We've been talking about the place from which intent and thoughts come from, the Heart-Mind. How do you get there? What is the method?

Let's take the process of Inner Dissolving, Lao Tse's 2,500-year-old tradition of ice to water, water to inner space. When you go from ice to water that's a yin-yang relationship; tension to relaxation is a yin-yang relationship. Now, if you want to go to the place where both of these energies originate, you effectively will move through two levels.

If you're talking about the level of human perception to arrive at relaxation (or water) you will move through the subconscious whether you realize it or not. But that in and of itself has more to do with the transparency of recognizing the deeper implications of what's involved with a specific yin and yang. It's much more about becoming aware of the subtle nuances associated with that yin and yang, which aren't normally terribly obvious.

Now, if you go one step further into what really allows the subconscious to generate yin and yang then you hit the Heart-Mind. You hit what can be called spirit.

So you're playing around with words to a certain degree when you say the Heart-Mind is the subconscious. Well, it isn't really, but given the fact that the West uses the conscious and subconscious dichotomy you could say the subconscious is the Heart-Mind. It's more accurately that which allows the thought that ends up in the subconscious to arise to begin with. It has no qualities, or you could say it has every quality. It's not yin and yang, or you could say that it has every possible yin and yang that could ever exist.

This place is then where you start going ice to water, water to inner space (Inner Dissolving). The process of going to inner space is the process of going to Emptiness. Emptiness only arises once the Heart-Mind is activated to a strong enough degree. How strong is the emptiness? To what degree is the emptiness? When you start looking at emptiness to a finite enough degree, then you find that there are stages of emptiness and qualities of emptiness. The point is each of those stages-when they finally arrive-comes from the Heart-Mind. If the Heart-Mind isn't activated sufficiently you can't go to the various degrees of emptiness.

In the Western Frame of thought there are only two things: the conscious mind and the unconscious mind. In Eastern thought there is a very distinct continuum that goes from gross yin-yang to subtle yin-yang to no yin-yang. The subtle is where the subconscious comes in. There's obvious intent and then there's the Heart-Mind, which is the place where intent ultimately comes from. Awakening and engaging the Heart-Mind ultimately is a keystone of all higher level Chi Gung and TAO meditation.