Tevia Feng, October 2026. An update to his 2016 contribution, “Wake Up, Qigong, and the Meaning of Life.”

Ten years ago, in this same space, I wrote that we were entering the most turbulent times in human history, and that we were about to face the most intense climate changes in our recorded history. I wasn’t trying to be a prophet. I was just paying attention.

So look at where we are now. Forecasters are warning that this year’s El Niño could be the strongest ever recorded. Ocean temperatures broke records in August. Fires across Indonesia, poor harvests in East Africa, the Panama Canal restricting ships because the water is too low. And it isn’t only the weather. Riots and unrest are breaking out in more countries, more often, and there is potential for a lot more.

The ancient Chinese looked at everything as cycles. Spring and summer build things up. Autumn and winter break things down. There is a creative phase and there is a destructive phase, and you don’t get one without the other. We are in the destructive phase now.

Now, I’m not a doomsday guy. I’m not telling you to go build a bunker. Winter is not the end of the world. Winter is when the farmer goes inside, repairs his tools and gets ready for spring. The destructive phase clears away what isn’t working anymore. The real question is whether you can see clearly enough to come through it, or whether you get swept along with the crowd.

So the most important skill for the years ahead is not money, it’s not technology, it’s not where you live. It’s seeing the truth.

We call ourselves truth seekers

People call us Daoists. In my lineage we don’t really use that word for ourselves. We say we are truth seekers, and that’s simply all I am. I’m not a guru, I’m not your master. I’m just a person who has been seeking the truth for over 40 years.

Lao Zi put it better than I can, more than two thousand years ago:

知人者智，自知者明
zhī rén zhě zhì, zì zhī zhě míng

“Knowing others is intelligence. Knowing yourself is clarity.”
Dao De Jing, chapter 33

Here’s the problem. In times of chaos and confusion, everybody wants to tell you what’s true. The news, the feed, the politicians. And when you’re scared, you’re easy to lead. I’m not a psychologist, but I’ve watched this in thousands of students: fear narrows your attention, your nervous system flips into fight or flight, and in that state you don’t think, you react. That’s not a moral failing. That’s physiology.

So where do you find the truth? You don’t find it out there first. You find it in here.

The acquired mind

In Daoist inner training we talk about two minds.

The acquired mind is everything that got installed after you were born: your experiences, your conditioning, your beliefs. It’s useful. It’s how you drive a car. But it is not you. The original mind is what was there before all of that got assembled.

Some people make this very mystical. They say you have to kill the ego and dissolve into the light. Really? Is that what’s happening? No. Think of your phone. You bought it clean. A few years later it has two hundred apps running in the background, half of them you never chose, and the battery is dead by lunchtime. You don’t throw the phone in the river. You find out what’s running, and you close what isn’t yours. That’s tangible. That’s the work.

And we do it in layers, from the outside in:

1. The emotional residue. Old hurts and stored tension sitting in the body.
2. The conditioning. The norms and values you inherited from your family and your society.
3. The deepest beliefs. Identity, ideology, nation.

That third layer is the one nobody wants to look at, and it’s the one being pulled on hardest right now. When someone can push the button on your identity, they can lead you anywhere.

The acquired mind used to be built by your family, your school, your village. Today a lot of it is built by a screen. We have never been more connected, and we have never been more confused.

Where to start

You don’t need to move to a mountain. Try this tonight. Put your phone in another room. Sit down and breathe low and slow through the nose, into the lower belly, for five minutes. Then watch your thoughts go by like traffic outside the window. Pick one strong opinion and ask three questions. Is this mine, or was it installed? Where did I get it? Who benefits if I believe it?

Slow breathing through the nose shifts the nervous system out of fight or flight. That part isn’t mystical, researchers have measured it many times over. And when the nervous system settles down, you start to see clearly.

But here’s the hard truth. If you’re looking for someone to hand you the answer, this isn’t it. Nobody can do it for you. I can’t do it for you. Qigong can’t do it for you. You have to do the work.

In 2016 I said the answer lies in love: love for each other, love for this Earth, love for your body. I still believe that. But love without clear seeing gets used. So be still, look honestly, and see what’s true.

Ten years ago I said wake up. Now I’m saying: stay awake.

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Tevia Feng is the Founder and Master Instructor of White Tiger Qigong. He began training at the age of seven and has practised Qigong for over 40 years. He is a certified Medical Qigong teacher, authorized to teach by the Tian Ji Dao sect of Hong Kong and mainland China. Since 2008, White Tiger Qigong has taught more than 70,000 students in over 80 countries, bringing together Daoist Medical Qigong, Chinese medicine, neuroscience and sports science.

The inner work described here is taught in depth in his series Transcending the Acquired Mind, part of the White Tiger Qigong Inner Circle:

whitetigerqigong.com/products/inner-circle-masterclass

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