Believe me, I am very skeptical of most lineage claims after 25 years of testing over 60 different internal arts systems. A lot of Chinese lineage claims are just a way to protect someone’s fragile ego by associating themselves with venerable “ancestors”. They don’t have to prove themselves, because the lineage claim does it for them. It’s also used as a way to discourage students from studying with other teachers, as they are threatened with dishonoring their ancestral lineage.
Most publicly taught lineages in China are fairly modern styles. Under scrutiny, they really only go back one or two hundred years (as opposed to 800 years). Most tai chi chuan lineages lead to martial artists, people who made their living as bodyguards, not as spiritual masters. This has led to a common blindness among modern martial artists – they don’t know the difference between “powerful chi” and “high spiritual presence”. Westerners think bigger is better. But “big chi + lack of spiritual refinement = Big Demon” in the Tao spiritual tradition.
The day Zhu Hui first taught me this enlightenment form, I was in a state of total resistance. I didn’t even try to memorize the movements. I frankly thought this form was a wimpy version of “real” tai chi and that I would never repeat it again! Master Zhu looked at me while I was practicing in this state of total resistance and out of the blue said, “you will be an excellent teacher of this”. I smiled back politely, but said to myself, “Fat chance!”. Obviously, Zhu’s inner vision proved to be a lot clearer than mine.
I totally discounted at the time Zhu’s explanation that this form actually came from Chang San Feng, the founder of tai chi chuan. How many times had I heard THAT story from self-important egotistical martial artists? Later I had Zhu Hui’s book translated, and saw that he had done very thorough research into the historical records on Chang San Feng (which are contradictory and thus incite wide dispute amongst historians).
Zhu also had the benefit of the 106 year old Taoist monk Li’s oral history as an insider at Wudang Mountain. You only need six or seven more Taoist adepts like him to get back to Chang San Feng. Tao adepts are famous for their longevity. Note that famous martial artists in China don’t seem to live longer. It’s the spiritual art that is key.
It was only a few minutes after I first learned Tai Chi for Enlightenment that I was astounded by the immediate powerful chi flow in my body and felt a profound shift in my soul. I felt my heart tingling and opening in a way I never had before. There was a new quality of presence in me. Since I teach Taoist meditation, which is deeply embodied, I am quite aware of what is going on inside me at many different levels. At first I thought, “this can’t be real, maybe I am just feeling ultra sensitive today”.
So I taught it to my wife Joyce Gayheart as an objective test. She is a 35 year seasoned veteran of just about every alternative health-care, meditation and movement method ever taught, and is not easily wowed. Yet she immediately had the same “wow!” magical experience after practicing – just one time – Tai Chi for Enlightenment. She is now as addicted as I am. Addicted like the thousands of other “chi-aholics” from all walks of life to whom we have taught this form. Joyce uses Feldenkrais (lying down movements) and Taoist flower essences to help people go even deeper into the Tai Chi for Enlightenment experience. Her tai chi-feldenkrais tapes will be available shortly.
I spent years energetically analyzing how the ingenious design of this tai chi form worked its magic. Yet for all its richness and genius, I finally concluded that the presence of the lineage masters themselves is what makes the difference between a form that generates “strong chi flow” versus an “enlightenment experience of higher presence”. I overcame my deep skepticism and now personally accept the likelihood of its origin with Chang San Feng.
But I do not distinguish him from other great Taoist adepts whose presence I feel when I do the form. Chang San Feng certainly had guidance in creating such an ingenious form and probably had to merge with his Immortal Tao guides to accomplish it. This is the really wild level of this Enlightenment form. When you do the form with a sincere heart, the fused Original Spirit of the Tao Immortals (known in the West as “ascended masters”) show up and do it with you!
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