Awakening Dragon: Walking the Four Dignities
Awakening Dragon is my map for a man's inner journey — through the outer, inner and secret worlds, along the paths of Tiger, Snow Lion, Garuda and Dragon. On this walk you read each path and then practice it, with a meditation for each dignity woven in. Begin where the journey begins: with the three worlds you live in.
The Three Worlds
The work isn't out there — it's in the inner and secret worlds. So where are you on the way: drowning, treading water, swimming, flying, radiating? It takes humility to see it, and courage to step into the work from exactly there.
Five Stages
If you're drowning or treading water, this is where you begin: Tiger. Not grand plans — teeth brushed, body moved, your allegiance turned back to yourself. Let's go.
Now feel Tiger in your own body. Touch down into the power, resilience and strength already flowing through you, and find the contentedness that has nothing to hide and nothing to prove.
Tiger: Energy of Contentedness
Once you're swimming, it's time to leap. Snow Lion turns discipline from a jailer into nourishment — and carries you from the heavy chains of shame toward knowing your own basic goodness at a cellular level.
Come find the joy and cheerfulness already inside you, and practice inviting discipline in like sun and rain — the things that help you grow tall and thrive.
Flying now, the call goes further out — straight into what you've been avoiding. Garuda doesn't wait for fear to leave. Let's meet the monsters and the shadows, and fly through them into space.
Garuda is born in the sky and never touches the ground. Come practice letting go — flying into vastness, beyond fear, into trust.
Where Tiger grounds, Snow Lion uplifts and Garuda soars, Dragon integrates — strength without aggression, discipline without shame, fearlessness without recklessness. Beyond the stages, the paths fall away. Let's take it up a notch, to the most fundamental shift there is: from aggression to gentleness.
Dragon is wisdom in motion — not something you think, something you are. Come practice playing with the fabric of reality, flashing wisdom like lightning, without struggle.
Now step back and see all four at once — sequential and simultaneous, each needing the others, present or absent in every area of your life. Where are you already walking the path, and where are you being called further in?
And when you find yourself strong on one path and a long way from another — that isn't failure. Let's hear what it really is.