Wudang method technique

I think spin is the key thing. The neutral center of the sphere sounds cool, maybe I’ll try that!

I agree, be open to transmission from the qi field. freedom to experiment is yours, because the experience is YOURS. Examine the results, and go with what you need or prefer in the moment.

Barry,

It sounds to me that you have a lot of thinking going on as well as very good questions being raised because they are part of your process.

We ARE the process and it is important to remember that your earth center is you.

As far as the controller goes- “control” is a very fuzzy word. I don’t like to use it. I make decisions all the time about what to do based on what I feel is right and the difference between what I feel is right and what I may think is supposed to happen is enormous. A major part of my own process has been to learn that it’s alright to do things the way I want to do them and that, IN FACT, whenever I learn some “thing” from someone I had better eventually make it my own or I don’t really know it. We are supposed to be individuals not clones.

Making choices is “controlling” but when you say “I make choices” it doesn’t sound the same as when you say “I control things.” I believe it is a point of maturity one reaches to realize that one does not need to “discipline” but to guide and relate to oneself, and that it is in having this attitude that one actually transmutes oneself and grows (up). That is feminine energy – nurturing yourself.

Most of our thinking comes from our heads in this society and we are taught to fer anything else. Thinking from the head as opposed to thinking from the heart is thinking that is disconnected from the greater reality and is therefore dysfunctional. Unity consciousness, what we are developing now on earth, is based on the balance between the masculine and the feminine. That happens from the heart. Earth energy, your center, is created from this kind of interaction. When the feminine (in the kidneys below) is properly mixing with the masculine (in the heart above) you have the presence of yuan chi and yourSelf. That’s unity, love, completeness…however you like to put it. So, for me, our practices are about dropping anything we do that interferes with this action, like head thinking and all the junk that goes with it- doubt, fear, anger, resistance.

All your references to “shadow stuff” are about what Chinese medicine would call your constituional type, your personality structure. It is your way of maintaining an identity apart from the whole, the Dao. You have to make a big space inside you (a cauldron, technically) to hold all the stuff you are capable of doing, thinking and feeling and let it all boil down. In the end, you want to feel good, to feel whole. Who gives a shit if your mind thinks it’s doing things right, right?

This is why cultivation is a longterm project. Home wasn’t built in a day.

I know a lot of forms. I like to use them but I am always looking for what is deep underneath them, the essence, the core. So the form I use is an external structure for me to follow so that I can experience myself more fully and deepen my ability to stay in that inner-centered place. Once one lives in that place normally the form is no longer necessary. And that’s the point: The ultimate place to live is in wu wei harmony with the Dao. Where it flows through you effortlessly and spontaneously without undue thought or emotion, in peace, trust and certainty.

I believe that the ultimate key here is that we learn to trust our feelings about what we are doing. Our feelings tell us when we are on or off, aligned or not. The best way I know of to develop this is to use the smile and face our demons with it, holding the space and making the best choices we can as we go. At some point we have to challenge what our mind tells us and ask it, who is always asking us for proof of the reality of this spirtual stuff we are doing, to provide us with the proof that it is right to doubt, criticize or ridicule. “Prove to me, inner pest, that what you say about me is true. I challenge you to show me that I really should be ‘doing it right, proving myself to authority, give my moment a name, figuring it out so….I am… OK….’. If you smile strongly enough, deeply enough, for long enough things start to change. You get the idea that you can’t serve two masters and you spontaneously chose unity instead. When your “I” is single your body is full of light.

May the Source be with you, Alexander

“does the earth jerk back and forth on its axis of spin while circling the sun?”

No, but it wobbles. Nothing in the solar system works perfectly but it all works well enough to keep going. The point is, too much thinking ruins the rice. I think the pearl knows how to spin if we let it.

“wuwei: spontaenity only happens in relation to a structure. Musician needs to master strings and octaves before going wild.”

Yes. After mastering an outer practice form, the system embodies the knowledge and can use it through any presented outer circumstance which then becomes the structure to go wild in.

In a video clip I saw Fred Astaire onstage with Ed Sullivan in the early sixties. Ed handed Fred a golf club and asked him to do a quick improvisational dance with it. Fred took the club, hemmed and hawed a bit while “thinking,” (“Now what do ya want me to do with this thing?!) and then spontaneously leaped into several tap movements that developed into a large spiraling motion which ended in a completely unpredictable, smooth, consistent, full golf swing from the floor up. It was Tai Chi in tap shoes.