Introduction

In creative arts therapies, brief episodes of writing can open disproportionately large spaces for meaning-making. Since the 1980s, experimental disclosure paradigms have shown small but reliable benefits when people write about emotionally salient experiences, compared with neutral-topic writing (Baikie & Wilhelm, 2005; Frattaroli, 2006; Pennebaker & Beall, 1986; Pennebaker et al., 1988). Meta-analytic syntheses confirm the modest average effect sizes, even as boundary conditions and moderators remain important for practice (Smyth, 1998). In other words, expressive writing is best framed as a low-dose, high-meaning catalyst that interacts with the individual, the timing, and the surrounding ritual container.

What matters most in day-to-day practice is not a grand causal claim but the idiosyncratic arc of a particular session: what is evoked, symbolised, and finally settled – sometimes in a single instant of clarity. This paper is a ‘shorter’, practice-based autoethnography, documenting a writing-led inquiry that began with mythic associations to the Ziwei Emperor (紫微大帝) and Baize (白泽) (Lebovitz, 2022), traversed questions of destiny and sovereignty, and then released doctrinal claims to rest in a non-sectarian, Daoist-leaning stance – Dao as essence, action as function.

The intent is not to argue for a specific theology but to demonstrate how culturally resonant mythic images can operate within reflective practice to help organise meaning and action. The orientation aligns with Schön’s reflection-in-action and reflection-on-action, while autoethnography invites explicit positionality and dialogic honesty. In this spirit, I offer a single-session account that foregrounds curiosity as method and restraint as pedagogy – Laozi’s “teaching without words” (Ames & Hall, 2003, ch.43) – so that myth remains a lens rather than a demand.

Background

Expressive writing and reflective practice

The expressive-writing paradigm typically asks participants to write about emotionally important events for approximately 15–20 minutes across repeated occasions. Relative to neutral writing, such disclosure yields modest improvements on average (Baikie & Wilhelm, 2005; Frattaroli, 2006; Pennebaker & Beall, 1986; Pennebaker, et al., 1988; Sloan & Marx, 2004), with plausible mechanisms described as exposure, labelling, and reappraisal. Importantly, effect sizes are context dependent; participant readiness, timing, and the availability of containment and aftercare appear to shape outcomes. For practitioners, this literature converges with reflective practice: to write is to make sense, to place experience into a narrative sequence where attention, feeling, and language can meet.

Schön’s (1983) account of professional knowledge emphasises this iterative quality – reflection-in-action while doing, reflection-on-action after the fact. Autoethnography extends the frame by making the researcher’s situatedness not a threat to validity but a resource for insight: personal experience becomes a portal to cultural understanding, especially when the topic is identity-, value-, or cosmology-laden. The present paper uses this braided logic: craft, culture, and care intersect in a morning of writing (Ellis et al., 2011).

Mythic images within a Daoist horizon

Within Daoist religion, the Four Heavenly Ministers (四御, Sìyù) stand below the Great Jade Emperor and administer wide portfolios. Lists vary by period and source, but frequently include the Ziwei (Purple Tenuity) Emperor, the Gouchen Emperor, the Southern Polar Longevity Emperor, and – often – the Earth Empress Houtu. Ziwei is associated with the circumpolar Purple Tenuity enclosure, and is symbolically linked to imperial order and destiny; he is not a creator-god, but a celestial minister whose jurisdiction touches what many people care about: identity, vocation, recognition, and the fate of collectives (Daoinfo.org, n.d.; Pregadio, 2008/2011).

Baize (白泽), by contrast, functions as a wisdom-beast – a mythic counsellor. Medieval sources preserve demonographic compendia, the Baize jingguai tu (白泽精怪图), in Dunhuang fragments P.2682 and S.6261, suggesting a catalogic and pragmatic stance toward anomalies and their management. In the popular imagination, Baize does not demand belief so much as it models discernment: to recognise what one is facing, to name it properly, and to select an appropriate response (Lebovitz, 2022).

As a comparative anchor for state and popular dynamics, Guandi (Guan Yu) exemplifies how historical figures become canonised, accreting layers of meaning through spirit-writing, state legitimation, and grassroots devotion. For clinicians and educators, these figures are useful precisely because they are polysemous – they can support divergent meanings without collapsing complexity (Goossaert, 2015; ter Haar, 2017).

Method: A practice-based autoethnography

I followed a simple structure common to practice-based autoethnography: a concrete setting, a time-bound procedure, and a reflexive analysis that anchors experience in cultural and scholarly frames.

Setting and trigger: After an evening of expressive-writing exploration, I woke the next morning at 6am, held by a composite inquiry of curiosity – Dao – Ziwei – Baize. The night’s sleep acted as an incubation interval between active writing and reflective emergence.

Procedure: I wrote continuously for approximately 25 minutes without regard for polish or grammar, then composed brief analytic memos. Short lines from the Daodejing and Zhuangzi served as prompts – not authorities – allowing dialogue rather than doctrinal assent (Ames & Hall, 2003; Watson, 2013).

Analytic stance: I braided narrative vignettes with reflexive analysis, triangulating with secondary literature on expressive writing, Daoist cosmology, and imperial canonisation.

Ethics: Only my experience appears; no third-party identities are present. Religious–cultural materials function as symbolic resources – projective lenses – rather than prescriptions.

Creative artefact: Poetic interlude (bilingual)

The expressive session included a spontaneous short poem. I present it bilingually, preserving the Chinese while offering an English rendering attentive to tone rather than literalism. In the paper’s argument, the poem serves as an artefact of process – an index of how symbol and image carry insight without requiring discursive argument.

Chinese (original):

于我而言，好奇心是紫色的。
我想知道，道为何物？
我问二百零八字的《心经》，什么是佛？
知万物，晓万律，归其道。
已识乾坤大，犹怜草木青。

English (rendering):

For me, curiosity is violet.
I want to know – what is Dao?
I ask the 208-character Heart Sutra, what is Buddha?
To know the ten thousand things, to discern their laws, to return to the Way.
Having glimpsed the wide vault of heaven and earth, I still cherish the green of grass and trees.

“放翁百念俱已矣，独有好奇心未死。” – 陆游（陆放翁）

Vignette: “Dawn”

The city still sleeps; I do not. Between dream and waking two questions rest: Is Ziwei omniscient? If Ziwei governs personal destiny and national fate, where do my small choices belong?

I write. The characters fall like breath. The Daodejing says: “Man follows the earth; earth follows heaven; heaven follows the Dao; and the Dao follows what is natural” (ch. 25). Zhuangzi adds: “Heaven and earth were born with me; the ten thousand things and I are one”. (Watson, 2013, ch.2). I recall Baize – taxonomy as discernment rather than dogma. I recall Guandi’s “ascent from man to god” – history overwritten by need (Ames & Hall, 2003, ch.25; Watson, 2013).

I stop. The question is no longer about whether Ziwei is all-knowing but about what I take as sovereign in practice. The answer is simple: Dao as essence, action as function. No proselytising is needed; “teaching without words” will do its quiet work (Ames & Hall, 2003, ch.43).

Selected images from the reflective journal are reproduced for context (see Figures 1–3).

Figures from the journal (8–9 June 2025)