The 5 Excellences

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This is a 5-minute read that will help orient your spiritual & financial pursuits in life in a single direction based on Taoist wisdom I read in my early 20s

When I was 23, I came across this small book at a Salvation Army while looking for Art to resell.

At this time in my life, I was trying to figure out how to follow this impulse towards the supernatural & mystical while financially thriving and finding my purpose.

I feel like alot of seekers go through this and some never figure out how to move past it.

For me, it was learning of the 5 Excellences written in The Barefoot Doctor’s Handbook for The Urban Warrior: A Spiritual Survival Guide.

These 5 points fundamentally imprinted the structure for how I would begin to build my life, skills, and tradecraft. 10 years later, they are the pillars for my life here in West LA.

The Background on the 5 Excellences 

Centuries ago, the Taoist masters would travel from town to town without care about finances or livelihood, seeking only to heal & help people.

The author makes the point that these 5 excellences are just as relevant in the modern age and should be examined with attention. Basically, if you can do these 5 things with a moderate degree of skill, you will never go hungry or be homeless as they are always in demand.

1. Self-Defence - No explanation needed. Can fight for money if truly desperate

2. Healing - Help take care of others around you Best to combine hands-on with herbal knowledge (This is why I started taking Herbalism seriously as both a skill & trade)

3. Meditation / Magical Skills - Spiritual Arts for your path & helping others along on theirs.

4. Music / Song - Entertainment, camaraderie, and general merry-making. Being a joy to be around is quite the social helper.

5. Poetry / Communication - Learn to communicate clearly with language so you can teach & lead others.

The bottom line, you always have something to trade. No matter what societal situation, timeline, or location all of these are relevant to financial stability, health, and social integration.

Here are mine specifically

1. Self Defense - Jui Jitsu. Great exercise, and getting manhandled like that I feel is good humility for the soul. May not be super practical in a street fight but every fight I’ve been in ends up on the ground pretty quickly anyways.

2. Healing - Medical Herbalism & Wild Foraging - I take time each month to learn about the local plants in my area in case the world collapses for some reason. I keep an apothecary at my home stocked with 75+ types of herbs to treat basic seasonal illness, vitality, and acute conditions.

3. Meditation & Magic -Meditation for a still mind, magic for the creation of a new world. I’ve committed the past 13 years to esoteric study & practice with teachers directly. After seeing so many teachers turn out to be just abusive cult leaders, I tend to gravitate to the indigenous plant medicine & healing traditions.

4. Music & Song - I’m learning the guitar and putting a lot of attention into learning the songs of the various Peyote traditions. Quite the magic & healing in those vibrations.

5. Poetry & Communication -

   1. Marketing - If you can help other people sell their services or products you will always have income.

   2. Storytelling - For inviting people into your narrative, invocation & communicating myth & wisdom

   3. Teaching - The teacher does the most learning and helps refine the knowledge bank in their mind when sharing with people who learn differently than they did.

If you can find how to apply these into your life, you will never go hungry, never be without income, and will always find yourself surrounded by good people. The key is to start and then just keep going. Don’t stop, build momentum with learning new skills, and expressing something for the first time.

Opportunities will arise, doors will open, and you will find yourself in some pretty far out situations. trust me.

This path assists you in adding structure to creating the life you want and you will find that others want to be a part of that with you as it’s not so different from their desires.

The secret is to get started and reflect often on the alignment with your inner compass.

Let me know if you want some feedback on creating your own 5 excellences.

See you soon,

-Taylor

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