──Divine Revelation Part 1
Date Published: 2012-4-27
[Note: On April 20, 2012, during a Heaven-worship ritual, the Duke of Zhou delivered a divine revelation. This article presents the part of the divine revelation related to daily spiritual cultivation.]
Duke of Zhou
(1)
The daily etiquette of practitioners is divided into three steps:
First Step: Revere the Universe and the Divine. Learn the Heaven-humanity etiquette first. Show respect for Heaven above and have awe for the spirits and divinities. Thus, one will fear acting recklessly in thought, word, and deed. Every word and action is known to the spirits and divinities, therefore one is bound to be more restrained and will avoid behaving with disregard.
Second Step: Be filial and respectful to teachers. Only a filial person will truly respect their teachers. Establish oneself with virtue, and filial piety towards parents and respect for teachers must always come first. Don’t take this lightly. This is the fundamental principle of being human. Do not speak to your parents in a commanding manner or order them around, instead use soft and gentle words and take care of them attentively. Nowadays, people do not understand how to be filial to their parents. They comprehend being filial as just giving money or material things to their parents. In fact, it is not. True filial piety is about comforting their parents’ hearts, obeying them and respecting their wishes, and caring for their physical well-being. Love your parents as if they were your children. Even crows return to feed their elderly parents, fulfilling their filial duties—how much more should human be mindful of this. Show reverence to teachers and elders, and never be impolite. Serve your teachers as you would your father, with utmost respect and propriety.
Third Step: Be courteous and show respect for all things. When dealing with others, prioritize courtesy; when serving teachers and elders, prioritize etiquette. Between friends, trust and honesty must be upheld, and deception must be avoided. Between teacher and student, there must be mutual trust, and suspicion must not arise. Observe the proper hierarchy between elders and youth, showing respect for the old and love for the young.
Currently, the key focus of the “Three Rescues” work is to guide everyone to learn to be a better person, to properly cultivate the Way of humanity, to fulfill their duties at home, to fulfill their roles as an integral part of a society, and to follow the Way of the cosmos in all things.
Family affairs, national affairs, and world affairs—be concerned about everything. The Way of a father, the Way of a wife, and the Way of a child—these are namely the Way of humanity. First, walk in the Way of humanity, and when the Way of humanity is upright, then you will be aligned with the Way of the cosmos. Otherwise, hoping to ascend to Heaven in a single bound will be seen as ridiculous. Every single step must be built on a solid foundation. When the Way of humanity is perfected, only then can you integrate with the Way of the cosmos.
(2)
Strive to achieve harmony between Heaven, Earth and humanity. Don’t be inclined to engage in conflict with others, as this disrupts the balance within your heart, and damages the Way of humanity, and even harms the Way of the cosmos. The energy at each level must remain stable. The first level of energy is the proper cultivation of the Way of humanity. The Way of humanity encompasses both filial piety and the Way of respecting teachers. Only when filial piety is fulfilled can one properly respect their teachers. When the energy level of the Way of humanity stabilizes, your personal microcosm will gradually resonate with the macrocosm of the Universe at the same frequency, making it easier to connect with the cosmos. At this stage, you will resonate with the Way of the cosmos, and achieving communication. This is extremely difficult.
People who have not perfected the Way of humanity, even if they manage to resonate with the cosmos, often do not communicate with the righteous divinities. Instead, they are susceptible to receiving messages from negative entities resonating with frequencies similar to their own.
(3)
There is a law in the Universe known as correlative resonance. What is correlative resonance? It is when two waves of the same frequency create a resonance. That is, when your heart aligns with the Way of the cosmos, you will resonate with the cosmos and receive energy and messages directly from the depths of the Universe. This is called correlative resonance.
Correlative resonance can be attained through prayer, but there is no guarantee of a response, as only when you achieve tranquility of the mind and your frequency aligns with the high-dimensional frequency can correlative resonance occur. Therefore, correlative resonance cannot be forced.
Why do so many people fail to receive divine messages? Because they have not gradually removed their sins, and their hearts are filled with all sorts of desires and negative information, so their hearts are not pure enough to resonate with the cosmos.
Therefore, the first step in cultivation should be the cultivation of the heart. Cultivate until your worries are gradually reduced and you have a heart that delights in helping others, a heart that is warm and bright, a heart that is gentle and stable, and a heart with unchanging resolve.
(4)
You must all learn to repent, and reflect on your own mistakes everyday. Just like Zengzi, who said, “I reflect on myself three times a day.” You must have an attitude of admitting your mistakes and always have the courage to reflect on yourself. Live each day as if it were a year, carefully reviewing your faults, as only such people have hope.
The Divine favors those who are self-disciplined, who are good at self-reflection, and who serve the Divine wholeheartedly. The Divine does not want hypocrites, those who say one thing but mean another, those who flatter and deceive, and even more so those who are merely putting on a show. The Divine seeks true cultivators, those who speak the truth, those who are down to earth and conscientious, those who truly repent, and those who sincerely wish to return to the cosmos. The Divinities will respond coldly to those who are impenitent until they wake up on their own.
We only help people who truly wish to return. If you seek, we will give; if you do not seek, we will not force anything upon you. Only a soul that has truly repented understands the profound sacredness and pricelessness of the gifts bestowed by the Divine—gifts that are rare in this world! They will be grateful, cherish them, and understand what it means to contribute.
(5)
Do you know how many good deeds and bad deeds are recorded in your record of merit and demerit? Are you aware of it? You must accumulate more merits, do more good deeds, help the Earth, help humankind, and help animals. Those without merit cannot ascend to Heaven. If there are only a small amount of good deeds, but many bad deeds in your record of merit and demerit, you should worry about your future, as even the Divine will be powerless to help. You will be drawn to the place dictated by your karma, and you must take responsibility for your actions. With such heavy burden of negative karma, you must repay it yourself. No matter how great divine power is, it cannot override karma. You must follow your karmic path to remove all your sins, and you must endure the suffering personally. This is the path you have chosen yourself—don’t blame the Divine for not warning you.
(6)
There should be regularity of daily routine. Change the habit of staying up late. Staying up late is not only harmful to your health, and also detrimental to your spiritual cultivation. Late nights damage the internal organs, cause toxins to accumulate in the body, and cause blockages of energy channels, affecting your practice the next day.
A true practitioner should go to bed before 10 p.m. and wake up early in the morning. It is best to get up before 5 a.m. However, it is also acceptable to adjust your wake-up time to before 6 or 7 a.m. But never sleep past 7 a.m. It is not suitable to continue sleeping after 7 a.m., and sleeping past 7 a.m. is harmful to your physical and mental well-being.
The regular lifestyle of modern human is sleeping late and waking up late. This is the daily routine of a lazy person, and a reversal of the Way of humanity. This is disregarding the natural rhythm of the body’s internal energy flow.
For someone seeking to be successful in spiritual practice, the internal energy flow within the body must be in harmony with the energy flow of the whole Universe, as they are closely related and must be unified with nature and the Universe.
You must get up in the morning when the Yang energy is rising. If you remain in bed, the rise of the Yang energy will be obstructed, and over time, it will inevitably lead to various illnesses in your body. When the Yang energy within you rises, you should follow the natural rhythm, get up for morning practices, and combine with various spiritual practices, aligning your personal microcosm with the macrocosm of the Universe.
At night, when the Universe is already in its phase of withdrawing energy, do not let your internal energy flow remain overly active, else this would go against the Way of the cosmos, and in fact it is contrary to the Way of the cosmos. When the cosmic energy contracts, you should put down your tasks at hand, set aside your emotions of joy, anger, sorrow, or happiness, and enter sleep in a tranquil and effortless state, aligning with the energy flow of the Universe. This is the law between the Universe and the human body, which you must not violate. Otherwise, any talk of spiritual cultivation becomes meaningless.
When the flow of energy and blood in your body fails to resonate with the energy of the Universe, you are already deviating from the Way of the cosmos, and cannot align yourself with the cosmos. That’s why I say that sleeping late and getting up late is not only harmful to your health but also inappropriate for a spiritual practitioners.
Of course, when you enter a special state of cultivation, it can be regarded as a different matter. However, in all other situations, you must follow the Way of the cosmos, ensuring that the energy within your body corresponds with the energy of the Universe.
Do not deliberately violate this law. Otherwise, your heart will drift further and further away from the Way of the cosmos, and you will not be able to receive cosmic energy more effectively. When you sleep late and wake up late, your internal energy flow will be out of sync with the cosmic energy, and your body will have to catch up, causing your body to consume more energy and deplete more vital essence. In ancient times, every immortal cultivator without exception would sleep early and rise early, even waking up at the crowing of a rooster to start practicing. This is the exact principle behind it.
Today, I am here revealing to you, cautioning you time and again: The relationship between cultivation and daily routine, and cultivation and sleep is deeply intertwined and inseparable.
Spiritual cultivation happens precisely at every moment of every day, at every second of every minute. Make every minute and second of yours be aligned with the Way of the cosmos—this is the correct path.
Additionally, there are many taboos regarding health preservation, which I will gradually explain to you in the future.
Duke of Zhou’s Life and Influence
Duke of Zhou, whose exact birth and death years are unknown (circa 1100 BCE), was a famous political philosopher and educationalist during the early Western Zhou period. He was the fourth son of the founding monarch of the Western Zhou dynasty, King Wen of Zhou. He was the younger brother of King Wu of Zhou. Duke of Zhou’s surname was Ji and his given name was Dan. He was also referred to as Shu Dan and was honored with the posthumous title Duke Wen. He was called “Zhou” because his fief was located in the land of Zhou (present-day northern Qishan, Shaanxi Province). Additionally, as he held the title of Grand Tutor, one of the “Three Dukes” (highest ranking officials), he was respectfully known as the Duke of Zhou. He played a pivotal role in assisting King Wu of Zhou in overthrowing the Shang Dynasty, and later helped King Chen of Zhou govern the kingdom. His political accomplishments were summarized in the “Great Commentary of the Book of Documents (Shangshu Dazhuan)”: “In the first year, [he] rescued [the kingdom] from chaos; in the second year, [he] subdued [the King of] Yin; in the third year, [he] subjugated the Yan; in the fourth year, [he] established lords and guards; in the fifth year, [he] built up [King] Cheng’s Zhou [dynasty]; in the sixth year, [he] instituted rites and music; in the seventh year, [he] handed over governance to King Cheng.” After suppressing the armed rebellions of King Zhou’s son Wu Geng, as well as his brothers Uncle Guan, Uncle Cai, and Uncle Huo, and other eastern states, the Duke of Zhou “established rites and music”, and created and refined systems such as the patriarchal system and the feudal system, which further consolidated the Western Zhou’s slave-based society.
Taking the fall of the Shang Dynasty and armed rebellion events such as the “three uncles” as lessons, the Duke of Zhou placed great emphasis on political morality, the art of governance, and diligent governance education of the slave owners, aristocracy and their descendants. He advocated principles such as “revere virtue to protect the people”, “align virtue with Heaven”, “emphasize virtue and caution in punishment”, “practice filial piety and virtue”, “work hard in agriculture and avoid idleness.” He also stressed the educational influence of “songs” and “admonitions” on slave owners and commoners. Furthermore, he proposed evaluating and appointing officials based on their governance achievements. Throughout his life, he valued virtuous and capable individuals, treated worthy men with respect, and was welcoming to all newcomers. Duke of Zhou’s teachings are scattered throughout various chapters of the “Book of Documents”, including the “Great Admonition”, “Numerous Officers”, “No Idleness”, and “Establishing Governance.”
Since the Spring and Autumn period, Duke of Zhou had been revered as a sage by rulers and scholars across various dynasties. Confucius admired the Duke of Zhou and aspired to follow in his footsteps, praising his talents and expressing admiration: “The talents of the Duke of Zhou are magnificent.” “How I have declined! It has been such a long time since I dreamed of the Duke of Zhou.” Mencius was the first to revere the Duke of Zhou as an “ancient sage” and equated him with Confucius, indicating the deep respect he commanded. Xunzi regarded the Duke of Zhou as the great Confucian, and praised his virtue and talent in “The Effect of Confucianism (Ruxiao).” During the Han dynasty, Liu Xin and Wang Mang renamed “The Zhou Official” to “The Rites of Zhou”, attributing it to the Duke of Zhou and crediting him with bringing about the prosperous era of Western Zhou, even elevating the Duke of Zhou’s status above that of Confucius. In the Tang Dynasty, Han Yu, in his efforts to combat the influence of Buddhism and Daoism, promoted Confucian orthodoxy, listing a succession of figures from Yao, Shun, Yu, Tang, Wen, Wu, Duke of Zhou, Confucius, and Mencius. From this point onward, the Duke of Zhou and Confucius were often mentioned together, and in education, the concept of “the teachings of the Duke of Zhou and Confucius” emerged. In short, wherever Confucius is mentioned, the Duke of Zhou is also honored—this is the situation of ancient reverence for the Duke of Zhou. This reverence not only stemmed from certain political needs, but also reflected a deep respect for the outstanding cultural and educational traditions of the Western Zhou period, as well as sincere admiration for the Duke of Zhou as a great figure. This has historically played a significant role in propagating, preserving, and developing the excellent cultural educational traditions of the Chinese people.
Duke of Zhou was a great statesman in ancient Chinese history and also an outstanding representative of the early development of education in ancient China. There is a profound connection between the educational ideas of Confucius and the Duke of Zhou, and a clear continuity in their educational practices. Duke of Zhou lived more than 3,000 years ago, and he played a crucial role in the development of education in ancient China. If Confucius is considered the great founder of ancient Chinese education, then the Duke of Zhou is the great pioneer of ancient Chinese education.
