The Path

by Michael Puett

  We often tend to think that some people are just like your friend: spirited and highly energetic. Or we assume that at the end of a tiring day, it’s normal to simply run out of energy—but that we’ll regain it with the dawn of a new day.

  But how would we live differently if we thought in terms of being able to become full of spirit through our own training, and were just as aware that we are responsible for our low energy and loss of vitality? The Inward Training, an anonymous collection of self-divinization verses from the fourth century BC, focused on this very question. It asked, What does it really mean—and what does it really take—to feel more alive?

  To Be like a God

  For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods.

  —The Bible, Genesis 3:5 (King James Version)

  Many of our assumptions about vitality and human agency are based upon age-old notions about divinity. From the earliest days of humanity, people have imitated what they imagined was divine to learn how to live and be a person of consequence.

  The most common beliefs about agency are modeled after all-powerful deities and creators, such as the Mohist deity Tian: one who made the world, could move mountains, and had clear standards of right and wrong.

  When we think of taking action as standing up for ourselves or getting what we want, and when we think of agency in terms of creating, controlling, or possessing things, we are drawing unwittingly upon the legacy of such notions about divinity. We see ourselves as exercising our own agency along similar, if lesser, lines: we can lift a rock, buy a house, win a race. In these ways, we too effect change and impose our will; we can even change the very landscape of the earth if we wish.

  This is how people have long conceived of agency. Alongside early human impulses to imitate the divine, though, was a growing trend toward cultivating the divine within. The religious movements of the Axial Age rejected old Bronze Age practices of using priests to mediate between humans and the divine, claiming instead that all humans possessed some divine potential. In ancient Greece, figures as diverse as Empedocles (a pre-Socratic poet and philosopher) and Plato cultivated these divine aspects within themselves. Plato spoke of “divine ecstasy,” and even Aristotle referred to how cultivation could lead to “divine understanding” that transcended the human. Similar movements arose in India: The Upanishads, a collection of religious texts, called for people to access the divine directly through cultivation exercises such as breathing and meditation.

  Several centuries later, some of the early Christian movements emphasized our ability to uncover our inner divinity. The early Church called these Gnostic movements heretical, insisting on an absolute division between God and humanity; after all, God drove Adam and Eve from paradise for eating an apple that the devil had told them would make them become like God. This injunction—that humans should not strive to become like gods—was powerful precisely because the desire to become godlike had been so persistent throughout human history.

  But the Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century revived the concept of a divine spark within each person, one that provided direct access to God without the mediation of a priestly elite. Human divine potential became even more central in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The nineteenth-century German philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche’s assertion that “God is dead” and that man can take his place captured the modern focus on an individual’s potential and right to impose his will on the world. Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini were to take this one step further: each saw himself as a Nietzschean Übermensch, or “superman,” creator of a new world order.

  Today, even in a far more secular age, there is a resurgence of interest in self-divinization—though we might not name it as such—that is rooted in the earlier Gnostic traditions. We see people around us behaving like gods, whether they are seeking the divine light (or true self) within or acting like masters of the universe. We may debate the extent to which any of us should strive to be this way, and disdain those who seem overly power hungry or narcissistic. But we don’t typically question the underlying assumption itself: that we become divine by asserting ourselves. Most of us associate the power rush we feel when living this way with feelings of vitality and aliveness.

  This is not the only model of divinity, let alone vitality. The Inward Training also called for humans to become more divine. It argued that humans could, and should, alter the world by cultivating themselves to take on divine qualities. But its authors wanted to avoid the emphasis on the will, and so they did not define spirits as figures exercising control over the world or asserting themselves over other people. Instead, they portrayed them as highly refined, charismatic, and attuned beings that transform the world through their sheer connectedness with everything.

  This is a different model for human action that can lead us to a different way of thinking about how we should live. When we reconceptualize action and agency as arising from connecting rather than from dominating, we become more divine in an essential way: we become more fully alive.

  The Energies of Vitality

  We already do lots of ordinary things that make us feel more alive. The simplest of these is taking a deep breath. Though it has now been incorporated into Western medical treatments for anxiety and stress, deep breathing has roots in many ancient traditions. The Inward Training teaches that deep breaths are more than simple breaths; we breathe in energy that helps us to soothe ourselves, calm negative emotions, and relax.

  Imagine the impact of taking in that sort of energy through these deep, calming breaths all the time, not just during isolated moments in a yoga class or while meditating. We would not become so depleted of energy if we did this on a regular basis.

  Or another example: exercise. When you go for a Saturday morning run, you’re gathering energy; in fact, you’re energizing yourself. Sure, your legs feel like jelly, and you are sweating up a storm. But you probably also feel ecstatic—you feel that “runner’s high.” What science says comes from a rush of brain chemicals called “endorphins,” the Inward Training envisions as refined energies or spirit flowing through you. When you feel that highly energized sensation, you see things more vividly, you feel things more keenly, and the walls between you and the rest of the world drop away.

  Compare that postexercise exhilaration with the feeling of an exciting creative breakthrough at work. The rush is the same as that when you run: it’s a surge of well-being and vital energy coursing through your body. Or think about the feeling of incredible oneness with strangers around you when you are at a music concert or a sporting event. You feel the energy of the crowd pulsating through you; it sweeps you away.

  All these energies are the very same thing: energies that heighten your feelings of vitality. Your face is flushed because you feel more alive, not just because you went running. You feel satisfied because you feel more alive, not just because you came up with a great idea for that presentation at work. A deeply fulfilling conversation with a friend doesn’t just make you feel more connected; it makes you feel more alive. Whether you’re doing something physical, mental, or social, that glowing excitement and oneness with the world are the very same physical feelings. The Inward Training says that everything we experience comes from energies called qi and that the most ethereal of these energies—the ones that give us that exhilarated, alive feeling—are the energies of divinity.

  What If We Saw the World as Composed of Qi?

  As for the essence of all things, it is this that is life.

  Below it generates the five grains;

  Above it becomes the arrayed stars.

  When it floats between Heaven and Earth, we call it ghosts and spirits;

  When it is stored within a person’s chest, we call that person a sage.

  The notion of divine energies was hardly an unusual one in antiquity. In fact, it was a pan-Eurasian concept: in India, there was the notion of prana, or “breath,” and in Greece there was
pneuma, or “breath of life,” “soul,” “spirit.” All described a sense that some ineffable, unseen life force coursed throughout the cosmos and was responsible for the origins of life itself.

  Today many people would be skeptical that feelings of vitality come from divine energies. But qi is a useful metaphor for what it would take to make us feel more alive, and we can learn from it even without believing it to be true. All we need to do is to think of these energies in an as-if way: What does it mean to act and to live as if we were cultivating qi? And if we do so, how do we live differently? What would our lives be like if we lived as though this framework really exists?

  We commonly hold a dualistic worldview: God versus humanity, matter versus energy, mind versus body—we think of these as separate things. But the Inward Training holds a monistic worldview, teaching that every single element in the world and in human beings is composed of the same thing: qi. Everything, whether it is mind, body, matter, or spirit, whether it is earth, people, animals, or air, is composed of this very same substance.

  But although qi exists in everything, there are infinite gradations of it. Rocks, mud, earth, and other inanimate parts of the cosmos are composed of a low and coarse qi—what we might call turbid qi.

  As qi becomes more highly refined, it becomes “vital essence.” What sets vital essence apart from all else is that it exists only within things that have life. It is a life-giving force found in plants and animals.

  And finally, when qi is at its most ethereal and refined, it becomes divine qi. This sort of qi is so highly energized that it actually affects things around it. This qi is spirit itself. Spirit goes beyond being a life-giving force; it gives living beings consciousness.

  A plant has life-giving qi, or vital essence, but it can never be divine; it can never have a spirit. It can never think and process the world. It merely exists in the world. Spirits, though, being divine qi, are fully and vibrantly alive. They have full clarity and see the world with flawless consciousness. To be able to see the world so fully is what allows them to act in the world in transformative ways.

  And what about us? What sort of energy are we composed of?

  We human beings are a combination of the turbid qi of the earth below and the divine qi of the heavens above. We have less-refined qi, including our bodies, but like plants, we are alive, so we also have vital essence. And we even contain within ourselves a little bit of spirit. Unlike plants, we have consciousness, and each of us can effect some changes in the world: we can pick up something and move it through space, throw a ball, open a door. We possess the same potential that the spirits do.

  Lessening Our Dependence on External Things

  Hold the spirit within, and do not be excessive. Do not allow things to disorder your senses, and do not allow your senses to disorder the mind.

  The energy of rocks and plants and spirits remains constant. But human beings are different from all other things on earth in that this jumbled combination of energy shifts constantly in us. Over time, we can either become more drained of energy and more like the earth, or we can hold on to our spirit and become more spirit-like.

  It is difficult to hold on to our spirit. It’s more typical for us to spend our days doing things that drain us of it: We get angry during a fight with our sister over the logistics of a family reunion. We become frustrated by our daily commute and stressed about upcoming deadlines. We feel jealous of a friend, resentful of our spouse, anxious about the future. Every time we find ourselves dominated by negative or extreme emotions, we are allowing external things to sap our energies, allowing these events to wield too much power over us. Every time we go through the daily grind, trudging through our everyday activities, we de-energize ourselves. Our spirit is being drained away, and we are filling ourselves with bad qi instead. This causes us to live so poorly and so out of balance that we get exhausted. We slowly lose our vitality and our sheer embrace of life. If we continue living like this, our spirit will ebb away long before our physical life has ended.

  We’ve already mentioned which types of everyday activities help us to feel more alive. But this doesn’t mean that we should start going on more runs whenever we have a spare moment or seeking out our most entertaining friends to keep us feeling exhilarated. Just as external activities and events can make us feel giddy and excited, external events can drag us down. Every day we feel buffeted about by events around us: A lunch with a friend? We feel happy. Someone snubs us at work? We feel depressed. A morning run when the weather feels perfect? We feel ecstatic. We twist our ankle at the end of it? We feel crushed. These emotional extremes are exactly what the Inward Training would say devitalize us, exhaust us, and drain us of spirit.

  Of course, we all know that sad events trigger negative emotions and drain us. But even exciting and exhilarating events aren’t good for us if that’s what we depend on to feel a rush of energy.

  Triggering events of any sort—whether they make us giddy or jealous or furious—are external. Our emotions are being pulled to and fro by things that happen around us, and any feelings of aliveness we may experience are not steady ones. But these externalities don’t have to make us bounce from happiness to sadness and back again. What is within our control is the cultivation of balance and alignment, or an inner stability: to be grounded so that we aren’t vulnerable to the inevitable happenings of the day.

  Cultivating Balance and Alignment

  If one is not joyous and not angry, balance and alignment fill the chest.

  The Inward Training sees the world of our experience as consisting of discrete things that typically interact poorly with one another. This includes human beings and our fragile, imperfect relationships. But the text also describes an underlying Way in which everything is connected. The more these discrete things of the world interact well with one another, resonating with one another, the closer they get to the Way. We get closer to the Way and increase our feelings of vitality when we cultivate the ability to remain balanced. The more stable we are, the more able we are to refine and hold on to good qi.

  Like many of our texts, the Inward Training moves easily from grand, transcendental ideas to matters that we would consider exceedingly mundane. Concrete, ordinary things are essential means of refining our qi. Since all parts of us—body and mind—are composed of qi, refining the body helps refine the mind, and vice versa. Everything we do to refine one of these spheres will shift our entire being to a more balanced and stable place.

  That’s why many passages in the Inward Training exhort us to pay attention quite literally to our bodies: from standing up straight, with good posture, so that qi can flow unimpaired; to regularly practicing deep breathing, which lets balanced, aligned breathing fill our chests; to eating regularly but in moderation, to keep our qi constant. We might not think that it matters all that much if we stand up straight or sprawl on a couch, or if we are oblivious to our breathing, or if we skip lunch a few days in a row. But what we think of as physical cultivation is responsible for nurturing emotional stability.

  At the same time, we should not focus excessively on one area of physical well-being: for instance, becoming obsessed with green smoothies and a vegan diet at the expense of remembering to breathe deeply on a regular basis. We should be aware of maintaining all of these spheres in balance. The alignment this approach brings to our physical body allows us to become receptive to a higher form of qi.

  Balancing out different spheres helps to support our emotions as well. Many of us seek tranquility and alignment by withdrawing from the world temporarily, avoiding the various entanglements that draw out all sorts of uncomfortable feelings. So we take coffee breaks, catch a movie, go on vacation or a retreat: this is how we strive to regain balance. But we can experience balance and alignment always—while still fully immersed in the world—by modulating our impulsive desires and being cautious of the ups and downs that come with too much anger or even too much joy.

  Many people think of harmony as a onetime action
: bringing people who disagree on the best way to tackle a problem into agreement, for example. But the Wuxing, another text on cultivation from the fourth century BC, extends the lessons of the Inward Training by teaching that it is not only within our means to harmonize discrete, separate elements but also that we must do this constantly.

  According to the Wuxing, each of us has five potential virtues that need to be cultivated: goodness, propriety, knowledge, ritual, and sagacity. Each one helps us to refine our better sides. But they become problematic if we try to develop one virtue at the expense of the others. There is such a thing as having too much goodness, craving too much propriety, being fixated on ritual, and depending too much on knowledge. If we always relate to other people by exuding goodness, we can easily seem inappropriately gushy in some situations. If we’re overly concerned with propriety, we can seem overly formal and distant. If we focus too much on gaining knowledge, we can be too clinical. And concentrating too much on ritual can make us too rule oriented and prevent us from seeing the greater picture.

  No one virtue is an absolute norm for how to be. Instead, we cultivate ourselves constantly so that these virtues modulate one another. If we tend to focus too much on behaving appropriately with our coworkers, we can decide to loosen up and make a point of being a bit warmer. If we frequently research new purchases to the hilt, we can temper that tendency by deliberately making our next purchase without reading every consumer review out there. We work on playing our virtues off of one another and recognizing the infinitely interlocking and changing relationship among them, as well as how they give rise to many emotional dispositions. It may seem paradoxical, but we can achieve constancy only by continuously sustaining these moving parts. This is how we get to a more stable place, free from being rocked to and fro emotionally, so that spirit flows unimpeded within us.

  Refining Our Response to the World