I want to talk a little about “First Aid” and for that purpose I am going to recommend two practices which will complement and reinforce each other, the first of these focuses on the Heavenly Lord Taiyi and the second is a very powerful tradition Daoist invocation best known in English as “the Golden Light Invocation”.   Now why do we start with the Heavenly Lord Taiyi? Well for the sake of guests as well as continuity I am going to bring his picture from my PPD and some of the things that I said there here:             There is a good discussion of him here:   The Heavenly Lord of Supreme Oneness and Salvation from Misery     for those not familiar with the site if is a great online reference which, while it doesn't seem to be active anymore is maintaining an excellent reference for all things related to what I prefer to call Ritual Daoism.   There are several reasons for starting with the Heavenly Lord Taiyi, first of all he can and will be helpful in himself, secondly you can use him to help you connect with other aspects of the Daoist Pantheon in a safe manner. I don't want to take up to much time here posting warnings, qicat has already done a lot of this, but if someone is in trouble and does not have access to good guidance you can't at least through them a life jacket.   So, the beginning practice is to print out the picture of the Heavenly Lord Taiyi and to frame or mount it in a suitable way. You need some nice sandalwood incense, Nippon Kodo's Morning Star brand being a good one and generally readily locally and definitely online. Sandalwood is used because of its good clean “energy signature”, and I will explain more about that type of thing as we go along.   The first practice involves a simple mantra which I created as a simple means of connecting with the Heavenly Lord Taiyi. It goes like this:   Heavenly Lord Taiyi who rescues from distress, Bless, Heal and Protect me, Help me to realize my Heavenly Nature, To transform my Earthly Existence.   Now to explain this, why do I call him the refer to him as rescuing from distress, rather than saving from misery? That is because in John Lagerwey's excellent book, Taoist Ritual in Chinese Society and History, which I read, and deeply studied about thirty year's ago, describes him as “saving from distress” and I in time in my own usage became "rescues from distress", and so it remains my usage. If you want to use “who saves from misery” that is up to you. The original Chinese will support either translation.   The request to “Bless, Heal and Protect” is to be as helpful as possible. Blessing in this case should be taken to mean, expand my possibilities and potential and open new way to advance. Heal intended as physical and emotional and also to maintain health by healing imbalances that may not even have manifested as symptoms yet, and protect is pretty obvious from the context of this post, but means protect in every way, physical, emotional, spiritually and from spirits.   The request for help to “Realize my Heavenly Nature”, is a kind of poetic, but traditional way of saying realize the reciters full human potential. In writing this I particularly had in mind one of the most important concept in Chinese philosophy, that of 仁 rén, which is usually translated as benevolent or humane, and while these are satisfactory in a worldly sense, it leaves out the notion of “Human Potential”, which is to rise above the animal levels from which we start and become a Zhenren, an authentic person. These ideas are inherent in one very important interpretation of the character rén, which I will enlarge to show detail:   仁   the left side is considered to be derived from the ordinary character for person 人 rén and two horizontal lines, the top one is associated with Heaven and the Bottom one Earth and and is taken to be a symbol for the Human Potential to form a trinity with Heaven and Earth in which one ultimately becomes a Sage on Earth and a Shen in Heaven. Thus the request for help to realize one's Heavenly Nature to transform ones Earthly existence.   Look as the Heavenly Lord Taiyi's picture, burn incense and repeat the Mantra for Ten to Twenty minutes and then clear the mind as much as possible and focus on your breath. This should be at least as long as the incense is burning and longer if you it feels appropriate.   ZYD       Edit: For reasons not at all clear to me it was impossible to make the text before the enlarged Ren character the same as that which followed it.  I tried before posting and I tried by this edit, but nothing worked.  Now I have another reason not to like editing features of the recent upgrade.