These Chan structures illustrate some of the ways that attention can be
arranged to induce the golden flower experience. It may be possible to
apply this use of mind to psychotherapeutic theory and practice by means of
its transcendental understanding of the self, its method of experiencing the
self beyond the quirks of personality; and its concentration on the elemental
source of autonomy and self-mastery.
To the therapist, the golden flower teaching offers techniques of
developing deeper insight and greater awareness of human potential, as well
as a means of contacting patients at a level of mind that is not affected by
psychic afflictions.
To the patient, it offers an independent means of self-knowledge beyond the
domain of conditioned personality, judgment, and opinion.
Properly used, in the context of contemporary life and not as an exotic,
half-understood cult, the practice of golden flower meditation certainly has
the power to dispel the influence of neurotic compulsion. Rightly
understood and correctly practiced, it does not have the dangers Jung
attributed to it because it does not submit to the fascination of what he
referred to as unconscious contents of mind.
The exercise of turning the light around is in fact so penetrating an
avenue to insight and transcendence that it is tempting to consider applying
its theory and practice to the search for direction in treatment of some of the
more serious disorders currently being addressed by the psychiatric
