Just a note for those who might be interested: the “Learning the Opening of the Key” video and workbook course from 9 years ago is now freely available.
You’ll first want to click onto the below hyperlinked page to download the workbook PDF and all supplemental materials:
Continue reading “Learning the Opening of the Key (OOTK) – Course is Now Free”
I would rather not share this publicly, except geez do I wish someone had spared me so many failures and missteps simply by sharing something like this with me earlier, back when I was just starting out in my career, and life.
When you come from an immigrant family…
From a lower socioeconomic background and then suddenly for your career leap into an environment where everyone comes from so much more privilege and status than you ever knew…
When you’re a person of color and what goes for communication and people skills in your culture is not at all the same as what goes for communication and people skills in this society…
When you’re the only woman in a male-dominated industry…
When you’re neurodivergent and an introvert…
…when any of these situations are familiar to you, often a big obstacle that holds you back from the level of success you would otherwise enjoy is this: you’re terrible at corporate-friendly communication and people skills.
I know I am.
In my head I think I’m smiling, warm, affable, speaking clearly, slowly, and concisely, in a structured organized manner…
…in reality I’m looking nervous, shifty, I’m rambling off on tangents, I’m info-dumping on you, and I can’t seem to get to the point.
Because I never had a workbook like this, my growth and improvement rate was slooooow. Like how many times did many, many people have to tell me I speak way too fast and am rambling and info-dumping before I made any effort to speak slower and enunciate better. How often did I cross my arms and slouch and avoid eye contact at important social gatherings and as a result made terrible first impressions with a load of very important people. Either I over-share or I under-share, and can never seem to “strategically share to present micro-vulnerability as a signal of authenticity.” (Like, did you even know that is a thing someone has methodically and intentionally thought through??)
This is a free downloadable workbook based on strategic communication skills development and pattern-rewiring for executive leadership presence, with pretty easy-to-follow actionable techniques, skill development, and practice exercises to improve your people skills, your “executive presence,” and just all around be better at communicating to others.
Continue reading “Strategic Communications and People Skills Workbook”
The Oneful Tarot is inspired by MBTI (Myers-Briggs Type Indicator) personality archetypes and using the tarot to recognize our personality patterns. It was created by Dr. Maggie Man Sin Lee, a Hong Kong-based academic researcher, caregiver advocate, naturopath, and corporate wellness consultant, and brought vividly to life by illustrator Chinkal Pareek.
NOTE: If you’d like to download my personal notes on the MBTi personality profiles for the tarot court cards, which I use as reference in tandem when working with the Oneful Tarot, scroll down to the end of the deck review.
In an executive leadership workshop I attended, I learned about identity capital and how people leaders need to help their teams cultivate identity capital. It’s a concept popularized in The Defining Decade by Meg Jay, which in short summary is the collection of professional and personal assets that define why you’re great. This is subdivided into four categories: (1) skills and credentials, (2) social networks, (3) life experiences, and (4) personal qualities.
Identity capital is what sets you apart in your marketplace or industry. It attracts more opportunities, builds your credibility, and empowers you to be more persuasive. Even when headhunters don’t consciously realize it, they’re looking for candidates with identity capital in abundance. Those who stand out in competitive environments are the ones who are rich with these assets.
I found the workshop useful, so I want to share what I learned. And of course I thought, how fun would it be to combine those professional development learnings with divination as a tool for self-reflection.
Below is a free downloadable Identity Capital Workbook.
Continue reading “Building Your Identity Capital: Personal Spirituality Edition”
There’s this section in Chapter 9 of The Spiritual Axis (Ling Shu) from the classical medical treatise Inner Canons of the Yellow Emperor (Huangdi Neijing), which in canonical versions is often designated as Verse 27 that I love for many reasons.
Nine universally applicable precepts of healing can be extracted from Verse 27. The way they’re worded, you can interpret them through different lenses and they still hold true. The verse functions as axiomatic to acupuncture, and to both the ancient and the modern healthcare provider.
You can read it through the lens of how to ensure physical health, and also how to ensure mental, emotional health, and — as to the primary scope of work I operate in — to spiritual health.
If you’re looking at it as a road map for your own healing journey, it works. If you’re a healer of any stripe, these are nine clinical axioms for guiding patient care. You can look at these nine precepts as applied medical wisdom, or heuristics for clinical decision-making. They work as key tenets for helping a practitioner refine their diagnostic and therapeutic approaches.
And finally, in my view, these nine precepts can be instrumental to helping anyone set the foundation of their personal spiritual practice. It’s designed in such a way that you can account simultaneously for mundane physical health and hygiene tenets and for basic considerations in ritual or ceremonial magic.
Continue reading “On Preventive [Spiritual] Care: Nine Precepts of the Healer”
Let’s time travel and step into the mystical lineage of the Neolithic Wu 巫 shamans that laid the foundation for Taoist mysticism. This free public video lecture explores the birth of Taoist magic and the enduring legacy of Wu shamanism. We’ll decode Taoist occultism as it is practiced today to reveal the hidden history of how shamanism shaped the mystical practices of East Asia, preserving and refining early shamanistic techniques into a structured magical system, giving rise to Taoist mysticism.
Taoism is the enduring legacy of the Wu 巫, and how their oft-forgotten roots and history have shaped the modern practices of spirit mediums, Asian modalities of witchcraft, and Taoist ritual magic today. We’ll bridge the gap between the ancient traditions we’ve inherited from the Yellow River cradle of civilization and modern mystical practices, presented in a way rarely explored in the English language.
This is Taoist witchcraft decoded, in reclamation of the Wu 巫’s shamanic practices of the Tao 道.
The Baopuzi 抱樸子 (circa 300 – 343 AD) by the celebrated alchemist and polymath Ge Hong 葛洪 is a Taoist grimoire that I would posit to be the most if not one of the most influential and impactful texts on Taoist mysticism.
Scans of the text you see in this video are from here [四部備要], this copy of it archived between 1924 and 1931 as part of a national effort to preserve essential ancient Chinese texts. You can also access a digitized version of it via the Chinese Text Project, ctext.org here.
This write-up is the companion blog post to the video to provide some additional notes on the Liu Jia Secret Mantra and other fun (to me) tidbits from the Baopuzi.
Continue reading “An Overview of the Taoist Grimoire Baopuzi”
If you’re not a very disciplined, organized, love-to-do-research, always-did-your-homework Type A personality with strong Virgo vibes, then skip this blog post entirely and do not try to DIY intellectual property law. Hire an attorney.
Even if you are all that, this is not legal advice. I am not your attorney. This is a free-for-all blog post you came across on the internet, on a website about fruity-tutti metaphysical arts no less, so if you leave with even a few nuggets of insight to get you started on the right track, call it a win. Which is to say, do not blissfully rely on what I’ve said here. Apply critical thinking.
But… For an attorney to do the due diligence, put together the application, and steer your trademark through registration with the USPTO, it can cost around $2,500 if it’s a simple, un-problematic trademark. And if you’ve got unique circumstances or someone ends up challenging your mark, then the fees will skyrocket out of control.
If that sounds like way more than you’re willing to spend, well the good news is technically you can file a trademark without a lawyer. Yes, technically it can be DIY, though that comes with quite a bit of risk. If you do it wrong, your application will get rejected, you won’t get your trademark registered, and you will be out of pocket the $250 or $350 you paid for the filing fee (no refunds).
Nevertheless, I’ve always been a do-it-yourself (DIY) type and if you’re kinda like that too, and you are willing to roll up your sleeves and do a lot of research, homework, and study yourself, and you accept the risks of DIY trademark registration, then maybe you don’t need to hire a lawyer or take your chances with one of those discount run-of-the-mill legal services websites. Maybe you can shoot your shot and try to register your trademark on your own.
Here are the basics.
This was something I found helpful from a leadership workshop I participated in, and so I would like to share it with you. I believe the original source or credit goes to Tony Schwartz in The Way We’re Working Isn’t Working (2011).
It’s a personal energy audit worksheet, and then based on your self-assessed scores, set goals and commit to practices that will raise your energy levels in these four fields: spiritual, emotional, mental, and physical.
We often talk about productivity and time management, when really perhaps the conversation should be focused on productivity and energy levels. If you don’t have sufficient energy to invest in your endeavors, then it’s harder to be productive. So you want to make sure you have sufficient energy, at all times.
This worksheet helps you to audit and assess your energy levels, and thus immediately implement changes as needed to raise your energy levels in the areas where they are low.
Continue reading “Personal Energy Audit: Spiritual, Emotional, Mental, Physical”
This is a serviceable everyday personal divination deck that also doubles as an easy, accessible introduction to the I Ching.
It makes for a great study tool as flash cards and for learning the Ba Gua trigram and Wu Xing alchemical phase correspondences.
The listing is $23.20.
Yes, that’s right. A quarter.
But if you are on a tight budget, you can download the printables file and crafty craft your own DIY copy of the deck.
Apart from the six-line hexagram images, the card faces are text only. No one is trying to wow you with artistry here. =P
This deck is intended to be a functional beginner’s tool for learning the I Ching, to be used in tandem with the book, I Ching, The Oracle.
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