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I feel a bit lonely and bored in this path. To be honest this forum is the only thing keeping me to it. A reason for being bored is that I’m not dedicated enough and so advancing slowly. Another is that now that I have found my path I don’t have excuse to complain… I like the path, tradition, philosophy, teachers, cosmology… Everything. But… Nothing but practice will get me there. Its not easy finding what you have been looking for for a long time. It means I have to live it. Love you guys. I feel a bit nostalgic. Although I got people interested and enjoying yesterday summer solstice, I can’t imagine how long until someone really takes it as his own path, and does practice on his own. Well, just to share my mood with my comrades 🙂 But in the end is about practicing and living it, we can discuss our asses off here, but until we do it, it just doesn’t count.
I am trying to cultivate an appreciate for the times when I don’t feel inspired to do qigong and really sink into those times – just fully accept the desire to move towards unconsciousness the moment it occurs. I want to feed my shadow a little cookie every time it starts to get hungry so that I don’t suddenly one day have a huge revolt against my practice. I find that the moment I give myself express permission to not do qigong that day, the urge towards going more unconscious is instantly satisfied and I almost always end up doing qigong anyways out of a natural desire for it.
I am also trying to stay conscious about not forcing myself to treat my practice as a duty or chore but keep it as play and language. My natural tendency is to be very strict and forced – I must do _________ hours per day if I am to achieve my goals. But if I can just cultivate my innate love for speaking this language, then one day I will be “doing” far more work without even trying while avoiding burn out. This is the goal anyways 🙂
Hi Victor, I’m also feeling rather uninspired in my practice at the moment. I might even say it’s totally falling apart. I’m also reflecting on the fact that I’m coming up on the first anniversary of the beginning of my HT studies, and I’m trying to take stock of what has happened. At the time I was in deep crisis – hopeless, suicidal. HT gave me a way forward, and in the intervening months there have been times when I felt that I had made significant progress. My mind seemed to stabilize, some deep psychological issues were resolved, and at times I felt (for once in my life) like the universe was really trying to assist my progress. I also changed careers without really intending to, and got into a more interesting and meaningful line of work. But as much as I wish I could tell a story with a happy ending, it seems instead that I have come full circle to another crisis. Everything seems to be falling apart on me and my grip on my practice has proven to be very tenuous indeed.
Thank you for sharing elephant. I guess we both started around the same time 🙂
I sometimes look at our growing (evolution, growing) as a spiral. At some point we come to face the same issues, but now from a higher perspective. Internally is the same problem but now we face it with more insight, and closer to resolution. But externally many things may have changed.
It sounds to me like you are evolving brother. I wish you meaningful work through these struggles.I had big obstacle, that I have mentioned before and that was my left side imbalance. Many things helped but the biggest one was recognizing a gut/digestion problem which is burdening my spleen. As soon as I found out I started with leaky gut/candida diets and things are improving. So now finally after a year I am moving towards microcosmic orbit and grounding/rooting. The beauty o qigong is it didn’t let me skip through this problem and made me focus on it. My previous spiritual practice involved deep relaxation in lying position and then having shen experience, which was beautiful for a long time, but stopped making changes in my life after a while. Then it even stopped working, I couldn’t even get into meditation/shen experience.
Although my qigong progress in this system have been very slow, it has been supporting huge everyday life changes. That was before I didn’t care about going to the advanced stages. I made a career change towards my dream job as freelance web developer, healed my chronic headaches, got my spleen spirit back (felt like part of my being returned back), got better tolerance to cold and moisture. Not to mention other relationship and inner changes which would be more difficult to communicate.
Nowadays me and my crew are scouting for an abandoned village for starting a community with focus on sustainability and spirituality. Its really tough facing this dream. Also facing the dream of getting my spiritual path. I get to realize that I have to work to have this, keep it and progress in it. I have nowhere to run anymore. Can’t watch TV, read books and other things I used to use as escapism.
Sorry about the style of the original post, I couldn’t sleep so much after the DHQ at the summer solstice, but slept like a baby afterwards.
Thanks Victor. This post helped me stop and think “what is my insight?”. The insight is that when I am getting stuck I need to return to foundation practice. Foundation practice is grounding, if you want to think of it that way. More precisely, it is the practice of holding painful emotions in a neutral state of awareness. Grounding is key to foundation practice, but there are also elements of mindfulness, correct attitudes, mental discipline, etc. that may need to be cultivated separately.
Just catching up from having been away on retreats . . .
It’s great to hear about everybody’s experiences.
This is real-world stuff and where all the practices get applied.And as many of you have shared, there is a spiraling back action that occurs now-and-then with the practice, often returning back to the fundamentals/grounding. But even then, you are stronger than before and can now approach stuff (even if the same as before) with a fresh perspective.
It’s not all “up”.
It’s up and down, like the stock market.
But the overall drift in the long-term is up, if you are persistent.Just keep it up. 😉
S
The approach of push and push and push and push … is good but only in the beginning.
One has to find the Light and to surrender into it, and then it happens on its own. Then you are not alone.
It is unclear to me how people doing HT would approach that. Doing these practices, where is the surrender ?
In sitting meditation you can surrender down through the dantien. Are people in HT doing sitting meditation ?
In other religions, Hinduism or Christianity etc…, it is very clear how to surrender and when you do it; afterwards you are “taken”, then there is no separation between you and the path. You become the path. You are no longer alone.
But no just anything can surrender to anything. You have to know how to do it.
This is in the end the only way. Unless you have surrendered (and learnt how to) unless you merge into the path … you will be endlessly dropping in and out, endlessly pushing, endlessly “cultivating chi”.
But you must get the message at the beginning that this existing in separation has to come to an end. To cease.
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