Excuse my video skills. This completely rusted old wood splitter was lying round outside our house since we moved in. It was/still is jagged and chipped, but I gave it a good sharpen on Thursday and now it's quite sharp and has even some shine. I find it so cool to find use and value in old broken things. Also the process of sharpening/polishing and improving physical things feels like a metaphor for polishing and improving internally/energetically. Does anyone else have some kind of processes, tasks or crafts like this? I find it especially rewarding sharpening all my chisels, and knowing the way I work them now is going to influence how I cut the wood later.

This morning on my walk with my dog I thought about alchemy and how we can combine and forge new energies, or new levels of energy, through internal practices and external experiences. I was thinking about 5 hunyuan form (level 3 zhineng qigong practice) which I've been practicing recently, and how the goal is to reintegrate qi that's been separated into the 5 elements (and 5 organs, 5 emotions), and merge them in the centre. The principle seems to be that at a lower frequency things separate and conflict, whereas at a higher frequency (or state, plane, dimension, whatever), they have more potential to interact and merge with each other, or combine to create new qualities or substances --- hence the 'dan tiens' ('elixir fields'), merging and transforming crude qi and matter into refined qi and shen (spirit/consciousness). My hunch (and interest/exploration) is that the higher quality qi that we are able to create our of our raw material, is unique from person to person. That there are new 'substances' to be created through the heat and pressure of both internal practice and the experiences imposed on us by the world. Interested to hear how this relates to others' perspectives and experiences!

Recently I've renewed my interest in herbs, especially things growing wild in my local area. It's super inspiring to me that things that just grow on their own can contribute to my internal ecosystem and balance. It's also so cool to develop a more personal relationship with my local environment, and how things growing in it interact energetically with my system. It's harder to have this in the city where everything's a bit more flattened and managed. Everything in nature has its own signature and personality, which directly correlates to its energetic makeup. It's also exciting to me that you can just engage, pick flowers and leaves, smell them, dry them, make tea, and get to know them in a way you wouldn't by studying them in books or online. Especially in relation to the wider, specific, unique, ecosystem. Actually, this is the thing that inspires me about engaging with any facet of life, the situations we find ourselves in are arranged like systems of elements that become reflections of ourselves, and the deeper we look, the deeper they reflect.

The Life Craft category is for discussion surrounding your tools, techniques, perspectives for moulding your life, cultivating your Craft or Service in life... and how that's going. Feel welcome to ask for advice when you hit bumps and hurdles. As far as World Pool is concerned, the key areas of Life Craft are, developing your internal vocabulary and toolkit, your internal system for engaging with and contributing to the world, on the one hand, and on the other, cultivating the energy and balance necessary to move forward with this life's work.

Is anyone interested in Tarot? I'd love to hear what practices people use to keep in touch with the less tangible parts of life.