To consider the question of how the golden flower method could shed
light on clues to the understanding and treatment of mood and personality
disorders, it is useful to work with the Chan concept of host and guest, a
simple concept corresponding to the Taoist distinction between the original
spirit and the conscious spirit.
From the point of view of the host, or original spirit, everything
concerned with mood and personality is in the domain of the guest. But
through the process of social conditioning, the average individual comes to
be centered in the guest and therefore regards it as the self. As a result the
true host is concealed, and it cannot bring out its more objective and
encompassing perspective on matters of mood and personality.
When the guest has taken over center stage and the host is no longer in
sight, the "switching" that takes place within an individual in response to
psychological and environmental factors is taking place from one mood or
personality to another;
it does not return all the way to the source. The individual can then no
longer command the capacity to switch deliberately from a subjective mood
or subpersonality to an objective and impersonal state of observant mind.
Thus alienated from the primal source or "host" of the original spirit, the
ego seeks integration by attempting to establish order among "guests," the
conditioned facades of psyche and personality. Under these conditions, if
there develop great disparities among moods or subpersonalities in the
