zoe

Hi! I'm quite new to the forum, I'm looking for literature recommendations. (here's my newcomer post, although I mentioned that I'm looking for literature there I'm posting here since I imagine the newcomer section isn't looked at terribly often.) I have prior experience with the very early parts of The Secret of The Golden Flower but never got too far with it and I don't feel like the book will at least for now prove very helpful to me. I should note that by experience I really just mean that the basic methods of meditation it put forward garnered a lot more success than I'd experienced before having interacted with many 4Chan /x/ adjacent belief systems (Thelema, Chaos Magik, Wicca, etc.) At the start of my transition a few years ago that proved to be the final thing I could fit on my plate and I found myself unable to continue with any kind of spiritual practice until recently, so I'm now looking for a way to do inner alchemy without the exact instruction of Golden Flower. If context helps on the kinds of personal challenges I've been facing that make me want to learn inner alchemy, here's the main points: - I have quite severe ADHD and it frequently gets in my way when attempting my artistic pursuits (ink/pencil visual art, largely character and environmental art, and a myriad of different kinds of software development), the matters of executive dysfunction and ADHD medication have been some pretty extreme pain points for me. The tendency of lacking focus also makes almost any form of meditation very difficult. - I was pretty thoroughly emotionally traumatized by my childhood and my experience transitioning from male to female in Texas for the last few years (I have left since) all of which I've coped with via base hatred due to a history of consuming really harmful and militant ideology, which has given my mind a tendency to look for things to exhibit malice over at every opportunity, commonly this ends up aiming it at myself. - I'm transgender, I guess this isn't something that on its face seems like it'd conflict with the Tao but with the ideal of Taoism (to the faulty extent I understand it) being the belief I've most closely been able to ever follow I do worry at times that my medical transition is something fundamentally misaligned with the Tao, admittedly it's a pretty artificial state of being. It's something that's greatly helped me but due to my circumstances it's led to a painful rift between me and my family that I never expect to heal.

materially speaking I just want to be able to do the things I enjoy (art, programming, etc) without instantly becoming frustrated and burning myself, preventing me from doing those things on a regular basis. It's very rare that I actually manage to engage with those things in a way that I enjoy them, I'm quite sure that they're actually things I enjoy though as I have far too many hobbies and they all suffer from this issue in a way that feels very similar. There's also the whole trauma thing. It regularly inflicts me with periods of depression and anxiety and I'd like to be rid of that. Those are probably the two most prominent problems that I'm addressing.

I'm aware, I'm seeking literary recommendations because it's better than my old habit of aimlessly whining about my problems on the internet hoping for random things other people do that might help me, although I've gotten better with seeking out things that actually help me in matters at least adjacent to cultivation I frequently find that those things- whether they're really mundane manipulations of my conscience for productivity purposes or something like a shift in paradigm- feel very impotent and like they exist in an otherwise empty part of my mind that I can only observe and that nothing can really leave or influence the outside from. In fact- it often feels like the only mechanism by which these things work is my short-lived belief that they ought to.

ah. Hell yeah lmao

ah okay. I don't generally get a very good impression from "guided meditation" content on YouTube but I'll take the recommendation. *on the lingual stuff I'm single-language asf unless we're counting things that can compile to x86

sick ty! I will add that to the pile lol. I did notice your profile earlier, I actually found the forum when trying to find stuff on the matter, I found the thread that was started here on the general matter of trans people and Taoism but admittedly the entire context of that thread gave kinda bad faith vibes, regardless though very comforting to hear some degree of consensus that there's no conflict, thank you so much! EDIT: Oh. I forgot that Qing == Ching. I was kinda confused with the name similarity.

Oh shoot, that does sound quite helpful. Admittedly comprehending the writing was kinda half the battle lol. Ty!