THE GRACE OF GOD FLOWING THROUGH US
The grace of God is manifested as good health, vitality and longevity
Question
I am also very interested to understand the differences between the variety of ways in which we as humans feel the divine flowing within our body's hearts and minds. Our wonderful Sifu has allowed us to experience this in many different, profound and direct ways through his generous and beautiful teaching.
With my very basic level of understanding sometimes things can get blurred with regards to what I am feeling, how I am feeling it and where it is coming from. Thus generally I tend to just let go and enjoy allowing the universe to flow through me rather than trying to grasp hold of or understand it. However is this correct?
For example: practicing chi kung with my dad and experiencing chi flow together has been at times profound, beautiful and expanding, and once we suddenly felt a cosmic shower running into and through both of us. However at some point it was difficult to understand where it was flowing, i.e. from top to bottom, bottom to top, round and round, inwards to outwards or out to in, as we were simply enjoying being.
Maybe it was instead a wonderful chi flow blessing of awesomeness from the divine for us both. Either way it was a fabulous thing.
Sifu Sean Grame
Answer
The divine, called God in many religions, is infinite and eternal. It is everything there is. In scientific terms, it is the universal spread of energy. In its widest sense, the divine flowing in us is energy flow in chi kung. In its narrow sense, it is a cosmic shower. Hence the divine flowing within our body’s hearts and minds ranges from one exercise to all of chi kung.
The divine flow gives us the grace of God, manifested as good health, being happy, mental clarity and spiritual joys. But some people are sick and unhappy. This is not because the divine, or God, does not give His blessings to all people, but these sick and unhappy people block themselves from the grace of God. An excellent art is Cosmic Shower, which clear the blockage and lets the grace of God flow through.
The same principle applies to all other types of energy flow in all chi kung. Providing good health, which includes and surpasses overcoming pain and illness, is the basic benefit of all chi kung, the essence of which is energy flow.
There are countless ways of practicing chi kung, i.e. generating an energy flow or letting the divine flow through us. The countless differences may be classified into two main groups, dynamic chi kung and quiescent
An example of dynamic chi kung is Lifting the Sky from the 18 Lohan Hands. An example of quiescent chi kung is Abdominal Breathing.
Cosmic Shower refers to a chi kung skill, and it belongs to quiescent chi kung. We can implement the skill of Cosmic Shower with many different exercises. An excellent example is Lifting the Sky. Another excellent example is Carrying the Moon. Both are dynamic chi kung techniques.
We can also induce a cosmic shower using the quiescent technique of Dan Tian Breathing. But if all other things were equal, using Lifting the Sky or Carrying the Moon is more effective.
Congratulations for the beautiful, profound and expanding experiences, especially together with you dad. It was indeed wonderful to practice chi kung with your dad and together enjoy its amazing benefits. Practicing chi kung together with your dad by itself was a great blessing.
Like most of our instructors, you are very modest to say that your understanding and experience of chi kung are very basic. Modesty is a virtue which we should cultivate. But, at the same time, we should also realise that your understanding and experience of chi kung, like the understanding and experience of chi kung of other instructors in our school, are actually quite advanced when compared to those of other practitioners, including masters of the present as well as of the past.
Many masters today, for example, do not know what is entering into a chi kung state of mind, which is basic knowledge to all our students as it is an essential condition for practicing genuine chi kung. These masters, therefore, would not have entered into a chi kung state of mind on purpose when they practice chi kung, but due to their long years of practice, they might have entered into a chi kung state of mind incidentally. Hence, their chi kung attainment may not be high, but we still address them as masters, which is a sign of our modesty.
Masters in the past had a higher level of attainment than modern masters, but their knowledge of chi kung was lower. This was because knowledge was scarce in the past. Some masters might be illiterate. Today, especially with the internet, information is aplenty — to an extent that we have to distinguish good knowledge from mis-information.
One important benefit of this realisation that we are actually knowledgeable in chi kung besides having high attainment, is to give us courage to right wrong. We would, of course, do so tactfully.
An example which some of our instructors often face is as follows. This example concerns kungfu rather than chi kung, but I mention it as it is common and the principle is the same. In Taijiquan Pushing Hands, an established master may tell our young instructor that the latter’s way of pushing hands is incorrect, and the correct way is his way, which has been passed down, in his lineage, for generations.
Instead of keeping quiet which will give an impression that what the master has said is true, the instructor should politely reply that his way is what he has learned from our school and he has found it very useful, and the test of its usefulness is in practical application. Our young instructor should engage Pushing Hands with the master. Out of respect, he should not openly defeat the master, but he should first prevent the master from pushing him away, which shows defence, and then subtly push the master away or off-balance him, which shows attack, but without making it too obvious.
What you have said about letting the chi kung experience happened and not intellectualising on it, is not only correct, but was highly recommended by genuine past masters. They went further by telling practitioners not to worry about the benefits as the benefits would surely come. This is expressed by the term “wu-wei”, or non-action.
“Wu-wei" has been routinely explained as “not doing anything, and everything will be done for you”. This adds to the confusion. Many people, including many Chinese, wonder how could everything be done for you if you do nothing.
As I have often mentioned in class, the confusion will be cleared when we realize that “wu-wei” is only half the secret. The other half, which comes before, is “you-we", which means “do something”. So the complete secret is “do something” then “don’t do anything”, and everything will be done for you as a matter of course. Perform the action of an appropriate exercise, then be spontaneous and enjoy the experience, and the benefits that the exercise is meant to give will come.
Modern bogus masters do the reverse. They intellectualise about the exercise but never perform it, or never perform it the way it should be done. For example, in chi kung they talk about energy of different colours, which they never experience, but they never performed chi kung in a chi kung state of mind, which is an essential condition in performing any chi kung. In kungfu, they talk about internal force as body mechanics, but they never have any experience of what they talk about, and therefore never have the benefits.
How do we know that these bogus masters do not have the experience and benefits of what they talk about when we are not them. It is because of direct experience. From our direct experience we know that we have to enter into a chi kung state of mind to perform chi kung, and that internal force is not the result of body mechanics.
Having enjoyed and benefited from our chi kung and kungfu experiences constantly for a long time, we can look back to explain what happened. Our explanation constitutes philosophy. The philosophy comes after the experience, not before it. The philosophy is a logical explanation of our experience, and confirmed by repeated experience.
We say that we need to enter into a chi kung state of mind to generate an energy flow because that is our repeated experience. As a test, when we tense our muscles or let our mind wander, we cannot generate an energy flow.
We say that chi kung can overcome illness because that is our repeated experience. Many sick person have overcome their illness by practicing chi kung learned from us. Some skeptics may ask whether we did any scientific experiments to prove that it was actually chi kung, and not eating breakfast at 8 instead of at 9 as an outlandish example, that overcome their illness. We do not want to waste our time arguing with skeptics. To us, and to our students who were sick, it is sufficient, and rewarding, that they overcame their illness after practicing chi kung.
In line with wu-wei, where you enjoy a cosmic shower or any energy flow, it is not necessary to know how you are feeling it, where the chi is coming from, and where it is flowing, i.e. from top to bottom, bottom to top, round and round, inwards to outwards, or out to in.
I was often amused when beginners in our school, though they had used chi kung techniques to practice gentle physical exercise for a long time in other schools, asked me when they first had their energy flow, from where the chi came from and why they felt tingling sensations at their fingers. After giving them brief answers that the chi could come from the Cosmos or could be within themselves, and that feeling tingling sensations at their fingers was a normal effect of chi flow, I made a point to ask them not to worry about unnecessary intellectualization and enjoy their experience and benefit.
But at the level of instructors, it is good to know the answers. If you perform Cosmic Shower, energy will cascade down from top to bottom. If you perform Long Breathing, which is a part of Small Universe in our methodology, energy will flow from bottom to top, i.e. from hui-yin to bai-hui. If you perform Swinging Hips or Hola Hoop, energy will flow round and round. When you use chi kung to cleanse, energy will flow from inwards to outwards. When you tap energy from the Cosmos, energy will flow from out to in.
All these are normal way of chi flow due to different chi kung techniques you have chosen if all other things were equal. If a practitioner has a sever blockage that may affect his life, energy will flow to clear the blockage irrespective of what techniques he choses. If the blockage is at the top of his head which may cause a stroke though he may not know it at present, energy will flow from bottom to top. If the blockage, for example, is at his feet where a gland produces some trace elements necessary for the normal functioning of his heart, but it is not doing its normal work because of the blockage, energy will flow from top to bottom. This is an excellent example of the benefit of wu-wei.
However, if his mind is powerful, despite the severe blockage, he may direct chi flow with his mind. This, I believe, is an important reason why some masters, who undoubtedly had much internal force, did not live to a ripe old age. If they practiced wu-wei, or understand chi kung philosophy which our typical students know, they would allow chi flow to give them good health, vitality and longevity, which are the natural benefits of practicing genuine chi kung diligently.
Depending on how you look at it, your amazing experience was a wonderful chi flow blessing of awesomeness from the divine, or a natural result of your dedicated practice. Indeed, either way it was a fabulous thing.
Chi flow is the essence of chi kung
The above discussion is reproduced from the thread 10 Questions on Cosmic Shower in the Shaolin Wahnam Discussion Forum.
LINKS
Courses and Classes