Back to the roots

[buscon]

Hi all,

 

I want to share how daily qigong practice and taoism view of the world influenced my life. I wanna do that to make order into my mind and write it here in order to have some comments or discussions with you

 

 

What I clearly realised this morning having breakfast, after my daily qigong session, was that I'm slowly going back through my life, in very different meanings. I'm slowly dissolving my habits - both phisical and psycological. My life is going simpler, my desire are less and less. Overall I'm feeling better, eventhough I don't meet so many people as usual or I don't do anything special.

 

So I'm deconstructing what I've built up in my life until now, going easier. At the same time I keep facing old memories, especially important step of my life that influenced my way of living.

For example I face what I did when I was a child, the relationship with my parents, friends - sometimes little things, but they have been important in my education. All this stuff is coming up spontaneously, without any specific method. I'm just doing qigong and meditation every day, morning and evening.

 

I call this process going back to the roots, because it's remembering who you are and why, analysing your past experience and dissolving out old blockages.

 

All this stuff is kind of a consequence of my meditation practice: is all this happend and keep happening to you guys ?

 

I noticed that we spend a lot of time in this forum talking about specific practice and we stick to them too much. I think it's also good to talk about our experiences, keeping them simple but going deep into ourselves.

 

Looking forward to hear your experiences

Edited December 10, 2009 by buscon

[C T]

Hey there Buscon!

 

Thank you for sharing your experiences, some of which have resonated with my own unfolding.

 

Simplicity is one of the fruits of realization for me as well. It affords the mind plenty of space, and it is within this spaciousness that i have become more aware of a direct yet almost non-dual relationship with all things.

 

I have learnt to drop the frenzied mode of thinking and behavior. This has led to a mind-state that is now dominated by 'letting go' rather than 'grasping' and chasing after - be they thoughts, feelings, actions and reactions. In this way, there is hardly any unnecessary wastage of energy, and as a result, the 'being' now becomes more present, whereas in the past it was so fragmented, trying to be here, there and everywhere at once, and ending up being nowhere and getting nothing worthwhile done.

 

This awareness also allows me to see that when i associate and attach the 'I' into daily actions, situations and interactions, then inadvertently it leads to expectations, compensations, frustrations and stress. So the 'me' then gets caught up in this messy net of cause and effect thing, but when the 'me' is let go, there is no longer any personal attachment to all that is going on, and i can just observe the unfolding without being carried away by the undercurrent of the effects. Nowadays, the attitude is one where *There are thoughts, but 'I' am not my thoughts - there are actions, but 'I' am not my actions* - this to me is very freeing indeed. Again, the cycle returns to simplicity. Its really quite a joyful way to BE.

 

Yes i totally agree with your view that there is plenty of emphasis on people DOING a lot of things, getting caught up in all kinds of different forms of this and that, and lose touch with the simple way of just BEING. For me, i just do one practice only - and its so rewarding because there is no longer the need to behave constantly as if i was a juggler by day and psychoanalyst by night! haha. Funny thing is now that the juggling has ceased, all the cravings i used to have in the past has ceased as well..

 

Thanks once again for getting this topic up. Me thinks its a great one, because it challenges me to drop my distractions and see the 'being' without the 'doing'.

 

Cheers! All the best.

Edited December 10, 2009 by CowTao

[Marblehead]

Nice posts guys!

 

I have nothing to add at the moment.

 

Peace & Love!

[buscon]

I freely added some comments, as they came to my mind reading your answer

 

Hey there Buscon!

 

Thank you for sharing your experiences, some of which have resonated with my own unfolding.

 

Simplicity is one of the fruits of realization for me as well. It affords the mind plenty of space, and it is within this spaciousness that i have become more aware of a direct yet almost non-dual relationship with all things.

 

Exactly, and in this oneness you act more precisely, taking advantage of good situations (without scattering energy) and bad situations too (they are actually just different kinds of possibilities...)

 

I have learnt to drop the frenzied mode of thinking and behavior. This has led to a mind-state that is now dominated by 'letting go' rather than 'grasping' and chasing after - be they thoughts, feelings, actions and reactions. In this way, there is hardly any unnecessary wastage of energy, and as a result, the 'being' now becomes more present, whereas in the past it was so fragmented, trying to be here, there and everywhere at once, and ending up being nowhere and getting nothing worthwhile done.

 

Without this frenzied mode (quite a standard in our stressful world) you start to see the "quiet mind" and why you need time to re-learnt it. It's like learning to play and instrument that we forget to play...

 

 

This awareness also allows me to see that when i associate and attach the 'I' into daily actions, situations and interactions, then inadvertently it leads to expectations, compensations, frustrations and stress. So the 'me' then gets caught up in this messy net of cause and effect thing, but when the 'me' is let go, there is no longer any personal attachment to all that is going on, and i can just observe the unfolding without being carried away by the undercurrent of the effects. Nowadays, the attitude is one where *There are thoughts, but 'I' am not my thoughts - there are actions, but 'I' am not my actions* - this to me is very freeing indeed. Again, the cycle returns to simplicity. Its really quite a joyful way to BE.

 

I think that this simplicity it's exactly what Tao is about, and that's why is so difficult to talk about it.

Sometimes I try to explain it to some friends of mine and you really understand the gap between knowing something and experience something. When you learn smt through experience, it's very difficult to explain it:

- you risk to explain in a trivial way

or

- you risk to be incomprehensible, either because you're not able to explain yourself or because you're too cryptical

I suggest everyone to read the chapter "The Shores of the Dark Waters", from the book The Book of Chuang Tzu (Penguin Classics): at the end of this page you can find the beginning of the chapter.

 

 

Yes i totally agree with your view that there is plenty of emphasis on people DOING a lot of things, getting caught up in all kinds of different forms of this and that, and lose touch with the simple way of just BEING. For me, i just do one practice only - and its so rewarding because there is no longer the need to behave constantly as if i was a juggler by day and psychoanalyst by night! haha. Funny thing is now that the juggling has ceased, all the cravings i used to have in the past has ceased as well..

 

Thanks once again for getting this topic up. Me thinks its a great one, because it challenges me to drop my distractions and see the 'being' without the 'doing'.

 

Cheers! All the best.

 

 

I have nothing to add at the moment.

 

that's really taoistic too

 

Cheers, and thanks both!

Edited December 10, 2009 by buscon

[steve]

Nice topic. This is something my ShiFu talks about quite a bit regarding meditation.

He feels that one of the most important side effect of meditation is the unearthing of prior experiences.

Some may be quite painful and shocking and this is one of the reasons it is important to have a teacher/guide/coach of some sort to offer support.