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This post builds on my previous posts. I want to look back at “Liu Hung Chieh’s Overview” and see where “Using Bagua to Open the Tan Tiens” fits in.
First here is the summary of “Liu Hung Chieh’s Overview”:
1) Get everything from your finger tips to your toes and everything in between to become integrated into one unified entity.
2) Open the three tan tiens, yin/yang, left/right, central, and all of the smaller channels.
3) Create a stable mind.
4) For martial purposes, understand and embody how every square inch of your body can rotate like a sphere.
5) Find the one change.
6) For spirituality, learn about the chi of spirit and emptiness so you can eventually understand the chi that enables you to know who you are.
7) Eventually understand the nature of the universe.So, the work with the tan tiens and the palm changes requires #1 and #2. By the time you can work with the tan tiens the way I described, the power of Bagua is finally getting usable. While you are stuck in the #1, the usefulness of the these practices is marginal at best. When you get to step #2 and are able to use it at will, you’ll have power that starts to feel like the power Bruce has. Before that, not so much.
#3 seems to develop naturally. It is almost a by product of the whole process. The important point is that you are trying to achieve balance in steps #1 and #2. That balance is defined as the smooth movement of yin and yang as described in the commentaries on the “Strings of the Tao” CD. The smoothness is a very big deal. It is closely related to all of the practices that Bruce has taught to recognize and eliminate gaps.
At the end of the day, you’ve developed a very spherical whole body unification. You can put your mind into just about any place in6side your body and etheric field. So, I’m assuming that as you practice and as the tan tiens continue to open more and more completely, you eventually can work with any place in the body in the same spherical manner that the whole body works.
So, where is #5, the one change?
I’m not sure, but right now I’m guessing this is the change from emptiness to spirit to chi to jing and back. I don’ t think it is just the transformation of yang to yin and yin to yang. This is based on my practice.
By this point, you are getting glimpses of emptiness and you can direct your chi from spirit. Spirit aligns the chi. It tells it what to do. That spirit comes out of emptiness. In Bagua we are using the spirit to direct our chi to manifest movement. Movement eventually completes and moves back to emptiness. Again, I’m speculating that this is the one change. For martial arts this is all you need to have very usable power. Martial arts is really just the practical application of this power.
For spirituality, you begin to move onto #6. You really start to study what this is all about and how it works. I doubt you can be very successful in this phase without some serious guidance.
During the Lake Palm Change Event, I had a chance to talk to Bruce about this topic. He verified that the one change is about finding emptiness. I’ve gotten enough of a glimpse of this to “see” that there is only the one change. All of the palm changes are just ways of perceiving or looking at the same thing. Bruce verified this as well.
That said, at lunch Bruce verified that the sequence of learning the palm changes is important and each is intended to open up capabilities and capacities that are needed to progress to the next palm.
By the time you get to the Lake Palm the complexity is extraordinary and ultimately requires a consonant amount of relaxation to it pull off.
The practice is about trying your best to pull it off and then clearing methodically after the hit: basically, more crap comes to the surface which stirs (or disturbs) the red dust. Once again you have to clear everything out. So, it isn’t like you hit emptiness and then can immediately go back and do it again and again. You stumble on it, and then hunt it down again through practice and diligent work.
Just wanted to put out there I thought this was pretty awesome (not just the idea(s), but the way you phrased it).. thx for sharing,
as well as how it presents as a metaphor for the entire approach…
(try for it, then clear &recover
from the hit, and then reeval. and -shake one’s self off, and stand firm (once more into the breach) &try again- hard enough, it seems to continue, but when dealing with greater subtleties, which seem abstract, but even as one begins to clearly sense&deal with, still our culture-language all around doesn’t.. and yet- continue and try again).My thought on the first topic- (attempted paraphrasing from The Power of Int’l MartialArts):
eventually all the palm changes, one finds are variations on one movement; all the variations of chi are different viewpts on one flow of the one-chi,
and the changes (64 gua of Iching, all arising, existing a bit/time? [in nrml, or real,-time?] and then subsiding again into the ‘centre’) all those changes, are one change.(?)
-the idea of all the 64 (let alone the 8 trigrams being changes from A to B.. and not A to C, or A to D, etc.. different changes being different frequencies (?) of how a change occurs, not related to what the change is, not how, and not what is changed to, but the energy (or the source that motivated the wave that arose from the depths, as another reference I think I recall Bruce using).Anyway- just appreciation for your posting, not sure if what I wrote adds/contributes
Just to reference the #3 pt- might be something that just comes about, but I think a step on its own.. (even a “stable mind” being a another basis of “root” and thus An/Sinking, also threading into “ground” and yet not the ground of “down” but what the “Mind” stands-upon.. able to steadily stabilize.. one then can return to Standing (or sitting, or walking) Rooted- as a means of being stable.. and with different applications of the terms, see more/deeper how to apply in the fundamental.. thus root and be stable to a whole deeper degree… (thus stabilty, in motion, as much as “in stillness”)
Thus each new application of a term from what seems an obvious concrete meaning, can elicit a new insight/ability to do in the “obvious/concrete” application, and then further in the new way (like how Peng, isn’t just a posture, nor is a just a radiating field, as it can be in the depth of an energy-channel, or within a space in the mind.. and when one can feel what it means to Peng in nothing-nowness of an opening inner-space… which clearly won’t be physical-location based… then reeval and deepen in the basic Peng (or An, or Stability, or flow vs change-action, doing-choice, vs responding-to).
[just as what I think also relates to the first couple of pts, accesing and integrating, and spherically interrelating… -find the one-piece.]
from the hit, and then reeval. and -shake one’s self off, and stand firm (once more into the breach) &try again- hard enough, it seems to continue, but when dealing with greater subtleties, which seem abstract, but even as one begins to clearly sense&deal with, still our culture-language all around doesn’t.. and yet- continue and try again).This is an archived forum (read only). Go to our active forum where you can post and discuss in real time.