When the Channels are Aligned

[Anonymous]

On “The Strings of Tao” CD, Bruce starts one of the commentaries with the phrase “When the channels are aligned the space inside an individual has no end and at that point you begin whatever it is, whatever practice you are doing, and the channels are aligned. Opening and closings, spiralings, things like this become dramatically easier.”.

What is he talking about? What does it mean to align the channels? What does it mean to have space inside that has no end?

Over the years I’ve heard lots of discussions that sound like this, that sound more like riddles than instruction. But, I’ve invariably found that Bruce is actually incredibly clear and his phrasing is often as good as it gets given the limitation of language to convey meaning. Time and again I return to these seemingly cryptic phrases and eventually find they are accurate descriptions of something real and tangible. That’s why Bruce doesn’t have to script his seminars. He just describes what he knows and what he was taught.

So, what does it mean to align the channels?

[Anonymous]

Definition from Merriam-Webster

align
verb ə-ˈlīn

Simple Definition of align
: to arrange things so that they form a line or are in proper position
: to change (something) so that it agrees with or matches something else
: to join a group that is supporting or opposing something

[Anonymous]

“The real game is the internal alignments of how your energy aligns. And at least from the first to the seventh body because I think the eighth body is a bit tricky to understand and without understanding the seventh body there is no eighth body for all practical purposes. People are only influenced by it – they can’t directly enter into it.”

Bruce Frantzis commentary from “The Strings of the Tao”

[Anonymous]

So, here is another set of seemingly odd statements. Why is the eighth body “tricky to understand”? What does it mean to “directly enter into it” (the eighth body)?

[Anonymous]

I wrote this post in pieces on purpose. I was wondering if anyone would actually think about what Bruce said and speculate on its true meaning…or if they would think there was anything to it at all. Here’s the big leap I came up with.

Bruce is talking about how the tan tiens work. He is describing how they align, or work together. At first it is more literal. You need to be able to do the same thing in each tan tien simultaneously. It could start with something simple like a linear line of force, but the salient point is that all three tan tiens do exactly the same thing. Later it goes quite a bit further – it goes into the dispersion mode. I think this is one of those Taoist tricks. Working with the three tan tiens simplifies the problem. They ultimately give you access to every point inside and outside the body. That is, what you are doing with the three tan tiens is also done at every point inside and outside the body simultaneously.

The channels have to be open. They have to be capable of allowing energy to flow. You have to have trained enough to work with them. The tan tiens have to be understood, accessible, connected. Then you have to know what you want to do with them. You have to have the ability to work with them and direct them. The inside and outside have to connect. You need to be able to work with both the energy inside your body and outside it.

This is why you have to learn everything with the first seven bodies. It isn’t easy. It takes a lot of time and dedication and training.

When it all comes together, you can work with the tan tiens and have that transfer to the field outside the body. I was a little odd. Somehow I learned how to go out into that field directly first. Later I found a way to connect it to the tan tiens which is much easier.

I think this dispersion mode is the key to the eighth body – to entering into it. It is a bit tricky.

Without emptiness it is almost impossible to access any of this. That’s the gist of the seventh and why without understanding the seventh body there is no eighth body for all practical purposes. You can’t enter into it.

When I work with the energies of the trigrams now, I’m trying to work with the three tan tiens and every point inside and outside the body simultaneously. For example, it isn’t enough to know what the expansive energy of Heaven is. You have to make every point inside and outside the body express the energy of Heaven.

Basically, I’ve gone around the Bagua circle again. I still haven’t gone beyond the etheric body, but I believe I’m working with the eight bodies within that sphere. It is still only a partial understanding of emptiness. Alchemy is the systematic process of gaining a complete understanding of emptiness.

Or

It could be bs. Who knows?

[Anonymous]

I never speculated on this phrase’s meaning, “When the channels are aligned the space inside an individual has no end…”.

One of the possible interpretations I’ve come up with comes from my experience with the central channel. In the BMP, Bruce lays out a progression of accessing the central channel and then expanding it slowly and methodically over time. One experience I’ve had is the central channel literally grows and all you experience of it is emptiness. It literally has no quality and the only way you recognize it is there is by noticing the contrast to what is outside it.

Any flaw or any place where you aren’t properly aligned sticks out like a sore thumb – this is the false. But, the space inside has to end. You can’t feel its depth. You can flip this around and experience the space outside in the same way, but it is a bit trickier because you have to be able to evenly balance in all directions (in 3 dimensions). This also starts to make form is emptiness make sense, because although you can’t fathom the depth of the space, you can feel its shape (form).

Who knows? Could just be a hallucination.

[Anonymous]

Note that this is the best definition of the Tai Chi space I’ve found to date. It explains why emptiness and the Tai Chi space can be used interchangeably. The Tai Chi space is the flux field that Bruce talks about. When it moves it is in flux. When it is more stable, it feels more like emptiness.

I’m guessing the ability to find and expand it is the subject of the Mountain palm change or 7th palm. The ability to find it outside the body is the subject of the 8th body and is a bit trickier. You can understand why “without understanding the seventh body there is no eighth body for all practical purposes”.

This is another reason why I don’t think the zhong ding-a-ling is just a line inside the center of the body. To think so is to miss the point.

[Anonymous]

“Tai Chi space” observed
both scientifically and experientially.

Scientifically:
Scientists with LIGO have now directly listened to gravitational waves produced a billion years ago when binary black holes spiraled around each other and in a fifth of a second coalesced into a single black hole with a a mass of 62 suns.
“chirp, chirp.”
This ripple in the fabric of space-time was detected on September 2015.
see:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/12/science/ligo-gravitational-waves-black-holes-einstein.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=mini-moth&region=top-stories-below&WT.nav=top-stories-below&_r=0

Experientially:
The Tai Chi icon is the same graphic representation constructed by the scientist of this cataclysmic event.
In 3 dimensions the yin and yang fish eyes spiral around each other.
When they coalesce they form wuji, emptiness.
I can experience this personally when I drive energy into the heel of my unweighted leg. At the instant at the end of my exhalation just before a new inhalation is required, the yang energy condenses to its maximum and the fullness of emptiness results.
(It has taken me 23 years to experience this effect.)

Additionally, the resulting gravitational wave behaves just as Bruce describes the pulsing, twisting, spiraling, threading, lengthening and pulling of Qi.
In the Tai Chi classics Shangsanfeng described this principle as
“Where there is something forward, there must be something backward.”
The “chirp” is made as the gravitational wave simultaneously stretches and squeezes the fabric of space-time itself and everything it passes through.
In Tai Chi this accounts for the energy of the rebounding “fullness of emptiness” instantaneously energizing the spine, shoulder, elbow, wrist, Laogong, fingers.

Awesome!

Einstein and the Tai Chi masters have been confirmed.

Perhaps in Bagua you can create such emptiness with a Black Hole Palm Change.

Robert
Post Falls, Idaho

[Anonymous]

I’d also add that when entering the 8th body you lose all sense of self. That’s why you need an understanding of the first seven bodies: you need to know who you are so you can let it all go. When you enter into the eighth body you don’t have any sense of your individuality, what you think and experience as you. You just experience whatever. It also has a somewhat timeless feeling as well. After all, you have to create memory, context, and contrast to have time. To enter into a state that drops all of these in favor of pure consciousness precludes the latter. The space inside just grows without end.

Or maybe I’m just hallucinating.

[Author]

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