From Stress, Chaos, Dis-Ease to Harmony, Oneness & Peace

THE PROBLEM (Stress Chaos, Dis-Ease)

All suffering originates from the mind. From thought patterns and supressed feelings.

In the body they show through tension, pain in the neck and back, through headaches or sleeplessness… the list goes on. In more severe cases and with time going forth through disease. One can get massages and treatment, take pills, distract, take drugs, drink and have sex, but usually the symptoms come back. The effect of these patterns does not only show in the body, but also in life and relationships.

These patterns are created, through experiences. With the parents, caregivers (Trauma), they come from society, family, tribe, they come from the past. Rupert Sheldrake gives the example of a dog, that is scared of butchers, because the dog’s grandfather, whom he never met, had been beaten by a butcher. They have karmic origins, and the first neurosis, the thought ‘I am’, the first separation is of unclear origin. In the end the origin of the destructive pattern does not matter, because the knowledge of the story does not stop the creation of suffering.

The Mechanics of creating Suffering.

In the example of the dog is obvious how that pattern leads to suffering. He will avoid even those butchers, who want to give him the best delicacies he could imagine, and stay hungry.

Let’s take a human example. In childhood someone was being punished, anytime he felt sadness. So as a grown up, if sadness comes up, he is scared to death. This fear is also suppressed, unconsciously, and he feels sadness always as anger, because that is the next best opening, through which the pressure can get out. This means, that a part of the Self is being fragmented, split off. That is a loss of life energy, which means suffering.

Furthermore there is the fact that any kind of suppression and fear cause a hardening in the body. The mind can outsource feelings and thoughts, which it does not want to see, into the body. The problem is, that this frozen tense part in the body does get worse over time. First it is uncomfortable and restricting, then it can develop into outright disease. It will only disappear, when the root, the thought-feeling pattern is being addressed. The mind can also outsource what it does not want to see into the world. It is easy to imagine how someone, who is incapable of feeling sadness, and reacts instead with anger will suffer in his relationships, within the world. His life will be in chaos.

What aggravates the problems is the fact that the suppression of one feeling, means always the suppression of feeling in total, except for one valve that stays open, to not become totally crazy, in this example it is anger. So love, compassion, joy will also not be fully accessible. And because this stress seems unbearable, addiction is more often than not another attempt to find relief, but it creates more chaos and suffering.

Basically suffering is created on the one hand by pushing the unwanted feeling (energy) into the body, which creates dis-ease, on the other hand by pushing it into the world and creating chaos and stress. It is created by avoiding one part, in this example the sadness, and clinging to another part, in this example anger. That leads to all other avoidances and clingings, addictions and self sabotages and so on.

(If we are honest, we all live like that to a certain degree. We all are not individuals, because, we are by definition divided, fragmented into parts. That counts within a not very healty society as normal. I disagree with that.)

THE SOLUTION (Harmony, Oneness, Peace)

That what makes that whole thing so unbearable, is that life, or consciousness brings up the suppressed feelings and contents by creating symptoms, that have the quality of or make one feel and see exactly that, which one tries to avoid. Be it physical symptoms, that are in certain areas and have the quality of the suppressed feeling, or people and conflicts in life. The avoider needs more and more energy, to avoid, which makes it more and more impossible, and creates more and more suffering. Life, or consciousness offers actually the solution to the whole thing, by bringing the hidden parts to the surface.

THE GREAT SOLUTION

The great Solver is direct awareness. Direct awareness does neither push nor pull, it does not do anything, it is the full capacity of being aware, without any thought, without any story. Whatever is within direct awareness will dissolve into awareness, or in other words, will become empty.

One can give it a different name, like consciousness, or emptiness, the words will anyway never grasp ‘that’.

In principle it is very easy. Literally nothing needs to be done, no effort at all. But mostly when anyone attempts to let that solution happen, a strong fear comes up, or distraction happens before that fear can show itself.

Firstly it cannot be done. Doing implies separation, a doer and something that gets done, and a lot of thinking. When awareness becomes direct and unscattered, there is no more thought. The person, the ‘me’ is constituted by thought. Even the ‘I am’ is a thought. That means, if awareness becomes fully direct, without any thought filter, the person disappears. For the person that is dying, and it induces the fear of death. For awareness that is life. One can say, that thought and the person is there, to avoid life, to avoid the solution. When I say thought, I do not mean the mind as a tool, to solve external problems. I mean perpetual thought, that creates its own problem, that is there also, when there is no external problem, to be solved.

It would be enough to drop into emptiness, awareness, into ‘that’ for a split second, for the time between two moments. That fear would not be there any more, suffering would become empty. But it seems too hard. There is no other Solution. It can be described differently, more into detail, from different angles, the angle of time, the angle of doing, and so on, but that is how it works.

THE SMALL SOLUTION or As Above so Below.

There is a way to scale down the principle of the great solution. To allow awareness within a smaller and less scary setting dissolve a part of suffering. So that the person gets transformed bit by bit, so that the split of Self parts get reintegrated one after the other. To allow relative consciousness getting used, to separate the story from direct awareness, to get used to identifying with ‘space’ instead of with the contents, to get used, to neither push away, nor hold to anything.

The least scary, safest place that still allows transformation, is the body.

mechanics of the ‘small Solution’ (Sōng 鬆/松)

I

Awareness sinks with gravity into the body. Awareness within the body becomes as direct as possible. So that it perceives not the idea of the body, but the actual quality of perception. The body within direct perception is a composition of different qualities in different forms. Awareness does ‘neither go against anything, nor does it hold onto anything’. Like that it finds the space, the ‘in between’ within the body.

II

Through special exercises, movements, positions etc. the body is helped to open up.

III

Correction through touch and presence transmits a quality into the body that creates the right qualities and helps to make the practice work.

The right qualities are:

a release of the muscles,

opening of the joints,

a stretch of the deep tissue or fascia (dragon web, white tissue, Huang: different names for more or less the same thing),

a sinking of the weight through that white tissue.

The place ‘in between’, the ‘space’ within the body, is where the white tissue is. That is also where awareness gathers, and can become still. Furthermore the white tissue forms the channels where energy flows through. (And at a later point in practice it forms the physical part of the energetic centres (Dan Tien) where energy can gather and transform.) When the white tissue is being activated, a lot of toxic stuff is being led out of the system, not only physical, but also contents of mind and feeling (energy). The activation and strengthening of the white tissue helps to stabilize the nervous system, on the one hand, because the nervous system is literally under less pressure, on the other because habitual attention is getting used to be rather within the spacious part of the body, within the deep tissue, so that it won’t fry the nervous system and so that energy can discharge through the white tissue. Often one can see people shake, when that happens.

In other words mind-energy flows more through the white tissue instead of loading the nervous system. That makes the mind calmer and as the body happens within awareness, within consciousness, the habit to ‘neither go against nor hold onto’ will also appear in the mind and happen with thoughts and feelings. There will be space within the mind, space between thoughts and feelings.

This whole process is called Song (鬆/松). It is being translated in different ways: releasing, letting go and so on. Its meaning goes deep. In the beginning it is mostly about ‘sinking’, but already here it points towards the ‘in between’, the emptiness. The effect of Song is transformation. From coarse, to finer. In its final form Song means dissolving anything into emptiness.

This is a very short description on what one could spend volumes on. It is all experiential, the words only give an idea, point towards something to be experienced. These foundational transformations are already very helpful with a lot of things, mainly physical and psychological health and efficiency of body and mind. It is thought to be a step towards being able to be dissolved by Meditation, by the One. It is also a description of the foundational work that needs to be realized, before Qi can be developed.