- This topic is empty.
-
Posts
-
All kinds of integration has been coming up in my daily practice. In Module 14 video 12, Bruce teaches a meditation that from one point of view is just another integration, but it seems to be a key progression that’s missing from my Bagua practice. It is basically integrating the unconscious mind or using the unconscious mind to integrate.
Towards the end of the video he mentions that this is a necessary step before you actually learn what shen is. He even calls the relationship between the conscious and unconscious mind another yin/yang relationship. The integration is key and I suspect that the integration is a form of relaxation. This has to be done in a relaxed manner otherwise it is just another yin or yang blockage: something that the mind grabs onto and holds and prevents the mind from opening. It is interesting that here, Bruce seems to tie the Fire Palm directly to the progression of jing,Chi, shen, wu, tao. So, before you can really find emptiness you have to bring the unconscious mind online. And then the Water Palm will really get to shen and what you are.
The process of bringing the unconscious online is very similar to the beginner practices of seated meditation. In fact, my Bagua practice feels more like meditation than Bagua. There are a lot of advantages to doing Bagua movement over sitting. For example it is much easier to find where the body isn’t connected.
Integrating the unconscious may start in the FIre Palm, but it goes much deeper in the Water Palm. The bone marrow gets much more concrete and unified. You literally start working with it as one connected piece rather than the arms, legs, head, and torso.
It is that integration that seems to be the point. When you do it well enough, you don’t feel like the physical body is the only concern. The etheric body begins to solidify and become…tangible.
I’m not convinced that this is really what is happening or whether it is imagined. The center of the bone is directing the body. In the Water Palm, it seems equally valid to consider that each arm is exerting pressures internally through the fluids rather than through the space between them. But there is also the feeling or sense that you are directing movement from outside the body. So, that seems to be the beginning of the jing, Chi progression. The shen phase may be significantly more advanced.
All of this integration is part 16 of the sixteen neigung.
Unity is neither yin nor yang. It can’t be. If it is whole, there are no parts: there’s no this or that, there’s no both this and that, there’s only neither this nor that.
Anything that you separate out as a this thing or that thing not only intellectually separates you but also severs you from unity. And, this isn’t just an intellectual separation. You separate from the one. The unconscious mind is necessary for unity. Both the unconscious and the conscious are needed. They are a yin-yang pair.
The practice becomes a process of finding and eliminating gaps – anything that isn’t integrated and part of the one. The more complete, the more unified.
James,
Thanks for your many comments.This line of comment can be a real stinker.
What is the relationship between the conscious mind and the unconscious mind?
What is the relationship between mind and body?
What is the relationship between yin and yang?
What is the relationship between the one and the many?Here terminology has to be well-defined and precise.
Are “integration” and “unity” and “center” and “space” and “shen” synonymous?Both Eastern and Western philosophers have spent millennia trying to distinguish these concepts.
We’ll never get there with a few comments in this forum.Early Buddhists played around with many categories of consciousness (to name a few: store-consciousness, eight consciousnesses, five minds, mind-only–most are viewed from a psychological standpoint).
Western philosophers (Hegel, Heidegger, Neitsche, Kant)
viewed consciousness from a phenomenological and existential standpoint.Modern physicists even take a whack at the subject:
Feynman: “a sum over histories” in which a particle does not have just a single history, but which follows every possible path in space-time.IMO the main blockage is dualism.
Every dualistic thought must be overcome.
Even the concept of “integration” must be overcome.
Both the “one” and the “many” must be transcended.
The “center” and the “peripheral” must be overcome.
Even the “neither this” and “nor that” must be transcended.Bruce does a pretty good job at this.
Yet, even he gets dualistic at times.
He says that the Unconscious Mind takes everything in and that you should trust it to figure things out–
Thus, the Unconscious Mind is seen as better than the Conscious Mind.
This sets up a dualism.
On the one hand you have a conscious mind;
on the other hand you have an unconscious mind.
One is better than the other.
That too is dualistic.
You can never reach “integration” with a dualism.You can never reach a whole, an “integration,” if you distinguish a “center” as different from its “parts.”
I see all of Bruce’s techniques of relaxing, letting go of body awareness, exhaling, inhaling as tools.
So how do you walk the circle non-dualistically,
without effort, doing by non-doing?How do you move your arms and legs from the central channel?
Practice, practice, practice.
Practice until you get the feeling of moving from the center,
not the thought (conscious or unconscious) of moving parts from the center.I’ve been trying a new technique.
Dissolving! Bruce’s Taoistic approach.
For example:
At all 8 levels, when you think you are moving from the center, dissolve that thought.
1. Physical: Ice to water to gas, dissolve the thought that any physical part is moving from the center.
2. Energetic: Ice to water to gas, dissolve any energetic link between the central channel and the left and right channels.
3. Mental: Ice to water to inner space, dissolve any conscious-psychological link between inner and outer
4. Emotional: Ice to water to inner space, dissolve any fear or anger or joy connected with the feeling of moving from the central channel–somewhere along this path the inhibiting link (gap producing) will be encountered and a new degree of freedom will be realized–and hopefully grow
5. Psychic: Ice to water to inner space, may open up a realm well beyond the expected
6. Karmic (causation): Ice to water to inner space, may dissolve the dualistic separation between cause and effect–once an old man was asked whether or not a person of great spiritual discipline fell into causation. He answered by saying that they do not fall into causation.
As a result he became a fox for 500 rebirths.
Master Po-chang answered the fox, “Persons of great spiritual discipline do NOT OBSCURE causation.”
This is still dualistic–go beyond both a denial and an affirmation of causation.
7. Individuality: Ice to water to inner space, dissolve even the core, the soul
8. The Tao: Ice to water to inner space, the Tao that can be named is not the Tao.Even the “shen” changes.
IMO
Hey Robert. It’s nice to hear from you.
I’m still fumbling through this like everyone else. I’m clearer about what I think Bruce means by many of the terms he uses. If there is anything particular you want to discuss, break it out into a separate post. There are too many interesting thoughts in your post to comment. It seems like you are doing a good job a sorting it all out.
All of the integration I’ve been working on seems to have given me clarity on the Bruce’s meaning of shen. I think I can work with it a will now. I’m sure there is a lot more to it, but I think I’ve got the gist. More importantly, I’ve think I’ve discovered how to use it to find and to begin understanding emptiness using Bagua. The progression is clear: jing, Chi, shen, wu.
Keep practicing and take care.
I’ve re-read this post several times. It is really helpful. Thanks.
So many angles left out or not even considered.
I did locate the point on the video where Bruce says that both yin snd yang are false, a bunch of B.S.
This is where I think that Dogen’s position (not your common run-of-the-mill buddhist thought)
presents a different angle.His point is that each “particular” is real,
but it has to be totally used without dualism.His approach is realizational.
For example:
you’re doing the Lake Palm Change,
you’re spiraling down and up at the same time,
you’re moving, mixing yin and yang–
counterclockwise/clockwise, left/right.
Then without any conscious effort you suddenly realize emptiness in the center.
(this is probably in the realm of unconsciousness,
I don’t know because it is not conscious).
Now you take this into the Single Palm Change.
Cut.
The Single Palm Change is yang ( heaven).
Cut with yang.
You are totally focused on your yang hand,
you’re USING yang in thusness, in emptiness, unconsciously in a non-dualistic system of being (in being-time “uji”–is this different from “wuji” or “taiji”?)
But soon you begin lose “it,” you revert to thinking consciously in terms of yin and yang, to thinking in terms of “real” and “unreal” in terms of “Bull-shit” and “Enlightenment.”
Here’s where Bruce says now is the time to change directions,
maybe return to the Lake Palm to reconstitute “uji,” “wuji,” “taiji,” “emptiness,” “unconscious-mind,” “inner-space.”Lake Palm is so miraculous.
I think this is what Bruce is doing when he tells his class that he is transmitting like hell–
measley Japanese monk Dogen called this
“wonderless transmission.”
So many angles left out or not even considered.
I did locate the point on the video where Bruce says that both yin snd yang are false, a bunch of B.S.
This is where I think that Dogen’s position (not your common run-of-the-mill buddhist thought)
presents a different angle.His point is that each “particular” is real,
but it has to be totally used without dualism.His approach is realizational.
For example:
you’re doing the Lake Palm Change,
you’re spiraling down and up at the same time,
you’re moving, mixing yin and yang–
counterclockwise/clockwise, left/right.
Then without any conscious effort you suddenly realize emptiness in the center.
(this is probably in the realm of unconsciousness,
I don’t know because it is not conscious).
Now you take this into the Single Palm Change.
Cut.
The Single Palm Change is yang ( heaven).
Cut with yang.
You are totally focused on your yang hand,
you’re USING yang in thusness, in emptiness, unconsciously in a non-dualistic system of being (in being-time “uji”–is this different from “wuji” or “taiji”?)
But soon you begin lose “it,” you revert to thinking consciously in terms of yin and yang, to thinking in terms of “real” and “unreal” in terms of “Bull-shit” and “Enlightenment.”
Here’s where Bruce says now is the time to change directions,
maybe return to the Lake Palm to reconstitute “uji,” “wuji,” “taiji,” “emptiness,” “unconscious-mind,” “inner-space.”Lake Palm is so miraculous.
I think this is what Bruce is doing when he tells his class that he is transmitting like hell–
measley Japanese monk Dogen called this
“wonderless transmission.”
So, it isn’t empty. Our essence can be homogeneous and unified. Perhaps this is when you really manifest the trigrams: when you have the ability to be completely one thing.
Bruce has always taught about the eight layers and eight energy bodies. Is it possible that you focus on certain layers when you want to access a particular frequency.
The single palm change ends up accessing it all, but not the first go around.
The first time around you are very physical. In the double palm change you want the etheric coming on line and perhaps you work a specific and deeper layer.
In the Wind palm I have the entire physical and etheric bodies online and the emotional body can be used to blow them around; however, I concentrate on all of the organs inside the body to get the correct frequency.
In the Thunder palm I go to the bone. I use all of the soft tissue, but it is the mental that I want to focus on, so, I use the mind to direct the motion. It is in the brain and the nerves.
In the Fire palm, I start penetrating the bones. I’m using everything I’ve done before plus I start using spiraling to penetrate the bones. It doesn’t go into the bone marrow though. That’s the Water palm.
I can definitely separate Fire and Water. In the Water palm you concentrate on the bone marrow. The Fire palm layer contains it. So, I’m using all of the layers before plus the bone marrow.
In the Mountain palm, I’ve gone as deep as I can go, but I find the tai chi space. I can activate expansiveness and condensing at the same time in the same space. If I chose, I can balance them so well they feel as strong and concrete as a mountain. Everything is used inside and outside.
In the Lake palm it all starts to integrate and I begin the arduous process of connecting everything methodically and more and more distinctly. When I do it well, I get glimpses of emptiness. I can’t open up fully into the outside aspect of the higher energy bodies but I’m understanding them through the associate parts inside the body.
Possible.
This is a really interesting way to practice. For example, when performing the double-palm change, you simply make the etheric go down. All of the physical movements do whatever, but the etheric just goes down. You perform the single palm change, but there is a “wave” of downward energy in the etheric field, the whole thing.
I the Wind palm the etheric is online – both front and back. I don’t notice this as much in the double-palm change, but I can’t do the Wind palm without a connection to the etheric field both in front and behind the body. It is as though the front palm faces the direction the field is moving in the front and the other hand spirals to the back in the opposite direction. When done correctly, the arms are filled even more distinctly center to periphery. Everything is connected to the internal organs. I wouldn’t recommend even trying this unless you’ve been working deep inside the body for a very long time. You’ve been warned.
The Thunder palm is a yin palm. It reverses the flows. Where the Wind palm creates a distinct flow outward along the legs, arms, and out the head (which seems to go beyond the etheric); the Thunder palm condenses it regardless of the physical movement. The energy is coming into the center. I can’t feel outside that far. I think that is a different progression of training (jing, Chi, shen, wu, tao). Here I’m just focusing on tissue inside the body to get the correct frequency.
So the movement of energy is periphery to center and the palms reflect this – they are spiraling to a close. Everything is condensing in before it reverses and explodes. I’ve always thought that Thunder was produced by two things slamming together. I still do.
However, it just doesn’t seem like a good idea to slam stuff into the delicate internal organs so I let the energy pass through them down to the rear foot and let it come up from below to meet and intersect there.
Note that there is a pattern emerging where the palms in the forms are giving us clues how the energy patterns should be performed.
I’ll also mention that once you get the separation, you can perform any of these in combination. A hexagram is simply performing two distinct energy movements at the same time. Which is dominant in one way or another probably determines the stacking order. The point is I’ve finally got a practice that could be done physically as the single palm change but energetically in 64 ways. Well… I’m building toward it anyway.
In the Thunder palm it seems like the frequency is associated with the fascia. It is strange, but the Wind palm working with the internal organs seems to be key to opening the fascia up. It is as though the progression is necessary to get to the layer of fascia distinctly.
When you get the Thunder energy, the body moves much smoother. It feels springy, spongy. You move more gracefully. Before you get this open, you move like an old, rickety, arthritic dog. When it is online, you move like a springy puppy.
Next, you start working the Fire palm. The hands are continuously spiraling often in opposite directions. All of the tissue and energetics in the first four palms are used to squeeze into the bones like wringing a towel. You start to penetrate into the bones. This is done with the entire body. Each segment of the arms, legs, torso, and head are organized around the bones. It is not about the joints. The joints were freed to move from previous steps.
Again, the hands mimic the energetics. These are truly palm changes.
It is important to note that I’m only working the jing phase. I’ve only got the physical and etheric bodies online. I’m working the 8 layers in the physical body. I’m not fully integrating any of the higher bodies. I’m starting lto earn how to access them clearly, distinctly within the physical body. Remember all of the 8 energy bodies overlap in the physical. They are all present.
The progression of jing, Chi, shen, wu, tao requires the integration and connection of an entire energetic body.
The work I’m doing here is necessary preparation for the next phase.
Errata:
“wondrous transmission”
This is an archived forum (read only). Go to our active forum where you can post and discuss in real time.