What have my own experiences of recognizing a spiritual patron and taking refuge been like?

I explain this through my early learning and later personal participation. Both recognizing a spiritual patron and taking refuge helped me understand which deities and Buddhas I had connections with and where I wanted to learn. They have some similar meanings, but this does not make rituals from different religions the same system.

In my early years, while practicing and staying overnight at a temple in southern Taiwan, I dreamed of my deceased grandmother reminding me to take refuge in Kṣitigarbha Bodhisattva. I later asked the fellow practitioner guiding me and learned about becoming a student and recognizing a spiritual patron within that Daoist spiritual-cultivation context. At the time I was drawing close to the Nine Heavens Mysterious Lady and underwent a recognition rite. The dream mentioning Kṣitigarbha and the recognition of the Nine Heavens Mysterious Lady were two separate connections.

Later, on the path of Sheng Zhen Men, I had more contact with Kṣitigarbha Bodhisattva and increasingly felt that he was my teacher. I also participated in a Buddhist ceremony of taking refuge in the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. These experiences had a similar purpose: having an inward place of reliance and knowing what I wished to learn from Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. Genuine understanding, however, still had to develop gradually through subsequent learning and experience.