Harmony

Any minute now we’ll be getting our first shipment of the highly requested DVD for Blossoms in the Spring. Not only does this 70+minute disk teach the essential movements of the form but it is filled with interviews, commentary and even musings on (more…)

It’s really very simple. You would not expect a leopard to act like a finch. And you must not expect the forces of the world to let you alone. There’s an old truism in the motivation business. People say that they want to get rich because then they can do whatever they want, relax, amuse themselves. But it’s not the truth. It might have been once but no longer. The reason people want to get rich is to get away from other people, to be less like targets, to keep other people’s dream from crowding in on theirs. In other words even in the act of preparing for you retirement from the rat race you are continuing the rat race. This is not your fault and you must not accept it as such or feel guilt for it. The forces in society, call them capitalism, call them socialism, call them this and that but they all want the same thing: you. There’s a powerful peace in the book by Arthur Miller entitled “Focus”. This is about a non-jew who, during a period of extreme prejudiceat the end of WWII is mistaken for a jew and ends up with his fate entwined with his jewish neighbor. At one point they end up barricading themselves in the same store. As they talk the non-jew asks why everyone is after the jews so much. The jewish man replies that there are too few jews to make a difference. “They aren’t after us, theyare after you.”

Absolutely right, and they are after you, too. Everyone soul must be accounted for. The eternal expansionism of EVERY phase of society which we hypocritically call “progress” is after each and everyone of us. The so called “freedom” which is offered to us carries a high price. Why we can’t even have  the freedom to disagree that this is freedom. But that’s not all we can’t disagree on…

You probably think we have a lot of options. In the mundane world we listen to the squabbling of the Demcrats and Republicans and we think they are offering options. But the subjects of the debates, the assumed platforms, the very details of the debate are all perfectly agreed upon by these “rivals”. As we listen we begin to see all the decisions in their framework, this pre-fabricated little house where our souls have to stoop to enter and, eventually, contort to inhabit.

Frontiers,as soon as they are recognized, become part of the plan for colonization. In the last twenty years, exactly as I and others predicted, “intellectual property” has become a battle ground a hundred times for significant tan before. While some poor online retailer is proud and happy to have created her own “brand” of something she is logically forced into a relationship of support with all the corporations who own the real “brands”. It start simple, like a good little girl she types TM next to every mention of the word “kleenex”, and she captializes it because kleenex is a specific brand not an idiom for a paper nose tissue. Now brands become real just as property turned from a concept to a “real thing”. And, mark my words, the time will come when wars will be fought over intellectual property with real soldiers dying for imaginary borders (they already do that) and implied transgressions.

The point is that now what is inside our heads is property and property always has an owner. What we feel has always been a target of this kind of acquisition. The Church did this for centuries. Think of all the misery, of the burning loins and stifled sorrows, of the trembling kneeling by the bed and humiliation in the confessional, multiplied for centuries, a dark and vastly misty land inside each person’s soul which, through constant force of argument, the Church essentially franchised until it could sell remedies for sins and considerations for murders.

Think of the assaults on your very being, that undefineable inside you carry around with you. For imagination we are slowly substituting special effects. For political debate we are encouraging sound bites. For knowledge of our bodes all too many of us are taking dozens of pills a day. For alternative health we are bullied into operations and chemicals. For employment we are taught to start our retirement planning in our twenties. For information we are closing our books and learning to skim and surf the same 1000 000  hits non of which goes deeper than thin skin. For our inner life we are lulled by women’s magazines and broadcast psychologists telling us what we should feel, how we should react: despite methods we all know don’t work.

The final frontier of the Star Trek series is really the frontier insider our hearts. The movement for it will seem fair and orderly, highly compensated. Give me this inch and I’ll make you happy. Give me another and I’ll make you thin. Here’s some money. Look we can make you live for five times a normal life, but we have to take away the uniqueness of your insides.

You stand there doing an exericse which could be Qigong, meditation, contemplation or prayer. Every second you stand you have you feet firmly planted in a world as alien as Narnia, a million light centuries from the world of the day to day. This is what grates on them. When you return they will ask “what was it like? Is it real or an illustion? Is it just a chemical reaction?” They don’t care. They want you to renege on what you have seen and felt. Like the character in 1984, Winston Smith, you must deny love and everything else. This system cannot stand with loose ends. Like corporate think only the leaders can be arbitrary, everyone else must learn the lessons. There is nothing in there that is not public, they advere. The world is consistently public and understandable by everyone else. Consensus

All we want is a clear mind. By that I mean a mind without pain or bad emotions. All we want is to take a vacation from the difficulties of being human. (more…)

Here’s a great little exercise. What’s so effective about it is that all you need is a little imagination. This exercise is about “intent”, that is bringing your attention to a specific task and then continuing to focus your mind while you accomplish this task. In Qigong most of the tasks are very easy because the real work is mainly on the internal functioning of breath and mind. Simpler tasks make controlling the intent and focusing on the essentials that much easier. Later, however, some of the advanced tasks are not only highly sophisticated but as beautiful as a dragon swimming through the waves.

Stand with your arms handing down as relaxed as possible. Slowly raise them to the height of your shoulders. Keep everything relaxed and soft. For this next section close your eyelids until just a little light shines in. Imagine you are in a room alone except for a single fly. The fly is buzzing around you and could at any time alight on the tops or you forearms or, being a fly, on the bottom sides. Concentrate until you are actually sensitizing the tops of your arms, waiting for the instant that fly will set down. When you can almost FEEL the fly about to land on one of your upper forearms then switch you intention to the underside of your arms. When you have a true feel for this relax your arms and allow them to fall to your sides as before.

You are now ready to practice “leading by intent”, an important component of Qigong training. Stand with your arms relaxed and hanging. Begin to imagine the fly on the tops of the arms but DO NOT MOVE at all until, allowing your imagination to become more and more real, you have an almost overwhelming urge to raise you arms. Keep imagining the fly but it is hovering just above the arms and your arms are drawn to the upside, slowly following the movement of the fly as it “leads” you upward. When you have reached shoulder level halt the movement of your arms. Concentrate once again  until you can almost feel the fly about to alight on your forearms undersides. Again, let the fly descend just AHEAD of your forearms as though you are being magnetically pulled downward with the movement. When you have reached the original position you have completed one entire cycle of movement controlled entirely by your intent. Each time you practice this you will feel a finer, subtler interaction between you arms and your intent. You are making real progress now.

Star Trek always started with a little introduction about the “final frontier”. Of course space is not the final frontier at all, and it never will be. The final frontier will always be the human soul and the human experience. (more…)

I was feeling stuck, overwhelmed, and tired.  It happens to all of us at times.  The press of our responsibilities and commitments begins to weigh us down. There’s too much to do, and not enough time. We lose balance and feel constantly stressed. If we don’t catch ourselves and make a timely course correction, we can get lost and depressed. (more…)

One of the most persistent confusions in medicine and health care is the idea of normative reality.  In truth normative information is only  generally true, not always useful in specific cases and sometimes quite misleading in application. (more…)

On January 30 a small group gathered in Aptos, California for a three hour Blossoms in the Spring workshop with Narrye Caldwell.  Sitting in a circle with a view of the redwoods, we started with qigong basics then proceeded through the three sections of Blossoms, taking hourly breaks for tea and conversation.  Though it felt more like a retreat than a workshop, by the end of the afternoon everyone could move through the entire set with confidence, even those who had no previous qigong experience.  As we completed the final move and hands came to rest gently in laps, one person breathed a big sigh and said, “oh, that’s so beautiful!”

Keep an eye on this site for information about future Blossoms workshops.