Archive for June, 2010

The Trinity of Spirit

2010/06/14 · Filed under Uncategorized · Tagged , , , , , , ,

Note to Self:  The flow of a healthy, abundant life cannot be experienced fully when one has a rigid mind, emotional blocks or a tense body.

Over the course of my lifetime, I have become aware of myself at deeper and deeper levels to the point where I am now aware that my “real” self is not the body that appears in the mirror, but a “spirit” which is composed of three components:  a physical part, an emotional part and a mental part.  These three components are so intricately linked that the state of one matches the state of the others.  In other words, they all change together whenever they change at all.

The physical part of ourselves is an indicator of how we are in the present moment, while the emotional part indicates the influence or momentum of our past on our current situation.  The mental part is the part of ourselves that can create our future and possibly change the course of our momentum through the use of imagination and visualization.

I have noticed a “natural flow of influence” between these three parts.  The emotional part (our past) fuels change in our physical part (our present) which, in turn, fuels change in our mental part (our future) which, in turn, fuels change in our emotional part.  As you can see this natural flow of the parts of spirit matches the flow of linear time (i.e., past to present to future).  However, the flow of influence has an additional influence, namely that the part of spirit associated with our future influences that which is associated with our past!  This ultimately makes our experience of time not linear, but cyclical.

So how does one heal from a health challenge?  Traditional methods in American and European culture have focused so much on the physical level, often to the exclusion of the mental and especially emotional levels.  As a result, healing is short-term, at best.  In addition, it appears to me that traditional healing methods are sometimes backwards, with respect to the natural flow of influence.  If one has a physical challenge, traditional methods may focus on a mental approach to force physical change (for example, surgery is employed to force a patient’s physical body to conform to an ideal image, such as being “cancer-free”).  If one has an emotional problem, drugs (i.e., physical substances) may be prescribed to force one’s emotional tendencies to be in alignment with what is deemed ideal.  If one is deemed to have a mental problem (which is sometimes the case with geniuses or those who see things differently), then one may be treated with guilt to conform with a custom or with “the way things have always been done” (i.e., those with mental problems will be “cured” when they emotionally please those who embrace the status quo).  Another way to summarize these three examples of traditional healing is:  Use the future to change the present, use the present to change the past and the use past to change the future.  See how backward that is?

When a client comes to see me for a qigong healing session, the client’s focus is typically on a physical challenge.  Inevitably though, I quickly see corresponding challenges at the emotional and mental levels, too.  So, my approach to the healing process is to not only honor the natural flow of (cyclical) time and the natural flow of spiritual component influences, but also look at all components simultaneously in order to maximize the long-term effectiveness of the healing.  This is what holistic health is all about, after all!  So, in general, clients leave a session with me with new ways of thinking or looking at their situation (to continue the momentum of the session at the mental level), recommended exercises (to continue the momentum at the physical level), and a new energy state from my work with their qi (which closely corresponds to the emotional level).

My healing practice is based on what I have learned in my studies of qigong.  I have learned much from others as well as from my personal experience and insights.  What I have been taught is that the human body has three major energy centers called dantians.  The lower dantian resides in the belly, the middle dantian resides in the heart area and the upper dantian resides in the head.  What I have recently realized in this teaching is that the trinity of energy centers just described respectively serve as a kind of “seat” to the emotional, physical and mental components of a person’s spirit.  The linear flow of time from past to present to future, therefore, corresponds to the lower, middle and upper dantians, respectively.  The upper dantian is the seat for the mental part of spirit because this is where one exercises visualization, imagination and thought, in general.  The lower dantian is the seat for the emotional part of spirit because this is where one stores up qi and where one checks in with how he feels (“My gut says tells me that I should…”).  The middle dantian is the seat for the physical part of spirit because this is where one experiences being alive in the present moment (Nothing is more indicative of being alive than a beating heart).  I have also noticed organs that correspond to the three components of spirit:  The kidneys and ears correspond to the emotional level, the gonads and eyes correspond to the physical level and the lungs and nose correspond to the mental level.  These organs, unlike the dantians, reflect the quality of interaction with others (i.e., they are relationship-oriented).  So, by tuning in to the qi of these various organs, I can get a picture of the overall state of a person and gain insight on what is the best way to heal them.

One of the gifts that the three components of spirit provide is that if one is oblivious to the condition of one part of spirit, chances are he will notice the condition of at least one of the other two.  Usually the component which is easiest to notice is the physical component because it is hard not to notice when physical pain or discomfort is present!  The physical is easiest to notice also because it is the most dense and lowest energy of the components (Likewise, the mental component is the hardest to notice because it is the least dense and highest energy of the components).  So, healing is really about acknowledging the whole spirit and transforming all of its components simultaneously.  If one component is “out of whack” in some way, look for the other two components to be “out of whack”, too.  By treating all three components simultaneously, one can gather insights about the challenging condition at hand, and thereby, heal faster.

So, the healthier one’s spirit is (as indicated by the health of its three components), the better shape that one is in to conceive, allow and manifest experiences in a flowing manner.  Thus, life becomes more fulfilling and abundant and demonstrates a most amazing principle:  What one experiences in the outer world matches what one experiences in the inner world.  Of course, this amazing principle is true even if one’s spirit is not in a healthy state.  The results are just not as pleasant.  Hmm…Perhaps I have the beginnings of another blog here…

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A Poor Substitute for Abundance

2010/06/03 · Filed under Uncategorized · Tagged , , , , , , , ,

Note to Self:  A society that encourages extravagance is a society that encourages extra vagrants!

This thought occurred to me a while back, but I feel moved to write about it in more detail now.  When I think about what extravagance is, I think of a lifestyle that consists of the consumption of goods and services that require an inordinate amount of resources to create experiences which provide the utmost in comfort.  Because of the resource demands of extravagance, only a distinct minority of people are allowed by society to experience it.  The social criterion which decides who gets to live in extravagance is simply a variation on the Golden Rule:  Those with the gold (money), rule (can live in extravagance).

The fact that relatively few can experience extravagance points to a key principle that underlies the economic system which allows extravagance to exist in the first place:  Value varies with scarcity.  This principle is what gives gold, a relatively rare metal, great value while water has very little value because it is relatively plentiful.  It is this principle that places great value on the services of medical doctors and little value on common laborers, given that the former tends to make a lot of money and the latter makes little money (not to mention that there are a lot of common laborers and relatively few doctors).

Even the currency used in the economic system is (in theory) limited so that it can be in alignment with the idea that the more scarce something is, the more valuable it is.  Thus, if a currency is to maintain its value, it must be limited in supply by the issuer of the currency.  An unlimited or infinite supply of a currency would force the value of that currency to plummet to nothing.  This is why if every American was a millionaire, the value of the dollar would be a lot lower than it is now.  So, because a society has a limited supply of its currency, the existence of a rich person in that society implies the existence of several poor people and vice versa.

Because one’s economic status (how much money he has) is tied to a person’s value to society, those who are deemed to be most valuable to society are most deserving to not only survive, but to thrive.  On the other hand, those who are deemed to be the least valuable to society are least deserving of survival.  It is those least deserving that we call vagrants because they have no income and cannot afford a home.  Hence, a society that insists on having an economic system where value varies with scarcity will, of necessity, have few wealthy people and many poor people in order to balance out the money supply.  It is impossible to maintain economic equality in such a society because doing so would either eliminate economic activity or else violate the principle of value varying with scarcity.

So, a society that insists on having an economic system where value varies with scarcity will, of necessity, not value human life in general because some lives are deemed valuable and some are not.  This is anti-democratic because democracy, by definition, values all people equally.  Not only is such a society anti-democratic, it also is unable to experience true abundance.  It goes without saying that those who live in poverty do not experience abundance, but neither do the so-called wealthy or middle-class because the focus of each member of society is on scarcity, which means that one can never have enough, especially when one’s survival is tied to this sense of scarcity!  This encourages competition and conflict as “every man for himself” becomes the underlying modus operandi in society.

As someone who was born in the USA, I certainly am aware of the “American Dream”.  But the economic component of this dream is based on the old economic scarcity paradigm.  As a result, anyone who achieves the American Dream does so (unwittingly) at the expense of fellow Americans!  Not only that, but given that the USA is the wealthiest nation in the world and continues to take action (military or otherwise) to maintain its wealth, it guarantees that some nations in the world will remain dirt poor.  Thus, the American Dream turns out to be much of the rest of the world’s nightmare!

If a society were to value life and each individual, not only would it be more democratic, it would experience true abundance.  Because all individuals would be deemed as precious, no person’s survival would be threatened by society and in fact, society would be interested in seeing to it that each person thrives so that she will be able to easily give her gift to society.  Thus, society reaps the benefits of supporting each of its members.  The environment would not be stressed or degraded because nobody would be motivated to consume resources (as they are now), but instead be motivated to share resources in order to preserve environmental health.  Conflicts would be minimized because cooperation would be naturally encouraged (Why re-invent the wheel when it is already freely available to everyone?).

When each individual embraces the principles of abundance in each moment of her day-to-day life, society can easily move from a scarcity-based economic system that encourages consumption and competition to an abundance-based system that encourages conservation and cooperation.  This may take some practice (and courage!), since old habits are hard to break, but it is quite possible.  The details of the process of embracing abundance are likely to be unique to each individual.  So, use your God-given creative abilities and dare to “think outside the box” as you have fun in this process.  Above all, share your experiences with others.  After all, sharing is one of the most important components of living in abundance!

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