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I’ve mentioned often that it has taken me over two decades to finally start understanding Bruce’s teaching. On the one hand this seems pathetic and slow. I think to myself, really? Why did it take me so long? I must be f-ing stupa.
Anyway, there are a few ways of looking at this. One is to feel self pity and wallow in the injustice of it all. Another is to realize it really isn’t that long. The truth is who cares? I had nothing better to do.
From yet another point of view, it took Bruce almost the same amount of time. I base this statement on Appendix D in Bruce’s Bagua book. He started martial arts in 1961. He was exposed to Aikido in 1963 and the Chinese internal arts in 1968. He met Liu Hung Chieh in 1981 – 20 years later. Bruce said that Liu spent the first year teaching him about the heart-mind. So Bruce didn’t enter into “the real deal” until sometime after. I don’t know what year he experienced the great stillness, but it would have been sometime between 1982 and 1986.
This is both encouraging and discouraging. On the one hand it means you could probably do it in about the same amount of time. That’s a good thing! On the other, it seems like it takes too long.
Look at it this way. I managed to get this far while working 40, 50, 60 hours a week in one of the most detrimental jobs of the last century – working with computers. I raised 3 boys and studied on the side about an hour a day. I’m healthier, stronger, and happier for it.
If you are reading this, you are in the Bagua Mastery Program. You may not realize how fortunate you are to have this material. When I started with Bruce, he hadn’t written a single book yet. Energy Gates was first published in 1993, three years after I started studying with Bruce.
The BMP has everything you need to understand how to methodically open the first 3 bodies: physical, etheric, and the body of emotion. This is extraordinary. You may not be able to appreciate just how good this material is for a long time.
My advice to anyone who really desires to take Bagua to where it can go is this: Get in front of Bruce when he is teaching meditation. Forget about all the other crap. Bruce has trained enough people who can teach you the basics of neigung. You need to get what the heart-mind is. The best way to find it is through meditation and Bruce is a gifted meditation teacher.
Liu recognized this.
Sometimes I need to hear things like that. At the moment I’m progressing pretty well but there have been times when I’ve felt like I’m going nowhere in any great hurry.
There was something I read the other day which I probably should have bookmarked but it had the minimum times to open certain things. It started with 3 months for the first stage which I think was settling to the lower dantien, then 10 months gestation to grow your energy, then 1 year further for each step after that, finishing at an absolute minimum of 10 years to open your whole body if you’re working “diligently” whatever you would define that as. I think this may have come from a classic text. Perhaps you know of it.
Can you get a glimpse of the heart-mind early on or is it not really possible? Do you think Bruce could trigger it so I could have a look? Going to a workshop with him on the weekend so I’m wondering if I should ask.
You can get glimpses of the heart-mind. If you didn’t practice or work to get it, I think it would be called grace. Anytime you are around Bruce you have a chance of getting it. I believe it is the source or mechanism he uses for “transmission”.
I remember Bruce giving advice at the Acupuncture School in Watertown, MA (so, this would be 20 years ago). His advice, knowing everything he knew as a master and lineage holder, was to get around him as much as possible. At the time I have to admit it sounded self-serving, but knowing what I know now, it is the best advice you could get.
Whatever you do at the seminar, don’t try to get it. Just relax, try to be present, and enjoy the experience.
Thanks for your words of encouragement. I’ll add a few of my own.
I was lucky to find a good teacher in 1987. His teacher was a lineage holder of taiji and Taoist mediation and I studied with him, too. It was a fire school so I never really synced with it. but it was the real deal and a good foundation. Then, I started studying at Brookline Tai Chi, learning Bruce’s system, about 12 years ago. I’ve had the time to practice every day since I started back in 87. I have a musical friend who says, “music is absolutely fair: you practice and you get better.” And I think that the way it works with tai chi. We’re just lucky to have found in Bruce a teacher who has a complete system and is willing to pass it on.
This stuff is really deep. In fact, it’s infinitely deep. The deeper I get, the more there is. It’s like a receding horizon. But I love it.
Thanks James, Cameron, Matthew,
I agree:
“You need to get what the heart-mind is. “As a kid, in 1953, I experienced the heart-mind
(after 2 months of being totally paralyzed with polio–this was before Jonas Salk developed the polio vaccine–before reliable treatments).Ever since, I’ve been trying to replicate that experience.
Last Nov. 2012, I positively re-captured my heart-mind and it is now an accessible, functioning part of my body/mind/spirit.
But it was a long, long 60-year journey.
Decades of prayer, TM in 1975, yoga in 1977,
shikantaza in 1989, taiji in 1993, acupressure in 1995, bagua in 2010.Today, for me the reliable trigger for gaining access to the heart-mind is now through an acupuncture point–any point–skillfully worked with–it works every time.
Acupressure? Yep. No kidding.So, am I going to stop praying, meditating, doing yoga, playing taiji, walking the circle?
No way! (Actually I haven’t had much luck with yoga, although it sure stretches the muscles.)What a blast to experience the “fullness of emptiness” while “Parting the Wild Horse’s Mane” by non-doing!
This taiji principle is simple, yet subtle and not easy to obtain.
Furthermore, I expect to reach this same level with the Single Palm Change.This is not to say that the Bagua Mastery Course isn’t somehow extremely significant in invoking the heart-mind. Bruce’s work is tremendous. Everything he describes supports my experience with the heart-mind and may have even directly contributed to the efficacy of my acupressure technique (notice that the acupressure technique didn’t kick in until after I had started practicing bagua.)
I guess my point is,
that the how and when of making a connection with the heart-mind is unpredictable. And length of study is not necessarily important–it can occur instantaneously or take years of cultivation (the sudden vs. gradual enlightenment paradox.)
Some of my other practices also occasionally open my heart-mind; meditation and taiji especially support the opening of the heart-mind.Nevertheless, Bruce is a blessing.
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