Barefoot Doctor - Tao of Internal Alchemy: Activating the Immortal Self

by

Barefoot Doctor

Activating the immortal self

Copyright Barefoot Doctor, Stephen Russell 2017

First published 2001 as Return of the Urban Warrior by Harper Collins Publishers

This edition published by Wayward Publications Ltd 2017

www.waywardpublications.com

The moral right of Stephen Russell aka Barefoot Doctor to be asserted as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All Rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author.

Cover design Spanky Pymm

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

ISBN 978-1-912062-30-0 in epub format

ISBN 978-1-912062-31-7 in mobi format

ISBN 978-1-912062-32-4 in azw3 format

ISBN 978-1-912062-33-1 in pdf format

ISBN 978-1-912062-34-8 in print

This is a reprinted renamed and updated version of Return of the Urban Warrior, though we still welcome any feedback on references, items or chunks that need updating in your opinion as we can adjust manuscript mid-flight and in return the author will reward you with an acknowledgment in the revised version.

Everything in the book you are about to read is based on Taoism. Though Taoism is ancient Oriental in origin, it has been generously passed down as a universally applicable system of self-development. Taoism is not a religion. It is merely a collection of methods for self-enlightenment. It will not, therefore, induce you to inadvertently or otherwise contravene the terms or tenets of any faith you currently hold dear to, either by birth or adoption. In line with the non-traditional, non-Sinophilic attitude of the author, phonetically spelled Chinese terminology has been kept to a bare minimum to avoid unnecessary confusion and instead substituted with the author's own zany, yet as-literal-as-possible translations. It is hoped this will not offend purists. But if it does, they know what they can go and do.

There are many ways to look at a book upside down, the right way up, from a distance or up close. You can see it as a pile of sixty-odd-thousand words stuffed into a small cubic mass of solid paper matter. You can see it as the pointless destruction of yet another forest. You can see it as a worthy object to display on your shelf to close the gap between other books. You can see it as a method of escape from the perceived drudgery of daily life. You can see it as a new pile of data for your mind to absorb and store for further use. Or you can see it as a mind-altering substance equal in potency to any strong drug of your choice. A drug that through its ingestion actually reconstitutes your reality at a radical level.

Though from my point of view as author in this particular charade (of you playing reader, me playing author), this book is written with maximum entertainment factor in mind, you could probably be far more easily entertained reading fiction or watching a movie. However, what this book promises is an interactive, somatic experience, whereby you, playing the role of reader, are led along a pathway of thought as dictated by me, playing the role of author; the very following of which will actually reconstitute your reality, or at least your experience of it, quite fundamentally.

In other words, without doing anything more than reading the contained text in sequential order, you will be taken through a transformational process which could easily result in your absolute enlightenment. And all you have to do is read it.

Like taking a pill, this text can transform you both in the short term, while reading, and indefinitely though this transformation requires nothing more from you than your undivided attention from start to end of the text. In short, the perfect high-speed spiritual fix for people on the run.

These days we have grown accustomed to sound bites of information requiring only a very short attention span. For this chunk of information (mostly consisting of a deeply guided meditational journey of sorts) to penetrate and do its work properly though, you will need to exercise a considerably longer stretch of attention. But then who said I had to make it easy?

I do however help you concentrate by the liberal use of subtle hypnotic triggers, which enable you to relax into the process, making it an altogether painless, indeed potentially a sublimely pleasurable experience.

Incidentally, I would like to point out (especially to readers in litigation-happy societies), that when attempting anything suggested in this book, you do so by your own cognizance and that neither I, the book's publishers, nor indeed anyone or indeed any entity involved in the chain of supply resulting in your current reading experience, can or will be held legally responsible for anything untoward happening to your person as a result of your experimentation based on information presented herein. By the same token we do not expect credit for any positive results either. This is your book now, and your trip (in other words), and so your responsibility.

Thank you.

Barefoot Doctor, London 2001

There isn't much time, so I won't waste any attempting to flam you with nonsense. There's far too much of that around as it is and my self-given remit is to deliver valuable perception-changing information with the minimum of fuss or extraneous textual posturing.

The purpose of this opening item is to draw you in, to seduce you and to induce you to overcome, override or simply bypass any resistance you may have to allowing these words to penetrate your consciousness.

And that is a very cheeky thing to do.

I'm fully taking advantage of a time-honored illusion we still cherish that the printed word is sacrosanct and that a whole pile of printed words shaped into the cubic mass of a book such as this is approximately sixty thousand times more so.

On the one hand it's true. By sucking this body of text into your circuits you will inevitably instigate a fundamental change in the way you perceive and experience reality and for that this book may well be worthy of its sacred status. On this basis, the same can be said for a fast-food hamburger, which will, through its interaction with your gut, also set up a chain of chemical effects that will fundamentally alter your perception and experience. This is in fact the crux of what you are about to read how your willingness to hold a hamburger sacred will lend your life meaning in the moment and, for a brief while, fill that irksome gap in your sense of wellbeing and integrity.

I'm saying this to immediately disinherit you of any false conceptions about this meeting (between you and I). I do so to free us both from unnecessary expectations. That way the process will be much more fun. I say process because gaining access to the most intimate part of your mind and introducing a whole raft of new concepts requires a process of you deciding to trust me enough to allow yourself to entertain the ideas I present for long enough to benefit materially from the substance thereof. Or at least to confuse you into a semi-trance state with long convoluted sentences (like the last one) or just by talking kinda funny as I tend to do but why not if you can get away with it? (Hell, I'm a funny guy.)

Notice that I've started to wax personal rather early on in this dialogue, which you may consider impertinent, but surely there's enough charade going on in the world without me adding to it. I've always had little patience for the longwinded and awkward tangos danced in society to ease the transition from bullshit to authenticity. I tend to go straight in and connect eye to eye, mind to mind, heart to heart, soul to soul, spirit to spirit even. I can't be bothered to waste the time otherwise. Can you?