I was going to write a post about how the Qi saturates the system and unifies the mind, but I want to get really simple here today. Maybe I’ll get to that…
We’ve got to simplify down our practice. We’ve got to go into stillness for a long time. We’ve got to explore what is trying to happen as we let go of our intention and allow all of these feelings, internal fluid movements, to express fully. And in that letting go, our practice will begin to come together.
At first we can’t feel much. Either we feel stuck, or we don’t feel anything. Our thoughts race out of control. Our desires are confused and our heart unbalanced. And so we need to spend a lot of time in stillness. Simple. Feeling. Allowing the body to express. Not controlling. Allowing any internal fluid movements in all shapes and sizes to move through without attempting to control or steer them.
Our intention of wanting to improve or heal or make something happen, to resolve something, this all gets in the way. So we need to let go of our intention, and just be attentive to what is happening and allow it. Get out of the way.
With time, allowing the body to fully express internally, will fill the body up. This will eventually feel good and beautiful and liberating. But along the way, at times it will be very scary to unseize places in the system that have been closed down for protection. This can get overwhelming, and we may need to take breaks from practice when we get overwhelmed. Then come back maybe a half hour later or later that day when the system has calmed down, and then keep going.
Our thoughts or our conceptualization about what is happening is okay. It does not matter what we are thinking. But as we get more and more into feeling, the thoughts will calm down and we will naturally quiet down. Insights will emerge, but they won’t come from this searching mind, this mind wanting to grasp what is happening. Often the chasing or grasping mind is the very same mechanism that is closing the body.
Having a teacher who you trust is important, as they will have gone through the crucible of letting go of control and coming through that process with the hard won great faith in the process. Their presence and joy will help our own mirror neurons to feel the possibility of letting go ourselves. We’ll get a great deal through osmosis as the main teaching.
Once we see for ourselves that we have radical permission to feel all that we are feeling and allow it through us, then we will have gained some joy, faith, trust in our own process. We’ll be so excited to discover what will show up in practice! And this will begin to permeate our experience more and more.
As we take the stillness practice deeper and deeper, we will learn the inner terrain and become agile in our inner transitions. Our system will become saturated and coalesce in a way we never imagined, like a sponge being saturated in ink. We will begin to fill up with Qi, and our mind and heart will begin to shift. Instead of the mind and the inner feelings being in a battle or in a type of chaos, the thought streams will lose their hook, and will begin to merge with this saturation. This is the Qi melding with the Mind, and it is a long process.
It will be relatively easy to do this while still. But then we see that when we move, when we interact with life, with others, it is much more difficult to stay open in this connected way. We are still and open, and then when we move that volatile open place in our chest or base of the skull calcifies in protection or disassociation. And so we keep it simple, we continue our stillness. We slowly take it into simple movements. It is like being in kindergarten, starting over. The simple Qigong movements are wonderful. Gradually our system is able to take more. It becomes spacious. It integrates the saturation more and more.
We’ll one day see that what we were searching for was where we were coming from, and practice will take on a whole new meaning.
Our movements of the body will be an expression of this saturation. When we look at something, it will be this saturation looking. Taking a step, coming and going will take on new meaning. Inside and outside will stop making sense. Insights will develop. Gifts will emerge. Intuition will naturally show up as we feel a huge process, a connected life taking over. But honestly, for a long time, where we are still stuck will just smack us in the face all day long, such is the relentlessness of this process needing to resolve.
I want to make it clear. What your heart is feeling. What you are feeling. It is not bad. It is not in the way. You must let it express, be completely yourself, open up all of the gates to life, and be saturated in this Great Life Energy that begins to permeate your experience. The passion in your heart, all of that love, will become nourishment for the world.
But, we begin with the stillness, we continue with the stillness. We continue our daily stillness and simple movement practice, doing the work and play, honestly finding our way, fascinated by the riches that gradually and suddenly show up. We’ll be changed in ways we may not even realize. We’ll be soft and natural and not special at all. People will notice. We’ll help them form a good place.
Lots of love to all of you! You can do it!
One of your best. Lots of golden nuggets in here. Would still love to hear about how the Qi saturates the system and unifies the mind!
So beautiful and helpful Corey, just arrived when I most needed it, thank you.