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Ok so lightning on a basic level is known to 'travel the path of least resistance' to balance it's self out so that negative and positive charges are balanced. I am more specifically interested in fork lightning, or lightning that shoots from the clouds to the earth, and how does it know where the path of least resistance is? We know that lightning often strikes trees or tall buildings, but how does it know to go towards the trees or high buildings from many km's up in the sky. It seems that trees or high buildings are not necessarily 'just in the way' because they get hit more frequently than the earth it's self. Lightning will even prefer to hit a person 1.8m tall, such a small distance above the ground compared to the lightnings path from up in the clouds, rather than just hit the ground directly. Tall buildings have copper metal rods on top of them to attract the lightning to them to prevent the building being struck, and they transmit the energy to the earth. But how does the lightning know to travel towards the rod, or indeed the building to begin with? Lightning also seems to travel left and right on it's way to earth, perhaps because of denser condensation in the air providing a better conductor for the electricity, but this doesn't explain why it more frequently hits tall structures. Here are some possible answers i found... Send feelers out - Small electrical currents scout out the space in front of the main bolt, and if the scouting currents hit a good conductor suddenly the scout current becomes the main bolt and so that is how it finds it's way. Earth energy rising - Although we only see the main lightning bolt, earth energy could be rising from the earth, through buildings, and especially through good conductors, and reach out higher to the sky attracting the bolt towards them. Like water - Water will flow down the easiest path but it may not always be truly most easiest path. Perhaps a small flow of water runs down a rocky cliff, zig zagging from left to right along a small valley cut in the cliff face, yet if the water knew that if it could only raise 2mm above the lip of the up most valley it could fall without friction (well air friction not friction along the rockface) directly straight down to the bottom of the cliff, instead of zig zagging all the way down. A small amount of extra energy to get over that lip would be overly compensated by the extra energy recieved by being pulled down by gravity while free falling down to the bottom. Therefore i don't think it is like water because... Spark plug - Sparks go from the cathode to the anode. If there are several different anodes, one made of copper, one gold and one aluminium, all equal distances from the cathode the spark will go to the gold because it is the best conductor. But how does the spark know without trying first? It's as if the electricity knows ahead of time. Now what if we try to trick the spark by having all anodes going to earth except the gold one which goes to a piece of wood (terrible conductor). The spark will now go to the copper because it is the 2nd best conductor and is earthed. Yet there is no first spark to the gold where it realises 'uh oh, this is the wrong one' then changes it's mind, no it goes straight for the copper. So how does it know? Can electricity look ahead? Does it have intelligence? Does then water have intelligence because it can find an easy path down the rock, yet not as intelligent as electricity because it can't know what is beyond what is directly in front of it? Why is this relevent to the tao bums? Tao encompasses everything and therefore lightning also. Qi is energy, lightning is energy. Beyond the stillness is the ability to use your internal universe as a lab to discover laws of the external universe. I would like to know how you find the chi to react within yourselves, how does the energy know where to go, what more can we learn about electricity? Are any answers you suggest experiences of your own cultivation, from scientific backgrounds you may have or just what you believe to be true? This has been bugging me all day, thanks for your input!