New Member Videos Posted Last Month

Here are the latest videos for Dragon School Teachings:

Building Your Dragon Business. Part 1 Business Tools

Talking about what it takes to run your business. Working our our community to begin building and sharing our businesses.

Time, Integral Being and Leadership

The humans experience of time. How to use and be aware of time in such a way to live more fully.

Personal Practices and Empathy

How to build your personal practices and have to use empathy in life.

Join our Newsletter & Stay in Touch

Today’s Tao Lesson – Names and Perception

Video Taoism Class #1 from  Awakening Dragon Urban School Classes

As people know I am expanding and create a whole new set of teachings for Taoism.

Here is the first class: Watch the Recorded Class Here

Class 1 – Personal Tao

This class will go over 3 topics.

Tao / Personal Tao (5 minutes)

Your Personal Tao Name Exercise (25 Minutes)

Multi-threading our Perception (30 Minutes)

In Learning Tao from Awakening Dragon Mountain School, watch these Two videos:

Taoism 101 – Introduction to Taoism

Taoism 101 Class – Session 1B – Your Path

You will notice that it is very free form.

This new Class will focus on Learning Tao from Awakening Dragon Urban School.

The key to this system is focusing on Personal Tao. In other words, Tao becomes Lessons on Personal Tao. Tao represents the unknown in life. Personal Tao represents being yourself so wholly that you define yourself.

This means the Mountain Dragon school teaches you to wander and learn as you explore life. Seeing yourself in the reflections of your actions. Over time, these tests reveal your character and style in each experience.

Urban school shifts the balance to knowing yourself more directly. In Awakening Dragon Urban School we will list out the stories in your life and then proactively manage them.

One Urban school student told me to build more structure and then triple it!

So let’s do just that! Instead of 9 threads of your life, let’s look at 27.

Lesson 2) Using Our Names To Explore Personal Tao

List up to 9 Names people know you by in life.

I will use myself as an example:

1. Casey (my core name)
2. Airen (My gaming handle)
3. Cashmere (Nick Name)
4. Kenneth Kochmer (my family name from my father’s Side)
5. Kenny (From childhood from people who didn’t know my real name)
6. Milochik (Family name from mother’s side)
7. Dad and/or Father (What my children call me. Notice how most children call you by your role.)
8. Julie’s NickName for me. (while I could share this, keeping it personal makes it more magical)

Now, let’s triple the structure.

List up to 9 Roles you fulfilled in life. For me I will list out:

1. Father
2. Husband
3. Programmer
4. Teacher / Student
5. Youngest Son
6. Creator
7. Engineer
8. Witness
9. Wage Slave

List the following concepts down. Everyone uses this same list. You can change them also.

1. Animal   (Accepting your instincts)
2. Trauma  (How you have been broken)
3. Fire        (We are a living fire, we burn food to be alive, feel your flame)
4. Community   (We are a reflection of our communities)
5. Nobody   (At times, we need to be outside our story and not be in any story; I spend about 40% of my time in this state to keep a clear head working through mundane or complicated tasks. We call this the crystal space.)
6. Your Home or Country
7. Zen (Your place of inner peace or Sacred Garden)
8. Your Totem or Spiritual animal form. (Dragon)
9. Karma  (Your connections from past generations and/or Lives if you believe in reincarnation)

Wow! That is only the start of being you! Each aspect flavors your soul and impacts how you see life and move through life. In truth, I could have listed hundreds of common external definitions people choose to focus on or limit their spark in life. The more a person chases external definitions of their life, the less room there is to be in one’s own life.

Is there an optional number of stories to embrace? Not really, but without Taoist teachings to help you manage your life stories, what happens is the over 27 life stories combine and merge down to only 3 to 7 life stories. As the stories merge, they change into incomplete and conflict-ridden life stories that only lead to constant conflict.

How to use this list.

• Write out what each element means for you, and explore how they have elevated or hindered your life.
• Identify the stories that don’t serve you and use the energy freed up to be more your core story. You can throw away your wage slave job and find work that you truly enjoy. So, I turned being a wage slave into a life coach and then used my wage slave experiences to help others.You can analyze, learn, improve, and then release your trauma stories so they don’t contaminate your core stories and relationships.
• Be playful to expand yourself. Look at your totem animal and learn what it means to give you clues on how to be more focused in your life. As a dragon, I help empower others.
• Look at which stories have been forced upon you, and then release the subconscious actions that arise from your country of origin or any of the other stories.
• Look at your names. We change every seven years, and sometimes, we need to give ourselves a new name to symbolize our new self.
• Keep the names that give you joy. Release the names that hold you back… Bye-bye, Kenny.
• Learn to separate your stories. Don’t be a teacher to your partner, for example.
• Keep the stories that are useful or bring joy; let go of old stories you no longer need to navigate around others. I am no longer an engineer, so it’s time to let that story go so I don’t do things I am no longer qualified to do. Put stories like this in a new category called Accents for when you need a dash of spice in an interaction.
• And countless other homework items we will go over in class.

There are two significant techniques a Taoist uses to manage their life story.

Trick number One: Keep Your Stories Separate.

For example, don’t simultaneously be a Father and Banker and a Trauma victim. This will merge into a terrible mess, causing you to get fired as a Banker and passing on your trauma to your child.

Integrity isn’t trying to be one story for everyone; instead, integrity is being consistent in the story you present to each person.

Trick number two is to multi-thread your stories rather than holding multiple stories. So, the last half of the talk will be about this technique.

Lesson 3) Multi-threading our Perception.

This material will be covered in the video.

The truth is instead of holding multiple stories at once, you can hold multiple threads of awareness to shift between your stories.

Multi-threading our Perception is both an active state of meditation, a way to juggle stories and finally a framework to logically and intuitively process the events around you.

Sign up with our membership to attend our next class

Or watch this class.

Watch the Recorded Class Here

Extra Materials to Watch and Listen to as Homework.

Audio to Listen to:

Alan Watts – Life as Music
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTLYiOg9C6M

Chinese Farmer Story
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWd6fNVZ20o

Dandelion Seed
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgZ73Lc5VS8

Movie to Watch: 

Support your Local Sheriff

Watch the video below at the end of the post.

The sheriff is an example of a Mountain School Taoist moving through life.

I look forward to seeing you at our next Tao Talk in August!

In Tao, they say gold is heavy. (Meaning it wears and loads you down)
Notice in the movie that the sheriff never finds gold; instead, he lives truly to his own style. Living fully is the gold.

What are the sheriff’s personal teachings? Kindness? Notice that he is always kind in his actions. Integrity? He stays true to his stories and accepts the stories of others. Notice he thinks he is the dandelion seed (mountain school) in saying he is going to Australia, but in reality, he is the sailor(Urban School), being proactive in his actions and using his experiences to be taken elsewhere in his journey. Also notice, that he rolls from bad events to good events as the Taoist Farmer.  However, the most striking aspect is his awareness, always being aware and actively using what is around him as part of his own path. You could summarize his personal teaching as an aware lifestyle, and that is it.  So this shows a simple Taoist truth: you may have 1 personal teaching or a 1000, but in the end, live fully as yourself.