Metaphorical Qi

[Adia]

Look into the new God particle they found in CERN in Europe it looks promising. It's a quark. I think it's called Higgs Boise quark or something. Cutting edge physics.

Adia

[Rara]

Yeah, I've heard many times people argue that chi is fake. That's like saying consciousness is fake...very misinterpreted as some mystical nonsense by those who can't categorise it or be open enough to just admit that something is just there! We cannot explain it, or trace it...but we cannot deny it. Otherwise there is no existence, no experience. Could you imagine that...? Probably easier to understand that chi is present haha

[Mudfoot]

I think that Qi is a good word, and energy (as defined by natural science) is a poor metaphore.

In practicing qigong, qi goes up, down, in and out. It can be warm or cool. All this depends on intent, stance and/or movement.

Working with qi outside the body, you can have a palpable connection over distances, or jump the distance.

 

In healing others, their external qi field can have sensations of obstructions, holes, etc.

 

In meditation, there can be an experience of space inside, ever expanding. When dissolving obstructions, going deeper end deeper, there can be an experience of light.

(And so on.....)

 

Are these experiences really experiences of energy in the sense of natural science. Does energy work just like our experiences?

Do we feel waves going through the air (what's on channel 5?).

Do we feel subatomical particles?

Does mystic experience readily translate into the natural world?

Is that important, and, more importantly, why is that important?

 

Is it not enough that internal arts are a science of the mind, and that some of it spills over to the physical world?

[PLB]

Greyharte, you ask:

 

"Is Qi a real thing in the sense that it is wholely contained in itself and perhaps misunderstood, or is it more of a metaphor for the multiple body systems working together to make the results of Qi? Is it something else entirely?"

 

I don't think qi is contained in itself since we only know about it because of the way it is attracted by focused intention. There is a feed back element that is essential to the stuff. Once this connection is experienced, what makes it more "real" to separate this qi from consciousness? What is consciousness?

 

If qi is a "metaphor for the multiple body systems working together to make the results of Qi", then wouldn't the experience of that "working together" require an actual organizing principle that either exists or not? If you or I confirm that things happen that way, then the organizing principle is not a theory or poetic allusion but a thing that exists. If the thing is supposed to only exist if it can be confirmed as "real" outside of my experience, then my experience is not "real." That is an absurd result and can be discarded without proving it true or untrue.

 

When you ask if it "Is it something else entirely", I don't understand how the first two frames you proposed are mutually exclusive. Something can be what it is according to its own nature and we can experience it disjointedly and talk about it only through various language games. If it is something entirely diiferent than either frame would suggest, we can't prove that by excluding the idea from one or the other domain.