Spontaneous listening, spontaneous responding

Some who start to practice internal arts, like meditation or qigong find it challenging.

Questions come up, doubts, thoughts, images and feelings.

The reason we experience difficulty is that we want something out of what we do. We are conditioned to seek pleasure, comfort and happiness, and avoid the opposite.

Very rarely do we encounter what is there without judgement, or without wanting anything.

But there is a way to truly reap the benefit of inner cultivation: Just listen.

Find a quiet place, stand or sit, and just sense what is there. Whatever inclination, impulse or feeling, whatever sound, smell or sight, just let it unfold.

At some point, maybe after a long time, you realize that what you experience is just that; sensation.

Listen and sense. After a while movement comes. Then you make a choice.

Either let it be, and just listen to the silence behind the impulse, or follow it without stopping. Let it lead you, like the universe is holding your hand, taking you into something mysterious.

At some point, the movement quiets down.

The very sacredness of existence is holding you by the hand constantly.

When we embrace this, we are completely authentic.

This is what is contained in the Daoist concept of “De”.

The heart of the mountain

On a weekend of backcountry skiing in the mountains, I scaled this face with my friends.

What happened was something subtle, even impersonal, yet deeply intimate. I’ve recognized that it had happened many times before on similar places, mostly in the vicinity of mountains.

As I ascended half way up the mountain, skis on my back and ice axe in hand, heart pounding, breath heaving, feeling slightly scared, a strange stillness crept up from within.

It felt as if it came from beyond this reality, yet deeply a part of my immediate experience. A deep softness, an almost palpable silence engulfed me. I felt as if the mountain itself was in communion with me. Maybe more accurate would be to say that I was invited into a presence. It was definitely coming from outside myself, yet it awakened something in me, energetically in my heart.

It seemed to give something, soothe me, forgive, embrace my heart.

I was glad I had my goggles on, so that they did not see me tearing up. I had to stop, kneel down and cry. Waves of hidden and forgotten pain and hurt came and left me, and I felt deeply held. It was as if everything was taken from me, and I was left with this deep peace.

My immediate experience was that I was taken into the lap of a great mother.

Then it passed. The wind started howling again, and I pushed on feeling no need to reach the summit.

Modern hermit series: Snow cave man

How to get up

Our bodies define us in many ways. But a definite cul-du-sac is to maintain the belief that we are our bodies.

This all sounds very philosophical or abstract, but in reality it’s quite practical.

As we age, our bodies change. We wake up in the morning, feeling sluggish, sore, tired. We may feel pain or aches or general stiffness.

But there is a moment before that, where we are just aware that we are awake. Our consciousness is not yet identified with the body. The sensation of this moment is characterized by something completely different.

Freshness, openness, space, light, energy, awareness.

Now this is where it may become really interesting.

Instead of jumping back in the suit, going into the random bodily identification, try to feel the fresh and light sensation deeply and drop all identification. From the resting  mode, let go completely, place your feet on the floor like a cat, and get up tuning into the space instead of the body. Link into the open, energetic field that surrounds you, and as you move out of bed, forget about your body. Immerse yourself in the space, slip into your morning slippers and forget about anything but the present moment.

As you relish in the fragrance of the morning java, see that every moment could be lived like that.

That’s how a river, cat, bird or cloud moves.

Collecting the light, preserving the body

After a workshop with my teacher this weekend, I realize how much work is really needed to maintain our state of energy, and how easy it is to lose it. Our energy is dispersed continually, and we are like vaning comets

Basically it boils down to this: The body should be integrated and fused with the light. This is an ongoing readjustment to realign the body with our essential light.

We may stand, but without “collecting” our light back into our body, we are corpes.

Only when the light is gathered back into the body, and finally back into the Dan Tian, is real qigong actually possible. Then the circulation manifests as true momement, true transformation.

Before that, all effort and work is in vain.

You can test this with just stepping lightly with an intent to move with chi, not with muscle, across a room. Step consciously, lightly, just like walking on stars.

Then, when you reach the last step, turn around and lift your left arm up above your head, and feel what comes back into the system as a trail of energy returning to its source.

Then, collect the energy back into the body, and feel how the lower Dan Tian feels afterwords.

On initiating the Nei Dan process

“He who can say how he burns with love, has little fire”
—Petrarca, Sonetto 137.

Alchemy does not occur until your heart opens to reality. For this to happen the universe must imbue you with its trust. In the same way the ocean opens itself to the fisherman or when your child spontaneously rests its hand on yours. Only when you reach true stillness and scincerity does yang arise spontaneiusly from yin.

Alchemy is a method, not a technique. To approach it as a function of energies is to miss it.

Alchemy is resonance. To the degree I understand it, it is a communion , a correspondence. A meeting. But it is not a scheme to be followed. This is duality and too instrumental . Do not approach it as an engineer but a poet or a lover. Communion happens with the universe as you own body, not in the body of everyone.

Couple two cavities an await some response. But if you are too eager for anything , you will lead yourself astray.

Alignment is mysterious, like a riddle. It concerns inner and outer, mind and heart, body and cosmos. The central axis is found through the spine, yet is not dependent on it

I have no real idea of what needs to happen, but feel like I need a long break from my mind to access it.
What I do experience is that using effort only is needed to a slight degree. Intention needs to be initiated very subtly, and then let go of. The key for alchemy to occur is to trust the inherent correspondence in the makeup of the cavities. When there is a pulse or a magnetic reaction, things start to happen on it’s own accord.

To my limited understanding, it is how nature works, and it feels like you come across an alien spaceship that you discover, slide your hand across the control panel, and everything starts humming, and there is no way of grasping what will happen. To the degree that it is working with form, it is truly mysterious.

The story of Ho Tenze

The moon is a bright orb in the starlight sky. It’s approaching midnight, and I’m watching a fire being lit inside a small room in an ancient watchtower on a deserted strip of the Great Wall in Hei Bei province. I have never felt so engulfed in the history of the Middle Kingdom. The view is overlooking the Wu Ling Shan mountains, and our quiet conversation is overtaken by the immense sound of the cicadas outside.

The floor is rocks and dirt. There is no furniture except a small opening in the outside wall where a small sleeping bag covers a mattress of dry hay. Our eyes meet. His name is Ho Tenze and he is 14 years old. But his posture and body is that of a child. His voice is almost a whisper. He offers us some dumplings, and trying to work past the language barrier we mime our words in the darkness. An hour ago, we reached a pass with a breach in the wall taking us up to the remote tower. After knocking on the door and shouting, a small door creaks and a little head peers at us through the opening. He’d already gone to sleep he says, but would be happy to let us come visit. Our guide is also his stepfather.

After a short awkward moment he asks us if we want to see the roof of the watchtower. The stairs have fallen down long ago, and small holes in the brick wall is used for steps and hand holds. The roof reveals a small row of weeds. He has grown herbs and medicine plants there he explains, and has been what he falls back on for nutrition when there is no other food around. Later I learn that these herbs are worth a fortune on the TCM herbal market on Beijing.

Here he has cultivated a little secret garden, and below me I see the valley leading down to the plains near Beijing. Above is only stars and the full moon. There is also the reason he is here. He performs a ritual to the full moon every month. We climb down to the darkness below and he lights up a small fire.  He sleeps on the ground with only a sleeping bag and hay as a mattress. He reaches behind a brick in the wall an pulls out his rarest collection of herbs, assuming we grasp the value of their worth for him. After some awkward attempts at sign language, body language, and then a competition in gymnastics we regress to silence. I listen to the cicadas playing outside.

Then the translator tells me the story:

The inner Everest

I’m turning 40 today. We think we can control the descent, but we can’t. But we keep trying.

The art of getting nowhere

It’s 10 pm and mid summer.  The park has an eerie glow of the night sky is turning purple and people are walking home.  I’ve been standing beneath a tree with my hands in front of me for half an hour, supposedly “Wu chi stance”, yet what I sense is just a feeling of complete meaninglessness.  Actually I feel silly, standing here waving my hands around in the darkness with people pointing at me as they pass, all but a few thinking “there stands a basket case”. In addition there is a sense of “why do this?”. With no satisfying answer in mind I return home in the dark.

There are a few taboos in qigong or yoga circles. The most common is being up front about why you do it in the first place, followed by the real reason you quit.