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No great insight, I’m afraid, just, well, to let go, you have to have transformed (/ allowed to transform) whatever you were previously holding on with, or it would still be doing it.
And my experience is limited, but my impression is that whatever you let go of is also transformed in the process.
Though maybe there is more than one way of letting go. From the descriptions of the Sedona method recently, it sounds, well, a bit easy. I understand that letting go shouldn’t exactly be a big effort, but I find it can involve a fair bit of endeavour, at least to start with.
Everything awaits transformation. Transforming it yourself is an act of self-responsibility. Letting go means that another part of the field has to do the transforming. This abdicating the power of responsibility. Everyone must be responsible for themselves.
Fajin
I think letting go, aka surrendering is of supreme importance. But unless you have sufficient practice and momentum behind it, it you won’t take you very far.
Sort of like a great musician relaxes and lets the music move through him. That only works after years of practice. The great athlete moves without conscious thought, again thats after years of basic training.
Maybe spirituality is like that. Some degree of instruction and practice is neccessary before surrender leads to grace.
An Aikido sensei of mine once said, There is the nothing that is very very powerful, and then there’s nothing thats just nothing. You distinguish the two by practice.
Michael
– “Everything awaits transformation.”
Maybe 🙂
– “Everyone must be responsible for themselves”
Yes, but we still need to establish what “yourself” is and what “responsible” is. How much of that-which-supposedly-needs-transforming are you responsible for? How much is “yours”? How much are you creating? How, most importantly, IS this stuff created?
Let me explain my attitude, and rather than arguing, we may find that we have much in common.
I choose to interpret responsibility primarily in terms of not creating any more energetic gunk, by not resonating with that which I encounter, through releasing the patterns within me which currently do so.
My experience is that we create, unaware, a truly PHENOMENAL amount of rubbish, just by being who we are and resonating with our fears and desires all day. And letting go of the parts of us which continually compose this junk is the single biggest contribution we can make to the energetic ecology (and every ecology).
To me it’s like dismantling the factory and THEN starting to clear up the countryside. Otherwise you can be moving about, thinking you’re cleaning stuff up and not realising that you’re still a factory.
I think much of the argument between “transformers” and let-goers” is just words.
I think that letting something go is not merely a process of turning your back and letting it drift, still noxious, into the environment. I believe that the structure has to be transformed in the process of letting go, otherwise it would still be part of you.
I think that the REAL issue between the two camps ( and the reason why we wind eachother up so much ) is the issue of how much of one’s “self” is “valid”, that is, how much is the divine nature of this incarnation with its divine job to do and hence to be cherished, and how much is rubbish to be cleared.
In short, transformers like their “selves” more than letgo-ers do. Let-goers say to transformers: “go on, you can do without all this identity, it only makes you miserable, you’ll still exist.” and transformers say to letgo-ers : “why are you afraid to express your unique nature, don’t you want to live?”
And I think they’re both right. Not because there is some well-balanced compromise view, but because both views are right for those who hold them. While you want to express your nature it is the right thing to do, if you want to release your identity it is the right thing to do. There’s no point trying to do one if you’re drawn to the other. And no point trying to convince anyone that the other attitude is right.
It just another level of the yin-yang of creation. Some aim for more individuality, saying “yes, I’ve got a plan, we can make this better,” and the others are more inclined to experience being undifferentiated life, saying “jeez, it doesn’t need fixing, if you’d just stop there wouldn’t be a problem to start with.”
I don’t think either of us are in favour of encouraging big clouds of nasty energy to float around until they attack Michael Winn. But it sounded like he learned something valuable from the experience, so who can say whether it was or wasn’t just the right thing to happen?
I’d agree that lots of letgo-ers don’t realise that a lot of stuff has to be dug up before it can be let go.
Would you agree that a lot of transformers keep a lot of personal gunk they should think about transforming, because they think that so long as their transformation process is ticking along nicely then everything else must be ok?
PH> To me it’s like dismantling the factory and THEN starting to clear up the countryside. Otherwise you can be moving about, thinking you’re cleaning stuff up and not realising that you’re still a factory. >
Best analogy I’ve heard to date.
PH> I think that the REAL issue between the two camps ( and the reason why we wind eachother up so much ) is the issue of how much of one’s “self” is “valid” >
Again, hit the head on the noggin.
🙂
I think you get a good impression of someone the first few minutes meeting them.
When I did a workshop with Michael Winn years ago the first 5 minutes someone picked up “Awaken Healing Light” and Michael immedietly said “I wrote that book”.
When I met Ken Cohen a couple years ago after a couple minutes I said how I liked the book he wrote he immedietly responded “I didn’t write it”.
Both are cool dudes but I would say this first impression of both is a major difference of there respective philophical and practice outlook. Ken really tries to see nature practiing through him. Michael seems to want to develop the self to navigate through the Tao better..with more “skill”.
Again, no judgements but I think it is a small representation of a major philisophical difference between some qigong practitioners.
I don’t see one or the other being right or wrong.
> the issue of how much of one’s “self” is “valid” >
I think that classical Buddhism and authentic Taoism are not so far off from each other in this regard… though you’ve gotta dig around some to see the correlations.
I don’t think that Buddhism’s no-self doctrine really is saying that there’s no self. Its just that, unless you’re genuinely an advanced cultivator (or are getting a glimpse above the din), everything you feel as yourself, intuit as yourself, think is yourself, act on as your basis, is totally wrong, is based on confusion.. many layers down. So the first thing they teach (for a long time) is “don’t do anything, just stop it .. no, don’t even just stop it, just don’t do anything” and stabalized concentration. Cause anything “you” try and do is based on confusion (“the factory”, in Poo’s analogy). And, yup, there’s the diamond body, but that’s taught after the channels are open, after you’ve stabalized one-pointed concentration, after you’ve (at least philosophically) been grilled on what Reality is, and with the guidance of an Elightened Teacher.
Classical Taoism (again, imo), starts with saying much the same thing: you’re doing everything wrong. Only its worse than that, you’re doing everything the opposite of right!: the “forward and reverse” teachings. Until you’re really fluent at reverse, you’re basically a garbage machine (except for those present and reading this message, of course). And the training is just as grueling.
I once heard a teacher say something like, “Most of the mystical maneuvers have as a prerequisite that thought is stopped, but most people aren’t even able to stop their thought”.
All that said, I’m not entirely in the “do nothing” camp. At least, I think its a lot easier to do nothing after you’ve done a lot of warm-up. And that the union of concentration and openness that initially occurs within the central channel but consequently includes everything is the big secret that both profoundly transcends the little self while at the same time promotes a subtle body cohesiveness of good foundation.
yap-yap-yap.
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