Live Qi transmission

fyi,
I routinely finance people to take retreats on extended payment plans, no interest. Ask for half down to pay the r&b.

In the old days (in China), you would learn all this over a much longer period of time, which was beneficial to actually actualizing it. (smirk).

But westerners are in a heady rush. Until their body slows them down. Or the lousy work ethic that only gives 2 weeks vacation per year….

I was on the ten year black belt plan too, but I think that had more to do with my stubborn teachers in my school. They refused to cough up the higher belts to anyone without a persistent, genuine effort, a commitment. I saw lots of people get up to blue and black belts and then drift away.

I agree that it’s a matter of priorities, which I think has something to do with an overriding interest to some degree. What I mean is, if you become very focused on something, it will tend to come into your experience more and more, in some way or another. It’s something like, perhaps, how a person will only truly quit smoking if they get to that stage of overflowing interest in doing so–although equating quiting smoking to finding time to take a qigong retreat is a bit off I realise.

Yeah the vacation thing in North America is sad. Living in Germany for a few years and travelling around to neighbouring countries was a real eye opener for me. I literally could not fully grasp when I was handed a contract at one point that offered me five weeks paid vacation right off the bat–but that’s the law for full-timers (in Europe in general, not just in Germany)…

Simon

What I did was different so I though I would share a different experience so people could hear another story.

I learned from the books and tapes. Practiced and studied diligently. One step at a time. Used I Ching for help on when to advance and when to stay with a practice when in doubt (someone here recommended it to me). I ended up only taking one course in person and that was a year after I had experienced the fruit of One Clouds formulas – which is just a new beginning an initiation into another aspect of life that is in general hidden. I still really enjoyed the class from both an intellectual / bringing completion perspective and also in meeting Michael and other practitioners – it was awesome! I will probably go back at some point in the future as the sharing that goes on at Tao Mountain is invaluable.

For me, it was a deeply personal journey and the tapes and books worked for me. So I guess what I am saying is that I agree that each one of us finds our own way in working out what we need or aspire to and somehow what we need becomes available to us when we are sincere and focused in our purpose. I had no idea how I was going to be able to afford even the tapes and books let alone a retreat! I know I have said it before but will say it again, there are many people out there who open up without any formal training – that blew my mind when I met someone like that and could feel the same primordial energy from them that came to me and other experiences. Now, I have seen many people in various traditions and practices who have opened up to these spiritual states of awareness. My venture in the HT took me two years. So I am also saying that time is not as important as your pure desire. Seems best to act on what you need to do and forget about how long it will take you.

Also tying into what Michael (thelearner) was saying in the post above. Yes, Pain or coming to a place where one is ready to change was essential. Perhaps it is a place where one realizes that they have grown tired of the ways of the world of this and that. That there is no rest in that. My mother had died after 4 years with cancer and I reached the lowest point of my life. Miracously I found Zen and Qigong and then HT. Without hitting that low I do not believe I would have moved along as swiftly as I did.

Inner Peace,

Matt

I have a good friend/customer in France who has to give such great vacation time to his people, among other perks.

Recently visited him and he was going on 14 days in a row 10 hours or more a day. But it’s his company. I don’t think he can give himself 5 weeks off either.

Hard when you are the bossmann.

Craig

Well I think when you know it’s the law to begin with you plan with it from the beginning, so you wouldn’t grow faster than your ability to fulfill that law structure. For us to do it here, to be fair and practical, it would have to be brought in very slowly, with lots of government help, since entrepreneurs have gotten used to it the way it is. The wages are a lot higher over there too! But I mean, it’s not like there aren’t a lot of wealthy, successful people over there, because there are plenty; it’s just a little more equalized, so that even the janitor can have a life.

Actually it would be interesting to look into the history of how the European nations ushered in those changes–because it wasn’t always that way. Maybe they took advantage of the wreckage of world war two: ‘Now that were back to square one, sitting in the ruins of our last model of the universe…’

Incidentally, I don’t think the Europeans are more enlightened, unless you count ‘enlightened self-interest’ as enlightened. I think it has to do with centuries of bloodshed on their own soil; it’s cultural mathematics learned the hard way; if we let the gap between rich and poor get too great it results in a rise in survival anxiety which leads to increasing discontent, violence (the janitor taking to crime since sweeping floors only pays the rent but doesn’t adequately feed his family, or in anycase his sweeping wage doesn’t give him any kind of a life and bettering himself through education is something only the rich can afford, and they’re already doing fine, grrrrr!), and leads ultimately, to war and/or revolution; since that was very, very bad, and communism (the toughest and meanest of the uneducated janitors becoming king and making the laws–since they executed all the ‘aristocrats’) produced a psychotically cramped mode of existence, lets make some laws to make sure that doesn’t ever happen again. The tendency is to think that this can’t happen in ‘modern times’ but people are just as subject to falling into survival anxiety as they ever were, in which state they can do ugly things. I think that rather than ‘socialism’ this is ‘capitalism keeping the guillotine in the museum, where it belongs’; in other words, I think it is not an abstract difference but a profound, flesh and blood, human difference.

Simon