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About halfway through month 8, and I am floored by how powerful worry can be.
I’ve never experienced worry in quite this way.
I should have known seeing as last month brought up such potent, uncontrollable anger that starting out this month would have made worry a factor. But I am truly humbled by the viciousness of worry, which can be just as yang as anger, in my opinion.
And what I find particularly strange is the quality of my spleen. I’d figure it would be as knotted and full of stitches as my liver has been but the feeling I get from my spleen is like it is ticklish. I’m guessing the ticklishness masks a deeper knottedness, which I found when I practiced the first two weeks practice while watching a Deepak Chopra video. During and shortly after this experience I could feel a large portion of my left side just stiff like a board. My instinct isn’t to try to penetrate to the stiffness again but to explore the ticklishness until that lets go. Yet another part of myself wants to get to the stiffness and knots and associates resolving that with resolving the aggressive worry. But I wouldn’t be surprised, though fascinated, that if I move through the ticklishness some of this aggressive worry will lose its poison.
Again though, I cannot stress enough my shock at the irrational, animal nature of this worry. I’ve often associated worry with something altruistic and reasonable but this exposes a side of worry that cannot be reasoned with, that is strictly destructive. And perhaps what is most surprising is how ostensibly lucid it seems, or rather deceptively lucid, like a camouflaged predator or those deep sea lantern fish. It gives me a new awareness of how intelligent these lower emotions of the second energetic body can be, but also how destructive. It is like my worry has been a wolf in sheep’s clothing, masquerading in my third energy body like a higher emotion while it feeds on my flock of compassion and kindness and love. A parasitic or vampiric emotion.
In fact, last night I wrote a thread I was going to post like this one but I got so worried for all the irrational though seemingly intelligent reasons and ended up deleting it. Worry is hell.
Whenever I sense impending maxing excess or deficiency of anything during practice, be it yang or yin, I immediately and gently ‘back off’ and ‘lighten up’. That is the wisdom of the 70% rule, or if need be the, 60, 50, 40, 30, 20 or 10% rule.
I’m happy that works for you, Colin, but in my experience it is easier said than done. The 70% rule, for me, is something that takes time and isn’t a one and done deal. Backing off and lightening up has been something I’ve done my whole life, but hasn’t been enough, which led me to meditation in the first place.
I’m definitely aware that for some people all they have to do is relax and not take it too seriously, but unless my life is an hallucination, that doesn’t cut it for me. It takes confronting these difficult emotions rather than running away because when I run they give chase or when I back off or lighten up they get in my face and get heavy.
The ideal is what you describe but not the norm for me, I’m just trying to get to where you are. I’d be grateful that it is that easy for you, Colin, because it genuinely isn’t that way for me.
I apologize for the passive aggressive tone, I’ve just been trying to do what you described my whole life. It’s frustrating.
No need to apologise. Backing off and lightening up, and the 70% rule aren’t about disengaging or retreating. More about patience, perspective and practice at a level and intensity which are more ‘suited to purpose’. I agree it’s not easy!
I relate to the struggle all are mentioning– I’d throw in the perspective that rather than it being a backing-off.. one can lean-in and push with effort (beyond 70%), or lean-back and take it easy, with less effort (still beyond 70%)– just a different activity, but internally still there– vs doing the same,or whatever,engagement, but with relaxed intention- fully integrated.
— that made sense to me in internal martial-arts (the more I’ve worked-pondered on this the more I’ve seen even-espec- those that title themselves int’l aren’t usually)… and how one can push with effort, other moves, or sort of push and other doesn’t move- and does one have the same closed-in feeling inside (ie my self doesn’t feel “open&free”).. vs the third option- push, and other can move (or not) with a feeling of open&free, and inside-feeling of not-closed-in (it may not move them, or it may slip, or it may move them..depends of course, but there is a feeling of effortlessness.. most of all per a sense of connection and all parts moving together, all arriving together, not (even in microalignments) any colliding in me, or in other, so phy-movement simul… let alone all the other sublte, less phy lvls..
-this relates to the mind activity (which I’d distinguish of shapes and story-comments the mind talks/think being very distinct from what the mind is doing, to create those results.. and what the mind is doing- is not the nature of that mind, and any currents or flows through that…
[so many have interpreted that the fourth-ebody/mental is the chatter in one’s head, or even images that flicker, I never had thta sense– that is how the phy-body is reacting/reflecting the above action-results.. anyway]
— so the mind activity, also has a linkage, when paying attn, and being open-awareness or explore different-newer places..
have the same sense of linkage and flow that is (or can be) in the phy-body integration-inside, as well as more grossly in the steps and reachings of a form (whether a reaching type like TaiJiChuan, or a more stationary like an Earts Neigung form).. I find that a handle that can help “grasp a feel for this”…
**the same feeling of linkage can change from standing in a rowboat and trying to push someone standing on a dock (you push them, they are on the dock, and then the boat moves back on the water)- even if the river is flowing ‘downriver’ and towards/under the dock..
—but if the river has a bow-wave, even moving very slow, and “relaxed as water” when the face-front of the wave contacts the person standing on the pier.. then all the water that is behind and involved (not all of the river, only that part of the water involved in the waver) -is like a crowd-mob all leaning pushing on the back of the person in front.. after the first or second layer.. it can be endless..(flowing like a long-river, lengthening-connected thread of 9pearls.. )
-this third option may be unclear (I struggle to write what I’ve felt- but the first two extremes- engage or pull back, doesn’t work really for me either… rather how engage differently…–which one may need to “Practice” in an action that is less, to try and build this “different way” and then more so.. (as trying to push-physically, or focus mentally, using the known-patterns you can do N difficulty, but if starting from scratch– that is too much… have the same degree of felt difficulty via one’s ability- so if you can write easily with hardly any thought.. if practice writing with your off-hand, it is much harder- if try and write the same degree of ‘hardly any thought’.. but if figure how would I write so that I can accomplish something (adjusted) but it is as difficult a ‘feeling’ as it was/is to write with my writing-hand? -ie you’d need to change the how/what you were writing- to develop that skill-coor… metaphor being it might seem adjust to develop this third way seems back off- but ISN”T as first way- engage, second way- back off (are both using the already programmed method) to build new pathways (third way) then won’t look like either- but espec will feel different doing?
[many words to describe, may be confusing, or little worth-time struggle I took to write, it would be a short chapter in an article or book, but likely seen as a ‘too long’ to read on post – anyway- hope it might make sense, and assist someone..
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(example- having feeling relaxed eyes- optic nerve, and throat-neck venous-return draining into top of torso– first creating that, and then being able to look and see, and recognize, and then stand and walk towards (let alone say something) without losing that.. not just a bit difficult but most of all, all ingrained habits I had were of doing XYZ as tense.. not needed, just that is ‘how’ the habit-pattern was.. so could trigger that program.Thus to wrap back to the start- sitting aligns (later standing, and walking) like that- one could do and try and ‘force’ it (enage- first option) or just sit, or stand, separate.. not look with eyes to see- but just disconnect vision to allow them to relax (not engage- second option)… vs the third-option… how learn new way of engaging.. which has different principle-foundations.. and ‘may be’ more efficient (rather than just new way- roughly the same, hopefully it was designed to be more effective, once once can act via these new “programs”.. not just relaxed-intent being a more-relaxed way to do the same.. but rather relaxed-intent is more effective and more powerful (?) and more-relaxed– than using force was.. (once the learning curve is surpassed- which is the rub….
** and all the sort-of not quite aspects build a glass-ceiling, unless you experience a while of doing totally new, and thus it won’t work, you don’t build-develop a new nerve pathway-programs.. you just try and tack-on adjust existing.. which don’t develop a groove from scratch, so won’t even get the int’l power connection.. -thus the learning curve is avoided- no matter how long).
(so not allow subcon, let alone conscious-mind, tendency to use the easier- known way, but also- our language and culture doesn’t affirm support this view either- so it doesn’t really click to even comprehend this… even if you get it, else in our ‘world’ conflicts with seeing it.) -luck
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long journey (of a 1K ‘miles’) begins with a single-step.. what step is that? not just a generic any-step, the journey referred to is “the journey” and the single-step is the first thing- ie do This first… fortune-cookie blogs say, any step will do, so that particular step is forgotten..
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