- This topic is empty.
-
Posts
-
As I mentioned in a previous post I met with Bruce recently and one of the topics we discussed was the Heaven trigram. I’ve been “playing” with ideas and concepts for a while and we talked briefly about this. I’ve created posts based on some of these. Most of what I was “playing” with could be summarized as applications or just various ways that you can move energy around. They exist. They are legit, and they can get very complicated quickly. But… in Bruce’s words you can drive yourself crazy thinking about all of the variations. I took this comment as polite advice saying don’t waste your time and energy with this.
So, we quickly moved onto other, more useful topics. In particular, we started talking about the energies of the trigrams starting with Heaven. Bruce stood up and showed me how Heaven can expand out, go inward, simultaneously expand out and in, and finally how it can disperse from a point throughout the entire field. He showed me the last one by having me push on his forearm and I could feel how my force was just dissapating from the point of contact into his entire field. You feel a bit like it is dissolving into nothingness.
One big difference between what I had been practicing and what Bruce demostrated is the spherical nature of everything he was doing. Where I had been working with the first three modes along on a line, Bruce did everything in 3 dimensions, spherically. The mind has to relax considerably more to do this for real.
The other interesting thing is that the mode of going inward isn’t a contraction or condensing necessarily. It just goes into inner space. We talked about some of my experiences with this and talked about how you can get lost going either way, going way out or going way in. Bruce explained how to balance the in and out starting with the lower tan tien and eventually working with the central channel so you don’t get lost and can control the out and in. This helps the mind to stay present so it doesn’t gap.
I’ve been training this for a few weeks and now have a conceptual way to understand how these four ways of demonstrating the energy of Heaven are really only one thing. I doubt I’ll be able to convey this in words but I may try in another post.
I always thought the inward thing was condensing as well. If you could manage to put the inner space thing into words I think it would be very beneficial. Either an explanation or an exercise that helps with getting the feeling/thought.
Thanks for the insight. It’s always very interesting.
This inward mode of Heaven shouldn’t be confused with closing. It can be used to facilitate closing but it isn’t closing. You could liken this to something getting pulled into a whirlpool or light going into a blackhole. The whirlpool doesn’t collapse or condense or close. It keeps its structure. The light of Heaven would just go in. Nothing would stop it. There wouldn’t be any inertia to its direction of motion. It would just go in.
You probably can’t experience this unless you’ve opened your sense of inner space through lots of inner dissolving. When you implode inward it is the same thing, the same mode. The heart mind is required and you should be working with the bone marrow. You have to use your internal senses which is really foreign to us because we are so externally oriented.
The two best practices to develop these are Taoist meditation (IMHO, this is all that is necessary) and the single palm change. But, you often have to take a very circuitous route before you can do what you are really supposed to do. If you can project the light outward you can simply point it inward as well. For example in the water palm movement that is part of the Bagua mastery program, there is a point where the palms are both pointing in. If you were using Heaven you would simple project through the finger tips inward toward a point, energy gate, tan tien, or the central channel.
Hope this helps.
Yeah I think that helps. I’m a long way off experiencing it though. Still working on the more general aspects of the first and second bodies.
BTW, I’ve been practicing this a lot lately. In the single palm change I perform all four modes. On the initial ko, everything is concentrated into my center to form an incredibly powerful piece of steel where both hands project energy up and out on a extremely focused line of energy. As the foot steps out from the initial ko, I’ve been shooting the energy in two directions along the line, the top hand up and the bottom hand is down. These are expanding out along a very concentrated line. That line creates three forces simultaneously: an up, an out, and a rotation. The closing hit is when I shoot everything into a point. The remainder of the single palm change is an attempt to express the dispersion mode.
This is an archived forum (read only). Go to our active forum where you can post and discuss in real time.