Celestial Art – Revisited

[Anonymous]

I was going to add this post to the “Celestial Art” thread I started in 2012 because it would be a good contrast and show how our practice evolves. This evolution seems to be a theme coming up in my practice a lot lately. So, this thread will have a whole new way to see how the celestial is used as you add either new neigung elements or new depth to existing capacities. I posted recently in “Stirring the Red Dust” about a peak experience that initially resulted in confusion but I knew would ultimately bring greater clarity. This practice comes directly from that experience.

So, I’ve tapped into a way to use heaven and earth very directly using the three tan tiens. Basically, you can connect to and borrow energy from heaven and earth through the tan tiens.

Before you can do this, you need access to them. You have to be able to feel and work with each separately and in combinations. That connection starts with OEG, SEB, MHE, BB, and Gods. Initially it is very physical and concrete. I’ve described a bunch of this in other threads. Some of the most important material is posted in a Hsing-I thread that descibes the progression of the fists as connections to levels of the spine. If you work through all of that, you have the foundation to start accessing and using energy. Without that foundation, you can’t go very far.

Next, you have to work through everything in the BMP. Specifically, you have to be able to access the central channel and be able to expand out smoothly and evenly past the skin to the etheric boundary.

If you can do this, you can start accessing the tan tiens. I did it roughly is this order: first the lower, then the upper, then the lower and upper start opening the middle, then go back and work all combinations. But where is the celestial?

If you have access to all of the above, you can use the slight closing action to connect the tan tiens to either heaven or earth. Watch Bruce’s video on the first energy posture, Energy Posture 01. He talks about the closing that comes before the opening up into the hand posture. It is the first half of the movement. In the movement, you can connect any tan tien or any combination of tan tiens to either heaven or earth. Once connected, you can use their energy to power your movement.

This seems to be a really important step because you need a lot more energy to power and wake up your consciousness than you have. Using your own chi is like having a small battery. Using the celestial is like tapping into the power grid where you have capacity on demand.

IMO, this is all part of stage V of “Bagua Eight Stages of Practice for Developing Fighting Skills”. You can’t fully access the energies of the trigrams without this skill. Everything will be vague and incomplete. So it isn’t enough to connect all three tan tiens to heaven when performing the heaven palm change. You still need to know how to create the energy of the heaven trigram. You also need a lot of chi to make it conscious and usable.

[Anonymous]

The real power of this comes from balance and it simply helps you to find the tai chi space.

[Author]

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