Otis

Michael, I am not trying to diminish your experience, or the sciences that you have studied. In no way, am I trying to imply that the energy body is fallacious, imaginary, or wrong. A metaphor is a sign, pointing at the ineffable. Every word serves as a metaphor, because every word is a sign, not the thing itself. All language is metaphor, because it is a conceptual substitute for what actually exists. And every method is metaphor, a way of helping other human beings understand. If a human being came up with the concept (and every concept is a human creation), then it is not the actual thing in the world, but a mental representation. The actual body, including its energetic aspect, knows itself, beyond the metaphor. It is the real thing. As you well know, book learning is no substitute for actually feeling the energy body. That is what I'm pointing at. The concept of energy body can be distracting, whereas the experience of energy body, can be liberating. In quantum physics, the words "particle" and "wave" do correspond to actual physical phenomena, but they are not accurate descriptors of what's there, because the phenomena is always more complex than these simplistic human metaphors. What exists is something that incorporates aspects of particle and wave, and yet, is neither. It's only in our dualistic expectations, that we witness collapse of probability. In the same way, systems of energy can help rough in awareness. But refinement always comes from the awareness itself. We can be taught how to ride a bike, but only up to a certain point; then we have to feel our way through it. Make any method "right", and you have necessarily excluded part of what's real. Because any method is always smaller, less perfect, than what is actually there.

I don't know about "proving" the energetic body, but I can recommend how you can feel it. Just balance something on a fingertip. Spend enough time with it, so the object is easily balanced, and you can move the finger around, without dropping it. When the wobble has settled, and the balance is sure, there is an "aha" sensation, at the tip of the finger, the very sensation that lets you know you've found balance. That "aha" is what Qi feels like. Listen for that sensation, elsewhere in your body, particularly while you're relaxed, and moving with ease, and you can tune right in to the Qi of your body. Balance sports, in general, are a great way to learn the feeling of Qi.

Google! Terms like: free dance, trance dance, 5 rhythms, sacred dance, yoga dance, etc.

Yes, the "physical body" is also a metaphor. That just means that the concept we use for the body, is not the body. We have various ways of looking at the body, via a mirror or a body map or our thoughts or self-image, but none of those is the actual body; they are just representations. Likewise with the concept of the "energy body". Yes, there are great models and techniques, that have verifiable results, in working with the energy body. But the models are still metaphors. What the energy body is, can be felt, but not 100% known. It can be made friends with, but not 100% controlled. IME, the body is a more true Self, than I am. It is the whole being; unlike me, since I am only the ego. So, the idea that I, the ego, could actually know the body, is backwards. The part can never know the whole. Nor do I need to. To be aware in it, is enough. The body knows itself, better than I ever will. It can teach me, better than I can teach it. That doesn't mean that the body isn't subject to consequences (e.g. via your rhetorical truck), of course; it just means that it is beyond my certain knowledge. The "actual" body is neither physical, nor energetic, nor spiritual because it encompasses all three (and more?). It is something beyond human description, and our models are just pointing in its direction.

This is how I use "dissolution of self": to mean dissolution of habits. IME, that's what the "self" is: a constellation of habits, including the habits of consciousness.

Thanks Jetsun, and thanks to everyone for the props. Yes, very much agreed that the "natural essence is never destroyed". I feel like my practice has been calling me towards awakening that essence in a continual cycle of yin and yang approaches. Yin: as you say, letting go of what covers it up. Surrendering the habits that I have, which prevent that essence from its natural freedom. And yang: enervating my system through exercise, through full engagement of my faculties in whichever direction I am called. I see the two as cyclical, flowing into each other, like exhalation and inhalation. The surrender allows me to do the activity, activating and engaging, and going to exhaustion. Which then evokes the resistance of my body, in the form of soreness and fatigue. Which then demands my surrender of taking offense at the pain. Which then leads to full engagement in stretch and more activity. Etc. The willingness to face pain has been key for me, because avoidance of pain has been every bit as confounding a habit, as belief in "the right way" to do something. Thankfully, as I've learned to make friends with pain, it has also become much friendlier with me: becoming a teacher, rather than a tormentor. And that has helped fuel my belief that all of the ingredients for growth are already in here, just some I've ignored or misunderstood. Edit to add: of course, by exercise, I do not mean "working out", but rather: playing out.

I would recommend that they dance. In particular, I would recommend finding one of the many "barefoot boogies" across the world, in which the ethic is "dance as though no one is watching". I would suggest that they base their dance entirely on how their body feels, in each moment; that they add as little extraneous effort as possible to the activity. Follow the flow when moving, and listen to what keeps moving, when they stand still. Do their best to surrender worry about appearances, and instead base everything on how they feel. I would also advocate thinking of the "energy body" as only a metaphor, that the physical and energetic are just different perspectives on the same thing, in the same way that a photon can be "particle" or "wave", depending upon how we observe it. I would say, instead of thinking about either perspective literally, just use the metaphors of energy and fluid, to help shift their relationship to their bodies. Listen to flow, rather than to body parts. I would advocate delicious stretches, and suggest that there is no concrete difference between authentic dance and stretch. In both, it is the interplay of resistance vs. ease that carves out the vectors of movement. In both, the body is best served, when the mind is not trying to make something happen, but is rather curious and playful in its willingness to take a ride on whatever capacity the body has, right now. Start with what's available, don't force anything, be patient, enjoy the journey.

Hi Jetsun. Good line of inquiry. About the methods themselves. They might be more useful to be seen as "training wheels", to help one get a taste of balance, Qi, etc., and then extend from there, into a more spontaneous, authentic practice, that goes beyond method. All method, really, is a teaching tool, a way of getting across an ineffable concept, not "the right way to do it". Of course, I think there's also a great deal to be said for not becoming too contaminated by concepts. If the techniques are taught as "truth", instead of as metaphors, then that rigid belief can impede later awareness. Personally, I have no methods or techniques. I stumbled upon awareness of energy moving through me, and I have let that energy be my teacher, not any tradition. When I started, I saw within myself, the tendency to try to pin meaning down, to say "this specific thing works; let's stick with that". But with time, I let those ideas go, as superstition, and I have fewer and fewer concepts attached to my practice. My practice is all spontaneous (once I have brought myself to the environment that allows me to do it). It is based upon stepping into the practice, paying attention to my senses, but not trying to do anything in particular. The more practice I've had, the more my body makes its own choices, dances its own dance, finds its own stretch, juggles the staff or explores the parkour obstacle, with as little interference from "me" as possible. In particular, my practice is all "play", meaning I just have fun allowing my body to explore the unknown, without any goals or yardsticks. Over the ten years that I have been practicing this "authentic movement", I've had pretty amazing results, and many others have commented on how much younger I seem to have gotten. My life-long bad back problem incapacitated me when I was 32, which got me started on this path. But by the time I was 35, I started breakdancing, for the first time in my life. I started parkour at 38, and I've learned to take impact, do stunts, headspins, etc., all without any instruction, and very little trying. A great deal of my syndrome of muscle spasm has retreated, and my capacity, flexibility, awareness, balance, and strength have all increased dramatically. I'm much much more capable and less prone to injury at 42, then when I was 18 (at least during my practice). The reason why I mention all this is just to assert: yes, authentic exploration has been an extremely effective (non-)method for me. From these years of practice, I believe that the body itself knows how to open up, how to liberate Qi, how to find its own full potential. It has been under "my" (i.e. my ego's) control for so long, that it had forgotten authenticity, but when I get out of the way, it is much wiser about its health, than I have ever been. After all, I just have second-hand concepts, whereas my body is following "what is", in each moment.

Personally, I don't subscribe to either title. But I like having both influences, in the discussions. I'd rather keep them together.

This one is a better example of a play video I created with friends. For awhile, I'd bring some props that I had found or bought at the 99cent store, and just invited people to play along. The result was always unpredictable, very silly, and involved the creative input of many people.

Thanks for the good words, H.E. I feel like the noisy is just preparation for the quiet, which is in turn preparation for the noisy. For example, partner dancing is one practice that calls me toward inner quiet, to listening without planning. If my only goal is to harmonize, then I don't need to try anything specific in the dance, just follow the moment. And the stunts, contact staff, and dancing on concrete and rails, are just examples of dancing with inanimate partners. These partners are perfect teachers, because they are utterly unbiased. If I use too much force, the only thing I hurt, is myself. I started doing all this at the age of 38, after decades of a bad back and muscle spasm, so I have little physical room for bravado. My practice with stunts, props, and urban dance play, is to become softer, quieter, and thereby become more flexible and capable, when the world does get noisy.

Humility is not just "a nice trait", or a "byproduct". Humility is precisely the action of surrender of self. Love is not "a side-effect" like happiness. It is precisely the action of living without separation. Questions of enlightenment, to me, are pointless. Who cares? Do I get a cosmic gold star, if I "attain"? To me, the question that matters is: am I living fully as my life? Or am I holding my self back from life, trying to "get it right" and/or "be above"?

I know that feeling. The couple of times in my life, in which I had to face someone with a gun, I didn't feel any fear, until after the event. I guess that's a good survival function.

Living in L.A., I have had to find how to be "in nature", even when there is no nature around. Thankfully, I have the beach and Griffith Park very near by, and I make it to one or the other, several evenings of the week. In particular, barefoot hiking in the Hollywood Hills has been important in keeping me connected to the earth. Even though they are not alive, the stairs, rails, walls and features of L.A. have welcomed me to play and dance on them. The concrete jungle has become my jungle gym. I think it is important that we embrace our environment, even when it is not "natural".

This never happens. At least not for anyone on this Earth. Well, I can't say for sure "what happens". I'm just describing the experience.

It really is a great topic; thanks to H.E. I'm fortunate enough that my work is what I wanted to do: filmmaking. And I've been fortunate enough to have many very cool assignments, over the years. Still, after so much time creating television (which I'm not a fan of watching), and working on other people's projects, I finally felt the need to create my own youtube channel, and start making improvisational play videos, with my friends. The last few years of Inspired Mayhem (the channel's name), have allowed me to use my production skills to bear on my new practice: surrendered, free, child-like collaborative activity, with few rules or plans. Many of the early videos focused on finding pedestrian inanimate objects, and discovering the adventure and possibilities within them. Then I did a lot of solo (and some partner) play dancing with inanimate objects in the world, like bulldozers, rails and ramps. My friend Nick joined with me to create "public provocation videos", in which we dressed up as characters, and interacted with the bemused and bedazzled random people we ran into. Plus, there have been many variations on stunts, dance, and other goofiness, usually centering around found objects and locations. I've always seen this creation as an extension of Taoist practice, because it is about forgetting what we've known, letting go of fear and expectations, and discovering new possibility through balance, joy, ease, and collaboration. A small compilation of stuff: And, of course, my main practice is dance. Not performance (so I don't tend to think of it as "art"), but rather the exploration of what beauty means, to my kinesthetic senses. Ease, passion, curiosity, discovery, and joy are the parameters and motors of my dance play, and it's been very rewarding to my body, mind and spirit.

What a fantastic post! Thank you! And the video is great, too! I loved watching the bowl take shape under your(?) fingers.

I think it was Steve F. who recently commented on how driving in traffic is great practice. Especially for those who have long and intense commutes, or face uncaring and unaware drivers, finding calm and presence on the roadway is a great way to learn, while enjoying the drive a lot better.

World history is useful. It can give lots of insight and perspective on day-to-day things.

Hi Keith. Interesting stuff. Also, I liked checking out your personal practice pages. Very nice.

Very good point. I experience it like that, as well. Like when I did my first bungee jump: part of me was fighting for its life, against that choice. This sounds very useful. I'll give this a try.

Excellent! This is very much how I strive to be in practice, throughout life. I also have to stress practicing ongoing forgiveness, to myself and others. When I do witness my resentment of the world, it is surrendered through forgiveness. When I find my internal critic slamming me (as if there were more than one of me in here), then it is self-forgiveness that allows me to recognize my mistakes, fix them, and move on. Also, the surrender of stories is important for me. I find myself spinning all kinds of yarns, throughout the day, as to what events mean, what people think, etc. I don't try to stop or ignore the flow of thoughts, because they are there for a reason, to help me make sense of the world. So I try just to listen to them, accept them, and then let them go.

Hi, Ed. You ask a very interesting question. I think, to some degree, Lao Tzu was anticipating the question, and offers the sage, as the model to abide in, when the practitioner's self-image has grown thin. I do think that all self-identity is false and misleading, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't serve a purpose. I think the Taoist sage identity is like training wheels, to help one align one's self, while the need for identity is still strong. Ultimately, I think that any and all self-identity needs to go, if we want to be totally free. Identity is just another trap. But until the need is fully surrendered, as you point out, then it is tempting to hold on to something. The identity that I find useful right now, is that of a student of the path. Within that identity is an alignment of what I am seeking (self-insight and growth) and what I am paying attention to (my internal resistance and need for control).

Great share about the frozen burrito + the heroin addict story, Manitou. I very much like that your OP translation is about "love" rather than benevolence or compassion (or certainly pity!). I just don't think the other words do justice to what I think the chapter is trying to say. I am not a person who lives in love (I wish I were), but I have tasted it. From my admittedly shallow depth, I experience love as a natural powerful flow, that aligns my entire organism, when I allow it. Within that flow, is the recognition that any judgment against others, is a contraction of the potential for my own life. If I want to be truly free, then I believe I have to allow love to take over me. As long as I hold back from love, then I remain a prisoner of my resentment and my fear. Again, this is something I have tasted, and not lived; but when it is present, it's power and clarity is so overwhelming, that it seems to be lighting the path, ahead of me.

I'm sure the difference between us is a semantic one, but I wanted to address this. I do think it is entirely in keeping with the path, to "strive for greatness". Not "greatness" as in social recognition, awards, etc. And certainly not "greater than..." But greatness, as in becoming the greatest human being I possibly can be. To believe in my own greatness, is not very useful. But to strive for greatness is extremely useful.