A Meditation Experience with Jing, Shen, and the Microcosmic Orbit

January 1st, I sat down to meditate, starting with the breath. Thoughts from the past few days came and went.

Water came to mind. I saw it as fast and fluid—when it hits something and breaks, it returns to its original form. I could feel its coolness. All three dantian centers seemed to pulse in the same rhythm. I drew the water into my lower abdomen, into the “yellow field.” At first it looked like a rice field, then it absorbed the water pore by pore.

I went deeper into the earth—dark and cold, yet it felt like something precious was hidden inside. At some point, I felt: I have arrived. Looking at shen, I sensed a gentle joy, a calm happiness, nothing forceful or exaggerated—everything exactly as it should be.

The ego appeared briefly, grand and self-aggrandizing. I told myself to stop imagining. Slowly, I began to feel jing in my mind. It felt like the dance between jing and shen. Yin and yang came to mind—jing as yin, the seed of yang.

Returning to the breath, I felt a burning in my lungs. I tried to breathe very slowly and silently. The heat spread like a disc but without a fixed shape. Metal came to mind, warm like being forged on an anvil. As it moved down, it cooled, like entering water—without disturbing it. For a moment, my whole body felt filled with water. Then, spontaneously, the microcosmic orbit started—but in reverse.

Energy circulated through both kidneys, tracing a triangular path to the middle dantian. The line smoothed into a soft spiral, like a small inward-moving pyramid. I realized the observer is ready to notice. The urge to imagine appeared, as if shen wanted it—but in wu wei, simply observing the flow felt enough.

I’m sharing this in case others have noticed similar interactions between jing, shen, and the microcosmic orbit. I’m curious about how others experience these subtle flows.