When you start learning chi gung, you have the intent for your chi to move. However, this is not the same thing as becoming directly aware of the chi itself, where it's a felt, living quality.

It's not that you have the idea, the imagination, or the ability to think about chi but that you actually feel it. It's the difference between the idea of eating and actually eating-having the juices in your mouth and tasting the food. The idea will produce some facsimile of the real thing and you might go so far as to salivate, but when the real deal is present the taste and sustenance of the food is either there or it's not. There's little thought involved.

Similarly, in order to actually feel chi directly you have to go through the Heart-Mind. You have to have a direct experience of moving chi in the body. To do this the body requires that the Heart-Mind be opened, if only to the tinniest degree.

Gods Playing in the Clouds is a bridge between chi gung and mediation since it starts from awakening the Heart-Mind and working with directly feeling and consciously moving chi. So, I'm going to start emphasizing this aspect in all of my courses. Gods is different from other chi gung sets. The beginning level of Dragon and Tiger, for example, can be done without actually feeling chi; you could visualize or have the idea of the chi moving. But, at some point, when to get to the next level, you are no longer dealing with the idea of it, you're dealing with the reality-you're tasting the chi, the juices and the food is going into your stomach. All chi gung and meditation starts at the level of intent and arrives at the Heart-Mind.

Take the idea of inner dissolving. You want a release, you have the intent for a release, but then it goes past a certain point where you start awakening the Heart-Mind. It sits there with the willingness for something to happen, but then it shifts into something that becomes very real. This is where Lao Tse's water tradition and the fire traditions part company. Many of the fire methods are very strongly based only upon ordinary intent.

To enter the real world of chi gung you have to access the Heart-Mind. At the level of intent, only a small percentage of your being is involved. To the degree to which you attach the Heart-Mind-surface-level or deep involvement-is the degree to which your being is involved. If you want to awaken the latent parts of the brain, it can only be done after the Heart-Mind is functioning really well.

Whether you're using only intent or you're accessing the Heart-Mind, normally you'll be doing the same things, the same transactions or techniques. The only difference being that once you awaken the Heart-Mind, there are specific methods and practices down stream that you can attempt that without the active use of the Heart-Mind simply aren't possible to accomplish otherwise.

You can get great benefits from intent. But that said you're going to find that people with intent alone are not normally resolving their deepest psychological and emotional issues, their sense of being connected to life. You're not going to find that genuine satisfaction arises solely out of intent. "Om Coco Cola" or whatever.

If human beings truly want to tap into something bigger than them, they cannot do it without tapping into the Heart-Mind.

I knew that at some point in my second phase of my 10-year-teaching program that the Heart-Mind was going to really start coming up. I just didn't know when. My first 10-year program was much more about teaching people how to use intent. If you can't crawl you can't walk. I got the flash last winter as to how to teach it. You could say my internal view went from fuzzy to clear. The Heart-Mind will henceforth be emphasized in my teachings as a result.

For Gods Playing in the Clouds it's very important. You can make energy move through your body to gain certain benefits, but if you add the Heart-Mind into it there's more that comes out of it:

A) You perform functions dramatically better; metaphorically 100 vs. 1,000 horsepower.

B) The Heart-Mind is really what allows humans to integrate their experiences, and become smooth with them during practice and our daily lives.

Ordinary intent doesn't do that. Ordinary intent can give you high performance in external tasks, but no more. What you will never get-no matter how much intent you use-is feeling whole inside. Ordinary intent will not make you smooth inside yourself. By its nature intent breeds the next intent because no intent can be complete. It always leaves you with what's missing. Integration occurs where everything comes together and where it truly is "all good." Something has to create continuity in your life, and basically that is what happens through the Heart-Mind.

The simplest definition-albeit partial-of the Heart-Mind is: Where your emotions and your rational mind come together. From an Eastern perspective it's not only to do with the mind. It's to do with the spiritual consciousness and emotions that reside in the heart and your rational capacity to figure out what's going around you. For example, you can be completely cool inside if your heart is open, but conversely you might not be able to walk down the street without getting lost if your intellectual mind functions poorly.

You don't have to have a Heart-Mind that's completely open to be more integrated inside. It's the same as the difference between being stark-raving mad, to being kind of okay, to being mostly okay, to being absolutely okay. Life exists along a continuum.

Classically Gods Playing in the Clouds is the bridge between chi gung and meditation. A central element is the Heart-Mind. Presuming you have all the earlier nei gung, they truly come together in Gods with the Heart-Mind and take it to the next level.

See you next time!
Bruce