a public health measure, you must first highlight a threat. And, to work, the threat must be made personal, so that people fear for their personal safety
• Next, you give people something immediate to do that will set them on the path of cooperating with the plan in its entirety. Examples during the COVID-19 pandemic include not leaving your house, wearing a mask, staying 6 feet apart, closing certain businesses and keeping children home from school. In the future, we can expect to be told we must get vaccinated and digitally tracked before we can resume life as normal
• By adding confusion to the mix, you can bring an individual from fear to anxiety — a state of confusion in which you can no longer think logically. In this state, you are more easily manipulated
• Eventually, when the fear and anxiety are great enough, desperation sets in, at which point people are willing to do just about anything to get relief

Dr. Peter Breggin, a psychiatrist, has written more than a dozen bestselling books on psychiatry and the drug industry. He’s frequently referred to as “the conscience of psychiatry” because he was able to successfully reform the psychiatric profession, abolishing lobotomies and other harmful experimental psychosurgeries.

This past year, he’s homed in on COVID-19 and the fears around it, which is the topic of this interview. He also started researching the history of Dr. Anthony Fauci, who has been the face of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, learning more than he bargained for in the process.

“He just looked like this kindly gentleman, until I started to listen to what he was saying and to look into what he was doing,” Breggin says. “In early April, [my wife] Ginger brought this scientific article to me and said, ‘Honey, this looks like it’s impossible, it’s fake or something.’ 

It was a 2015 article by a big team from North Carolina [led by] Ralph Baric,1 He’s the final author on it and the power behind it, although the lead author is Vineet D. Menachery.2 This article is talking about making a coronavirus that’s going to be a new epidemic agent. They’re talking about it. They’ve actually accomplished it — and it’s a SARS coronavirus. 

It’s a virus that will infect the lungs that comes from bats … And they’re checking it out and they find that it will infect human lung epithelium. They give it to mice and the older mice are getting very sick and ones that are compromised die.

It sounds … [like] the precursor of SARS-CoV-2. They even tried, by the way, to make a vaccine for it and they couldn’t. And I’m thinking, ‘My God, what’s going on here?’ And then I look down the line of all these authors. There are [two] Chinese names there … and they list themselves as being from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. 

And then I look who’s funding it. Well, China is funding it. And Fauci is funding it from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. I’m thinking to myself, ‘My God, we’re giving the Chinese a biomedical weapon’ … [The two Chinese authors] turn out to be two of the very, very top Chinese people in this, what is essentially a military lab. The Wuhan Institute, nothing like that is anything but military in China.”

What Is Fauci’s Role in the Bio-Assault on the World?

Breggin claims he was able to share the information with someone close to President Trump, and three days after sharing this finding, the president canceled the U.S.-Chinese research collaboration that was working on coronavirus gain-of-function research.

However, Fauci quickly took hold of the American research efforts and in October 2020 injected additional funding. Some of that funding will surely still end up in China, Breggin says, by way of the EcoHealth Alliance, which for years has subcontracted research work to the Wuhan Institute. Fauci also gave additional money to the University of Texas. Breggin explains:

“In Galveston, there is a Level 4 biosafety lab that can work with the most dangerous viruses. So, I decided to look into this. It’s not great magic to it, you have to use some search engines like DuckDuckGo. I [searched for] ‘China’ and ‘the Galveston Institute,’ and I got … a press release … bragging about their relationships with the Wuhan Institute, working on viruses. 

So, no wonder he’s sending them money. I start digging deeper and I come across a letter from the education department to the University of Texas, saying they’ve not been forthcoming about their connections to China and the Communist Party (CCP), and in particular from the institute in Galveston. 

So, I’m looking at this network of connections with China. They list them all. We have a blog out about that too now. And I realized there’s nothing stopping Fauci. Absolutely nothing is stopping him. He is going to carry on his assault on the world. And Fauci knew that the Wuhan Institute was unsafe.”

Breggin delves into some of the backstory that helps explain what’s been happening. In 2014, then-President Obama called for a moratorium on gain-of-function research [making harmless viruses virulent] in the U.S. He did not, however, mention collaborations with the CCP. To get around Obama’s moratorium, Fauci outsourced the gain-of-function research to the Wuhan Institute.

Based on the evidence, which Breggin details in a recent report featured in “Fauci’s Treacherous Ties to China and Globalists,” Fauci appears to play an important role in the global takeover by technocrats.

Technocracy is an economic system in which the world is ruled not by democratically elected politicians but by technocrats — a conglomerate of ultra-wealthy elites, scientists and technicians whose aim is to rule the global population and the allocation of resources through the use of technology.

Fear Is the Tool of Tyrants

Breggin was asked to be the medical legal expert in a lawsuit to put a stop to the never-ending emergency edict by the governor of Ohio. In his medical legal brief,3 Breggin detailed why shutdowns aren’t working, and the harm they inflict on the population.

This lawsuit has also stirred up other anti-lockdown projects around the U.S. You can find more information about all of this on Breggin.com. It’s important to recognize that the primary tool that enables local and state leaders to implement unconstitutional mandates such as universal mask wearing, business shut-downs and draconian stay-at-home orders is fear.

Unless people are terrified, they won’t agree to such freedom-robbing edicts. This is a well-known fact, and as noted by Breggin, there’s an entire school of research within public health on how to frighten people, known as “fear appeal.”

“What an odd name: Fear appeal. It’s a euphemism for scaring people to death. That’s how you ‘appeal’ to them. And it’s a very long standing [field of research]. 

The particular article [Ginger and I] studied together made several points. It said, first, you have to not only create something or have something that people are afraid of in order to get your public health measures imposed, but you have to make it personal to them, you have to make them afraid personally.

Then you have to give them something immediate to do to begin cooperating with the plans that you have. We have many examples of that. Things to immediately do [are]: Don’t leave the house; wear a mask; stay 6 feet apart; start closing down businesses and so on. Don’t let your kids go to school and on and on … 

That got me into looking more deeply at the whole question of public health. And public health, sad to say, is essentially a totalitarian model. It does not raise issues of collateral damage, it doesn’t raise issues of the Bill of Rights, the constitution, of liberty, the right to people to die with their boots on, the American tradition of individuals and their own communities making decisions. 

There is no such concept. It starts with the assumption that what public health officials think is true and must be applied regardless of the context. And we see this with this globalism. 

It doesn’t matter whether you’re working in Africa or in Communist China, North Vietnam or America, these are the principles, they’re about politics above everything. It’s quite astounding. So, [public health] became something that was perfectly usable by the most extreme totalitarianism …

At the top is extraordinarily wealthy and powerful people and organizations. I see it as a kind of a cooperative but competing group that welcomed Communist China, which shows how little these people — like Fauci and the World Bank and our governments in the Western world —worry about anything except wealth and power. 

Once they invited Communist China into this circle, China became a big, big player along these world predators and let each other be. Until Trump came along, no major figure stood up and said, ‘No, no, we’re going to go back to the [way things were].”

The Psychology of Learned Helplessness

Fear is undoubtedly one of the most powerful motivating emotions for individuals, and the single most powerful intervention capable of controlling an entire population. It’s certainly hard to miss that fear has been used to control the masses during the COVID-19 pandemic.

By adding confusion to the mix, you can bring an individual from fear to anxiety, a state of confusion in which you cannot think straight anymore.

Governments now have access to incredibly sophisticated technologies, including artificial intelligence and machine learning, which is being used for all it’s worth to push this fear propaganda. The end goal is to push us into a state of helplessness, so that they can come in and “rescue” us. For decades, Breggin has studied learned helplessness and its remedies.

“When we’re born, we’re fundamentally helpless. All we can do to be taken care of is to express pain, we can cry, we can wiggle, we can express suffering. But we have no ability to take control of the environment other than by hopefully attracting our caregivers that cuddle us or look for a thorn in the side or whatever. 

And that remains an aspect of humanity. That never leaves us. All of us can at some point be made to feel helpless again. And when we feel helpless, we become like the infant. We feel we have to be saved, basically. We look to other people, we look to drugs, alcohol, we look to authoritarian religions, we look to leaders of all kinds.” 

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REVERED AYAHUASQUERO TAITA JUANITO HAS AN ESSENTIAL MESSAGE FOR THOSE STRUGGLING DURING THIS CRISIS

 

Dylan Charles, Editor

Waking Times

When I look at people’s faces covered in masks, I try to discern from their eyes alone what they are feeling. And it’s tough.

But, it’s tough not because you can’t see their whole faces, it’s tough because people everywhere are hiding their whole selves behind their egoic masks of confidence, surety, and stoicism. They are hiding their true feelings, their pain and their suffering from the world.

We are all experiencing unprecedented stress, loneliness, anxiety, worry, and uncertainty right now. And in this climate, it’s very easy for the mind to take you in to fear. Fear of what’s happening now, and fear of what is to come.

But these feelings aren’t the whole story. They don’t represent the deepest truths about our lives.

The fear is a finger pointing at the moon. Pointing to something so big that we can’t see it right in front of our eyes. Yet here there is a truth much greater and far more powerful than all the fear in the world combined. And when you connect to this truth, your power and your smile return.

Speaking in a recent online conference, revered Ayahuasquero, Taita Juanito shares a powerful message for all people who are experiencing these challenges right now. It’s a message that gets lost in the clutter and flash of an info-drenched and drama-craving world, but it is so simple and pure, that when you open your heart to it, it cuts right through everything else.

I hope you are doing well, but if you’re struggling right now, give some consideration to Taita Juanito’s words here, and please share them with those you know who are also in need of such a reminder.

The following transcript was taken from an interpreter to Taita Juanito in a recent presentation by Canta Con Amor 2020:

“All people that are going through difficulties, we send you many blessings, because you are our family. All of us are connected. Now, in this time it is different for all of us. Some of us have practices and medicines, and this is good. Continue practicing your spiritual path, and you can consult plants at home. But another part is that some of us don’t have spiritual practices. We’re in sadness. There’s absence in their life, in their heart. And for all of you experiencing this absence in your heart, please understand  that you have never been alone. Always, there is something greater, bigger, deeper, which is the Great Spirit. You have to connect more. You, who are experiencing absence, open your heart.

Some say that you need faith. We say you need to find balance in this time, because for those that have a spiritual path and for those that don’t, there is a lesson for both. First, never feel alone, because when you close your eyes and you feel the vibration of nature, the Spirits of nature, and the Great Creator, there, automatically you’re not alone. It’s a limiting belief that is taking you there.

For you, we pray for you, and you should pray as well, from your heart. And if you have plants, do plant baths. Share this time with your family, your children, your friends, because all this is teaching us community. We run around too frequently, searching for money, or things that we may need or want, but then we forget to live life. So now you have this chance. Live life. Live intensely, asking the Creator and nature.

The plants have always been here when you place a good intention to a bath or steam bath with plants, or you have a visionary plant, ask of the plant, and the plant will always show you the door. This time is a gift. Many people might see it different, but when we go to the deepest aspect, there’s an ecstasy, a vibration of energy, of light.

A few days ago I drank medicine and I was asking, and what I saw was a world full of vibration, full of colors, and we were observing it, and I was asking why are you showing me this? And it said to me, ‘you, humanity have to be here, in this world of vibration with nature.’

It’s always been her for you. The spirits have always been here. You might call them Guardians, Angels, or Guides, but they have always been here. We have to ask from them, ask your Guardian, ask that energy of Spirits, the Angels, to come and change your memory through a prayer, through a fast, to strengthen you.

All this fear, this absence that I feel, it is only a limiting belief which is coming, and all things which come to your life, they are for something. They will bring you strength, they will bring you study. What is this experience teaching you? What does it want to say to you? And there we connect with the art of life, the art of feeling.

This is why the Creator gave us our senses, eyes, mouth, nose, ears, skin. Activate it. Activate the listening. It’s important to listen to the heart and to listen to all the energy of the Spirits.”

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LAO TZU’S 2500 YEAR-OLD MESSAGE TO ‘THE PEOPLE OF THE FUTURE’ TELLS HOW TO APPROACH OUR GLOBAL CRISIS

 

Dylan Charles, Editor

Waking Times

The lessons of 2020 just keep rolling in. Everything is being challenged, and so much that had been in the shadows forever is being illuminated by truth. Our system is totally unsustainable. It’s collapsing under the weight of its own hubris, and all of the things we thought brought us security and convenience are turning against us. It’s time to rethink all of it.

My sense is that we have drifted far from the true nature of life, and have grown dangerously out of balance, divided, and fragmented. Over time we have lost our ability to perceive life in its wholeness, and now, in the actual reality of living in a masked, socially distanced, self-isolating world of almost 8 billion people, this truth is unavoidably right in front of our faces.

Humans aren’t as mysterious as we’d like to believe. We’re creatures of habit, predictability and pattern, and we love to follow programs. By carefully observing the patterns in life, the sages and wisdom keepers of generations long gone were able to envision our current predicament.

I came across a passage from Lao Tzu’s the Hua Hu Ching, in which the venerable Lao Tzu seems to speak directly to us today in this time of great crisis. In an oration with a student, Lao Tzu explains how the human mind of the future will deteriorate into fragmentation, specifically noting that the intellectual element of the mind will take over.

“Kind prince, there is great power in an integrated and sincere mind. By keeping their minds whole and untouched, the ancient sages evolved profound mental and spiritual abilities. They understood that intellectual development by itself fragments the mind and can lead a person far from the true nature of life. In the future, humanity will overemphasize the intellectual element of the mind. Instead of recognizing the wholeness of life, people will perceive life as having a worldly aspect and a spiritual aspect that are separate and unrelated to each other. People will also lose themselves in isolated fragments of conceptual information and become the victims rather than the masters of their knowledge.” ~The Complete Works of Lao Tzu: Tao Teh Ching and Hua Hu Ching, translated by Master Hua-Ching Ni

This sounds remarkably similar to the prophecy of the Eagle and the Condor which sees the people of North America becoming dominated by the masculine, logical, intellectual mind, as represented by the eagle. The remedy for this is a reunification with the condor of South America, which represents the feminine, intuitive and empathetic qualities of the mind.

Lao Tzu goes on to comment on how we, ‘the people of the future,’ can rectify this situation, noting that we will become dependent on modern ideas which don’t serve us well, while shunning holistic knowledge which may be of great benefit to the times. He offers the following insight.

“The remedy for people of the future age of great confusion lies in the ancient knowledge of the integral way of life that has been passed down from generation to generation. The holistic way of life, practiced by the ancient sages incorporated body, mind and spirit as a whole in all activities. Their clothing, diet and dwellings were in accordance with nature. They relied on their limbs for transportation. Their education was broad and comprehensive; it did not emphasize one element of their being while neglecting the others. They did not seek out special activities for recreation; their work and recreation were one and the same. Their forms of exercise developed not only the body, but the mind and spirit as well, through the harmonization of internal energies. Their music functioned as a bridge between mind and spirit and was not just an emotional release. Their leaders were chosen because they were outstanding models of virtue, not for their financial or military capabilities. Philosophy, science and spiritual practice were incorporated as one whole.” ~The Complete Works of Lao Tzu: Tao Teh Ching and Hua Hu Ching, translated by Master Hua-Ching Ni

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