I walk by faith. I walk by faith. I have to tell myself this to remind myself because all too often we lose our faith in God/The Universe/the Tao. But the bottom line is that it has revealed itself to me many times personally in my life. When all the machinations and conscious workings fail, we leave it up to the higher power and things arrange themselves and work out, they lead you in the right direction, a door closes and another one opens.

The evangelicals look at us in astonishment and quote scripture, how can you think God doesn’t care for you, how can you think the Holy Spirit is not acting in your life? The encouragement and the inspiration is the same in Taoism and Tai Chi and Zen–walk by faith. The Universe will provide. Follow the Tao.

Mike Murdoch the other night talking about the Law of Recognition–everything you need is right in front of you, you just aren’t seeing it. You need to learn how to discern and to recognize. This is the tai chi lesson–we develop awareness and consciousness in our practice and soon we are able to recognize the things we need and desire are right in front of us. Yes, we have to do the work, but the Law of synchronicity says that it is right there.

In a small example, I don’t know how many times I walked by the sign in the mall that said “Now Hiring, for info contact…” I was so absorbed in the difficulties at work, at financial issues. But then one day my eyes were opened and in a very quick, I mean very quick time, I am now working for this new company and extricated myself from an anxiety ridden situation.

Mike Murdoch says we are one instruction away from our fulfillment of who we are. We need to listen. The Christian listens to the Holy Spirit, tries to discern what He is saying. The Taoist listens in silence also, to hear the Sage, to hear the Higher Power.

Sit in silence and hear the inner voice reveal to you what you need to do. Practice Tai Chi and move in unison with the Tao, totally joined, and see how your awareness and consciousness will rise.

For the Taoist, read the I Ching, for the Christian, read the scriptures. The Holy Spirit and the Sage are with us, guiding us, embuing us with wisdom. IT’s right in front of us, if only we could see it. You are one instruction away, you are one agreement away, you are one person away.

Another pastor preached about giving birth to that thing inside of you, that talent, that passion, the gift God has given you and wants to use by working through you. What is yours. What will you give birth to?

I hear the Sound of Abundance of Rain! Pastor Paula White. I Hear the Sound of Abundance of Rain. What joy I get from going to the woods, walking in silence, practicing my tai chi, sitting in silence and learning how to listen. I want my eyes to be fully open so I can see what is standing right in front of me.

As a Catholic and as a taoist practitioner of tai chi chuan kung fu, I have experienced two mighty forces in my life: the power of the Holy Spirit and the Power of the Sage. Both exhort us to right action and virtue, both impart seeds of wisdom and understanding. Both call us to walk in faith, to live in faith, to trust in the way of things, to trust and to love.

But today I want to give a word on the Holy Spirit, because he has touched me this week and it has been a very powerful experience. And as this is a tai chi blog, I want to say that everything I say about the Holy Spirit is consistent with my practice of tai chi and visa versa. I would also like to give a shout out to The Word Network, which appeared on my cable tv this week out of the blue, and as I lay on my couch, sick as a dog with some kind of virus, expecting to start a new job next week, I was caught up in watching one preacher after another lift me up in my faith.

The Holy Spirit is a mighty power. He has been working behind the scenes. He wants you to succeed. He wants you to be good. He wants you to prosper. The Holy Spirit is a mighty and powerful ally. He is there for you. He will fight with you, side by side. The Holy Spirit wants to dance! Why are you still sitting in the chair? What are you afraid of? Get up and live by faith! The Holy Spirit is in the car with the motor running, he’s revving the engine. He’s ready to go. What are you waiting for? What are you afraid of? Get up out of the house and get in the car! Take the leap of faith. Trust him. Don’t be fearful.

The Holy Spirit is wise and will imbue you with his wisdom. Talk with him. Work it out with him. The Holy Spirit is bad! He’s like special forces rappelling into your life. The Holy Spirit knows every kind of martial art! The Holy Spirit is your friend. He is like a mighty wind. Nothing can stand against him. The Holy Spirit will carry you. Just say yes! The Holy Spirit is creative. The Holy Spirit is spontaneous. The Holy Spirit is adaptable. The Holy Spirit is synchronicity. The Holy Spirit will bring the right people into your life. You have to open your eyes and recognize it.

Here’s the deal. Sometimes, evangelical preachers want to promise you a little too much. But both Christianity and Taoism teach us the truth. Life is not all joy, neither is it all suffering. It’s a mixture of both. And both the Sage and the Holy Spirit are there to guide us through both seasons in our lives. Sometimes it seems like the bad season has no end, but we can turn our season into a new season if we accept the friendship and the love of the Holy Spirit. It’s not like a magic wand, but you will get through what you are going through.

Now, I have to do it. I’m going to use the word “devil.” When we’re young, we hear about the devil. When we get older, we don’t believe in folk tales and use more existential philosophical terms. But in the end, the devil is a good way to describe the negative forces that attack us through our lives.

The devil is a liar! The devil wants you to think you’re no good. The devil wants you to think you aren’t smart enough, good enough, pretty enough, handsome enough, able enough. The devil wants to confuse you and sabotage you. The devil wants you to believe you aren’t doing a good job at work, that you don’t deserve a decent wage, that all that is wrong in your life is your fault. The devil wants you to believe that no one loves you, that no one wants you. The devil wants you to believe you are alone. The devil wants to drag you down and take you out. But the devil is a liar, and the Holy Spirit will help you to rebuke all of the devil’s nonsense, the anxiety, the fear, the tension, the lies. And make no mistake about this, the devil is strong, the devil is smart, but the Holy Spirit is stronger and the Holy Spirit is wiser. The devil is bad, but the Holy Spirit is BAD!

Last word. Pastor Paula White prophesied: “I hear the sound of abundance of rain. I hear the sound of abundance of rain.” She repeated it throughout her preaching. She has a good rhythm and cadence to her preaching. But she has me believing in the sound of abundance of rain. I have just extricated myself from a very poor work environment and am entering a new season. This change has been filled with the Holy Spirit every step of the way. I’ll still be selling shoes, but for a different company. I am still a bit nervous, as anyone would be. I’m taking a bit of a risk. But I am lifted up in faith, and I will live by faith and I will walk in faith and I will know in my heart that I have a might and powerful ally. I have the Holy Spirit.

It has been a recurring theme in my life, as I engage in the contemplative life of tai chi and taoist thought, to look at the people that come in and out of my circle, and reflect on why they are there at particular times. Certain people come into our lives to help us, teach us, support us. Others come into our lives to challenge, test, and make our lives miserable so that we can learn an important life lesson from the adversity.

What I have not paid much attention to is the parallax view of this Buddhist/taoist/positive thinking way of working out one’s Karma, but a few people have thrown this at me in conversation: What if you are in their lives to help them work out a karma or learn a lesson?

Modesty kind of holds me back from thinking along these lines, and it can be colored by egotistical desires to get back at people. But, you know what, maybe it’s true. I know and accept that I have been a good family member and friend to a lot of people and it’s nice to know I have entered people’s lives, become part of THEIR circle to help, teach, support and love. And the truth is, there have been a handful of people who probably think or thought I was the biggest asshole on the planet and regretted every day of having to interact with me. Ha! So I’ll just posit this to you guys: Maybe there was a reason for me being there, to help you come to a lesson learned.

I just finished reading The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho. The story is one in which the basic premise is that if you know what it is you truly desire, if you have discovered what your Personal Legend is to be, then the Universe will conspire to help you succeed.

The same promise is made in Tai Chi and Taoism. If you align yourself with proper principles, if you align yourself with the sage/the higher power, if you allow it to work in your life, then in synchronicity you will get there.

Is this just a way of applying a rationale and a way of thinking to the natural random course of events, or is it a truth of our lives that this really is the way things work? What makes it difficult to know is that there are built in explanations for everything. When tings go well, it is because you have aligned with the Higher Power, you have allowed the Universe to arrange itself in a zen like way, you have used the Laws of Attraction to visualize and create the world around you. But also, when things to not go right, when you are confronted by adversity and obstruction and negativity, it isn’t just because these things exist in the world we live in and life sucks, it’s because there is a lesson to be learned in the adversity, it is because the Higher Power is working in mysterious ways behind the scenes, in ways we don’t quite understand, but should accept, or, as in Coelho’s story, in order to reach the final plateau, the Universe will test us with severe challenges to ensure we have learned the lessons and developed the spirit and are ready for the “success” it has conspired to gain for us.

Along the way, there are many of us, who in our youth know what our Personal Legend is, but along the way, find a comfortable niche, a successful job, a loving spouse, we settle down and live good lives, but the Personal Dream gets put aside. Does the Universe breathe a heavy sigh knowing that we have given up?

I don’t know if we are capable of magical thinking in reality or if it is just a really cool way to approach our lives. It certainly is a workable matrix to help us negotiate and deal with what appears to be a random existence. I do know that there are anecdotal instances in my life where I have seen it work. I also know that when I follow the counsel of the I Ching in dealing with adversity, it helps me make it through the day a little easier and without as much anxiety.

Perhaps, being on the fence is the very thing that keeps one from flowing with the universe and allowing it to work. Maybe we do have to take the leap of faith and just do it. And maybe, like in The Alchemist, we will learn to turn lead into gold, discover our treasure, and learn to turn ourselves into the wind.

Tai Chi, like Yoga, is a practice of integrating the body mind and spirit. We’ve all seen this slogan everywhere, but maybe we begin to take it for granted. I thin k many people are surprised to find how physically demanding true tai chi can be, and for those who practice martially, perhaps sometimes the physical, postural, technical aspects take up more attention. But tai chi, like xing yi, is also mind intent, and like yoga, the physical and the mental and the spiritual all inorm each other in a sort of perichoresis.

What is our psyche? What is our mind? Our consciousness? Our subconsciousness? Is it any wonder Freud and Jung and all the other masters of the mind wrote volumes and volumes on the subject.

I was thinking of ourselves this way the other day: that our bodies are like spaceships that the real us are using for the ride. It’s like we’re looking out the spaceship windows through our eyes, experiencing everything we experience. Now, this may lead to a bit of a disconnect between our selves and our bodies, and in tai chi and other spiritual practices, we don’t seek to disconnect, but integrate the spirit and the body.

But the existential question is there. What is my spirit, is there a spirit, a consciousness, a jungian collective subconsciousness? Does the spirit live on after the body dies? We engage in such practices as contemplation in order to develop the spirit, to prepare it for the next level. But what does this spirit consist of? Is it something that has been around forever? Is my current spirit a conglomeration of many spirits come together in this one incarnation?

The established religions, philosophies, “ways,” all have come up with workable matrixes and solutions and explanations. Was Freud right? Jung? Maybe we need to just let it go and throw a lasso around the psyche with some behavioral control and train ourselves to act in acceptable ways.

It is fascinating and sad to see some people with broken psyches, people who develop paranoid schizophrenia and other mental illnesses, to see how awful it can be when something goes wrong. It is also encouraging when we engage in deep practices, when we sit in silence and listen, when we walk alone in nature, that we become attuned to and aware of that numenous, ineffable, mystical aspect of our selves and our lives.

I just turned to the left and could see a nice gentle breeze blowing through the leaves of a tree, and I see that is how our lives are. There is a breath of life animating us, a life force, a higher power, a source of life. We are manifest. We look into the distance, the external and the internal distance to try to catch a glimpse of it. It requires deep silence, deep contemplation, but it is there, that gentle breeze.

If you were sitting in on a poker game, and the Universe went all in(Bet all its chips), would you have the hand and the guts to call and go all in too? The “chips” you have is the thing that makes you “you.” The talent you have been developing, the creative side of you, the work you do or have been perfecting, the job you want or the business you want to start, the book you want to write or the life you want to have?

Now the metaphor can get complicated, because I know some really good poker players play for the long haul and it is a game of endurance and stamina, having the wisdom and intuition to wait and wait and wait until the right moment. Going all in impetuously and rashly, without consideration and a good hand, well, it isn’t so smart.

First things first, we need to build up our “chips.” If you are an artist, paint, if you are a writer, write, if you do tai chi, practice and explore the forms. There will come a time when you have ripened and matured and developed and the universe will push in all its chips. Knowing and seeing this opportunity takes a lot of practice at developing the higher self, the inner self. If the time is right, and you still fold, you squander an amazing opportunity.

There will also be times in our lives when it is right to go all in and not fold, and we still lose the hand. But that’s a part of the game and an important part of our own development. We take the loss, gather up another stake, and play again.

The universe has been testing me, looking at me from behind its darkened sunglasses, searching my body language for some giveaway, trying to figure out what’s in my hand. The I Ching has been counseling me lately to be patient, to be still like a mountain, to say little, to allow the hand to ripen and mature, to wait. I’m itching to go all in, and maybe the universe is sensing this, it knows I’m growing impatient with a penny-ante game.

For the moment, I’m folding this hand. Deal em again. I’m building my chips. But the time is coming soon for me to call and go all in.

In the midst of a long conversation about life, choices, risks that creative people take, I posed this question to my friend and to myself, If I were John Lennon(pre-famous John Lennon), wouldn’t you think I was a complete and total f’ng idiot for going to work the next day to manage a shoe store instead of devoting myself completely to my music?

In all humility, I don’t think I have the equivalent of talent in tai chi that John Lennon had in music, but I have worked very hard over these many years to become very very good at it, and I do have a passion for the practice and I love sharing and teaching it. And in the contemplative practice of tai chi chuan kung fu, we go to the “external well” of the I Ching to gain wisdom, advice, and knowledge as to when to act and when to be still, when to engage and when to disengage, being careful not to act out of the emotions of the ego and a desire to force a change out of the bad times instead of allowing it to mature and ripen on its own.

If I knew John Lennon, I would understand if he was working in a shoe store to pay the bills, but I would also encourage him to do everything he could to work on his music. What a shame it would have been if someone as talented as he gave up on his music or kept it as a nice hobby because it would have been too hard to break into the industry, or because he was so wiped out working 50 hours a week to give much attention to his creative side.

We all have to work to eat, but we need to pay attention to finding the right work that can be integrated into our whole lives, and that offers balance to the other important things in our lives.
I don’t want to be on my deathbed knowing I received fully effectives on my yearly reviews, but never wrote, The Contemplative Practice of Tai Chi Chuan Kung Fu.

A good friend sent me Paulo Coelho’s book, The Aleph, because I had mentioned the idea of taking off on a backpack journey across the United States, and she thought it was somewhat similar in that I was looking at this as a sort of contemplative pilgrimage.

My trip is still in its dream stages, but the book is very enjoyable. It was inspired a lot of good thinking, about awareness of images and events and people around us, trying to look into the synchronicity of things, to solve the puzzle, to find the hidden meaning in things, people and events. It is a wonderful exercise in reflection–why did this happen, why were these particular people in my life at particular times.

Coelho’s book focuses a bit more on the idea of reincarnation and fixing the wrongs done in a past life; fixing the whole karma thing. Personally, I’m not sure I buy into reincarnation as much. I did a past life regression once and toyed with it the other night(In the first many years ago I was a 19th century herbalist/medical student; in the most recent I was a sailor in the Pacific–which didn’t make sense because I might have still been alive when the now me was born, unless I was killed in action, but that’s neither here nor there).

In the end, it’s a quest to understand who we are and to connect with the deeper meanings of who we are, to experience the “knowing,” that’s deep within us, that we can only experience and not explain.

Coelho’s Aleph is a physical place which one encounters accidentally. it is a point in the universe where all points converge.

The monks pray, the guru does yoga, the tai chi player does tai chi. All are exercises in bringing us into the presence of the Divine, of the numenous, of an experience of satori, of understanding, of knowing.

Coelho uses a quote in his book, “those who know God cannot describe Him, those who describe him do not know Him.”

I have not experienced the mind blowing satori enlightenment, but in practicing tai chi I have experienced many mini enlightenments. The daily practice, like the monks who pray daily, like the yogi who practices daily, like the musician who practices daily, the practice itself is sublime and fruitful. And there are many times that you get the little enlightenments, God speaks to the monk, the yogi experiences a sense of oneness, the guitarist receives a new rift or song or chord progression seemingly out of no where, and sometimes, the tai chi player experiences that the entire universe is moving ith him.

How can I explain the deep experience, in perfect tai chi posture, moving together with everything else, and “knowing” that the answers to everything are in a sweeping circle and spiral of the arm and hand, generated from the dan tien?

I was struck the other day by the profoundness of something we already know and I guess take for granted. As a strong proponent of Vitamin D supplementation, especially in the winter when we don’t get enough sun, I was enjoying the sunny day, and realized the deep awesomeness of the fact that–actually what lead me to it was discussing chemistry with one of my workers who is studying to become a doctor–but I was thinking of it while enjoying the sun and realized that the sun produces vitamin D in us. There is a relationship and dependence on something so many millions of miles away. And it’s not just that we rely on the sun to keep us in orbit or to warm the planet. There is an actual chemical reaction taking place by being in the sun.

After I finish this post I’ll probably google how it actually works, just as plants rely on the sun for photosynthesis, there is this amazing connection between us and a star.

It is a concept full of the mystery and numenous quality of our existence. All we can do is sit in silence and marvel. How can we understand it? Are there other interconnected experiences between us and the universe? Are there other related chemical reactions taking place that we are not aware of? Is it reciprocal in some way? We breathe in air and exhale. What are humans giving in the exhange of our existence.

Life is such a profound mystery. Awesome.

It’s a little known fact that you can resteep tea up to seven times, and each steeping of the same tea reveals new layers of taste and experience. I know with black tea the first steeping can be a bit acidic while the second steeping of the same tea becomes sweeter and deeper, more earthy. The seventh steeping, according to tea lore, brings an experience of nirvana.

I’ve applied this concept to tai chi a few times, doing the complete form 7 times in a row only once many years ago. Each “steeping” reveals nuances and experiences that are new. Last week, I steeped the form two times in a row, and the second time, I compressed into a more small circle, more compact, much shorter steps. It was the short stepping that really informed the experience. When we practice, we look to create the proper distance between our feet, and as part of practice, we push ourselves so that we can get our stances to where they need to be. But shortening the distance in the stance while remaining centered and grounded is very cool. I’ve noticed in some xing yi performances the feet are very close together.

When we resteep the tai chi tea, if we know the form well and have practiced for a long time diligently, the form becomes more creative and spontaneous and more revealing.

So give it a try and tell me what you think or experience!