Relaxed Awake Tai Chi

Dedicated to Great Grandmaster Willem Reeder (Liu Siong)

photo from http://www.tibetantaichi.com/LiuSeong.htm 

Relaxed Awake is a general attitude toward being, however we are discussing an attitude with Tai Chi practice in mind. 

Relaxed Awake 

Movement timed to our breath. 
Counting breaths, measuring time,
For each stance, each moment,  shifting.
Each stance only a temporary milestone,
Along a long journey of 108 Long Form kata.
Movement happening in a relaxed manner.
Not-holding, embracing, stillness, a pause.
Not-pushing, feeling volume, allowing space.
Not-pulling, connecting, centering inward.
Tension and compression always coexist.
Balancing tension and compression,
Being the synthesis of cohesion.
Being fully awake each moment,
Is all that is needed to
Maintain balance.

Physical form ebbs and flows, always cycling. Round and round she goes, where she stops no one knows. 

Stance flows into stance and there exists a pause between. That's the wide open door right before it closes. Or, the fully closed door right before it opens. The opening at the end of the Blue Tube Ojai Portal.

The pause right after in-breath and right before out-breath is different yet similar to the pause right after out-breath and right before in-breath. Observe this difference from complete breath to complete breath, multiple times in a row and achieve Heightened Awareness. 

As the kata progresses through 108 stances, it is joined by relaxation and awareness. The intrinsic nature of breathing overrides willfulness. The breath slows down on it's own. The mind settles and movement tends to Stillness.

Breath is the ever-cycling junction between self and other -- between our individual mind/body/spirit and the greater Universe Of All Existence. 

By itself, the kata slows down always, never done slowing down (Hexagram 64). Observant consciousness (different from controling consciousness) relaxes control, but at the same time becomes more awake. Relaxed Awake Tai Chi.

The system which slows down informs a self-governing process. If the observer/performer is successful in Turning The Light Around, then powerful life-energy pours forth from the Fountain Of Youth. 

In other words, the physical body has an innate ability to slow itself down when our mental complex releases control and observes our inner processes with continuous, un-interrupted attention. The observed lengthening of intervals influences conscious processes in general. Stillness increases for all processes at the root. Profound stillness opens etheric channels of communication with the Essence Of Life.

Ultimately the kata performs as a self-governing feedback loop resulting in an increased flow of life-energy accompanied by bliss, peaceful mind and healthy body. Relaxed Awake Tai Chi. 

Karma Lodro Gyaltsen

Tom Greenbaum

20201104

Trinity: Dividing the Universe into Three

How do trinities work? This is a very deep question with answers on many levels. The levels exist in many domains of human experience and knowledge. It would take a lot of words to answer this properly.

The mind naturally divides the universe into three parts:

1. The subject or thought that our mind is considering in the moment, which is actually a set or collection of things.
2. Everything that we think is included inside this thought, or within this consideration set.
3. Everything that is excluded from our current thought, or outside the consideration set.

Because of this mental process our mind creates trinities. Every time we think about something we divide the universe into three parts. When we later recall our thinking process, we tend to generalize and think about the big picture which is the trinity of the situation. We think about the 'system' that our mind created when we thought about that particular consideration set. We look at the way we divided the universe with our thought. This is mostly not a conscious phenomena, but it is operational nonetheless.

One of the most powerful examples of how this innate dividing of the universe into three parts is Earth, Heaven and Hell. Primitive Human experience thought of their world as a flat plane that extended infinitely in all directions. Naturally this divides the universe into three parts: The Earth on which lives Humans and all creatures, Hell below and Heaven above.

Primitive Humans knew about the Earth on which they stood. They thought about their Earth intently and with great curiosity because their survival depended upon this knowledge. However, when they had time to think about the 'big' picture, they considered how the the universe must be divided into three distinct regions: Earth, Heaven and Hell. They imagined that beings must exist above and beneath the Earthly plane. They placed themselves in the 'big' picture and thought of a cycle of existence that must include the possibility of traveling to these other planes of existence, etc.

There are so many trinities that Humans throughout history have created that it is impossible to catalog them all. Searching the Internet for 'three' yields some interesting results. There is a very interesting website written by Michael Eck who has devoted his life to cataloging threes, see www.three.com and The Book of Threes.

From Wikipedia (and other sources) some interesting facts about three.

In Mathematics:

• Three of the five regular polyhedra have triangular faces — the tetrahedron, the octahedron, and the icosahedron. Also, three of the five regular polyhedra have vertices where three faces meet — the tetrahedron, the hexahedron (cube), and the dodecahedron. Furthermore, only three different types of polygons comprise the faces of the five regular polyhedra — the triangle, the quadrilateral, and the pentagon.

In Nature:

• A human ear has three semicircular canals.
• Humans perceive white light as the mixture of the three additive primary hues: red, green, and blue.
• Genetic information is encoded in DNA and RNA using a triplet codon system.
• Atoms consist of three constituents: protons, neutrons, and electrons.
• We perceive our universe to have three spatial dimensions.

In Religion:

• The Christian Holy Trinity: Father, Son and Holy Ghost.
• The Hindu Trimurti: Brahma the Creator, Vishnu the Preserver, and Shiva the Destroyer.
• In Hinduism the three Gunas underlie action, in the Vedic system of knowledge.
• The Hindu Tridevi.
• The Three Jewels of Buddhism.
• The Three Pure Ones of Taoism.
• In Kaballah the trinity is God, Torah and Israel.
• The three Patriarchs: Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
• The Jewish Bible, the Tanakh has 3 sections: Torah, Nevi'im, and Ketuvim.
• There are three main divisions of Jews: Kohen, Levi, and Israel (Israelite).
• According to the prophet Muhammad, there are three holy cities of Islam (to which pilgrimage should be made): Mecca, Medina, and Jerusalem.
• The Wiccan Rule of Three.
• The Triple Goddess: Maiden, Mother, Crone; the three fates.
• Gurdjieff's Three Centers and the Law of Three.
• The three Doshas (weaknesses) and their antidotes are the basis of Ayurvedic medicine in India.
• Hegel's dialectic of Thesis + Antithesis = Synthesis creates three-ness from two-ness.
• Saccidānanda, Satchidananda, or Sat-cit-ānanda is a compound of three Sanskrit words, Sat, Cit, and Ānanda, meaning truth, consciousness, and bliss respectively. The expression comes from Hinduism and is used in yoga and other schools of Indian philosophy to describe the nature of Brahman as experienced by a fully liberated yogi or saint.

It is no surprise that most of the major religions have a highly significant trinity in their teachings. What I find curious is that perhaps the most significant trinity of Human existence: Father - Mother - Child is not represented. The Christian Holy Trinity: Father, Son and Holy Ghost comes close. Do you think that the Holy Ghost is a substitute for Mother? Some reports state that the Blessed Virgin Mary is venerated more than Jesus Christ as a Christian Deity.

An interesting web page The Christian Goddess talks about this issue. See http://www.northernway.org/goddess.html  (My highlight below).

Many theologians and scholars believe the Holy Spirit written as, Pneuma in Greek every time it appears in the New Testament, is a feminine being.  Note that Pneuma is a neuter word in Greek, but in Hebrew the word Ruah (Spirit) and in Aramaic the word Shekinah (Presence) are feminine words and imply a feminine divine presence.  The Holy Spirit is possibly a Christian Goddess, not a mysterious invisible member of an all-male Trinity "club."

Plato also conceived of a triad consisting of Beauty, Symmetry and Truth. Bucky Fuller talks about this in Synergetics.

Fig. 542.02 Tetrahedral Analysis of Plato's Triad: The triadic concept of Beauty,Symmetry, and Truth inadvenently omitted the function of the observer. The tetrahedron is the unique symmetrical set of minimum interrelationships.

Copyright © 1997 Estate of R. Buckminster Fuller

Do You Believe In Ghosts?

I believe in spirits and other paranormal stuff. I have had several very real encounters with spirits. Here is one story of an encounter that I had.

When I was married to my first wife I became very active with Tibetan Buddhism. I co-founded a Buddhist center in Albuquerque back in 1984 which still exists today. I donated some money with several friends and we bought a small house in the North Valley of Albuquerque. On this property was a detached garage. The garage had an extension that was a shop built by the original owner. We worked hard and converted the garage/shop into a Buddhist temple.

The house in the front of the property was rented by a member of the group. The tenant worked for an insurance company. She also was a Buddhist and a spiritualist. She claimed to have psychic abilities and she was very talented in reading Tarot.

We had many high lamas visit and give teachings and empowerments. We transformed that property into a thriving Buddhist center. It was an exciting time.

After I divorced I decided to concentrate on my meditation practice and move into the garage/temple. I was sort of like the temple caretaker who lived on the grounds doing chores and helping with events.

I didn't have much back then, so the sparse accommodations were no problem for me. I led a very simple life for about a year in that converted garage. I ate a strict macrobiotic diet, but that is getting off the story. The real story is about the ghost who visited me.

I had this recurring experience that I would be awakened by knocking on the door to the temple. I would get up and open the door only to find that no one was there. At first I thought that I was dreaming the knocking. You know that state of mind when you are about to wake up in the morning and you are half asleep and very susceptible to noises. Sometimes a noise is transformed into an element of a dream.

However, this happened over and over again, so it could not be a random dream. It got down right spooky.

Then, one evening after a group meditation session, everyone had left except for a friend. We were engaged in a casual discussion in the small entry to the temple. We were talking for a some time and the night was quiet. Suddenly, we were scared to the core by the horrendously loud sound of a door slamming shut.

I have never heard such a sound in my life. Imagine a very strong person slamming a large wooden door right next to you. The sound was that immediate and personal. It did not come from some distance away. We could almost feel the breeze from the movement of the phantom door.

Both of us just stared wide-eyed at each other for what seemed like several minutes. We were visibly shaking as if we just survived a crash. We were frozen with fear. Slowly we recovered from the shock of hearing this frightful sound. Eventually we turned away from our stare and surveyed the room.

There was nothing that could have made that sound. There were only two doors in that small room. Both doors were within a radius of 6 feet from where we stood. The one to the bathroom was wide open and still. The entry door was closed before the sound had occurred and it had not moved.

The sound was clearly a door slamming shut in our immediate vicinity. There was no other door within 75 feet of us. It was an impossible perception, yet one that my friend and I shared. When we both had gathered our wits, we walked together to the house in the front of the property. We still had not uttered a word between us.

As I mentioned before, a women from our group was renting the front house. She claimed to be psychic and was quite good at Tarot. We knocked on her door and started to explain what we just experienced. However, a full explanation was not necessary. She knew better than we did what had happened. She told us that a spirit had moved through the property.

She said that she clearly saw a dark figure come through her living room from the back to the front several minutes before we knocked on her door. She said this plainly and with no drama. She said the spirit was an occasional visitor that seemed attached to the property, but meant us no harm. Oh, that was all?

Knock, knock, knock, who is knocking at my door?

On Being A Seeker

When I say that I am a "seeker" it is not the way people mostly think about the term. I am not a seeker in the sense of the troubled youth seeking to be rescued by religion or a magical tradition. I am not seeking to believe in something greater than my self in order to find refuge or protection. I am not seeking an omnipotent being to answer my prayers. I am not even seeking a spiritual identity or acceptance by a group. I am comfortable in saying that I am passed that.

What I am seeking is evidence of other humans who have broken through the illusion of culture, language, science, logic and myth and have seen truth with their hearts.

Sometimes I follow a promising trail only to find that it leads to a dead end. I have come across many cold, worthless pieces of propaganda masquerading as spiritual evidence. Other times I find a glowing gem of great beauty.

Sometimes I learn about an ancient manuscript that hopefully will reveal an important teaching, but it takes reading a half dozen translations in order to find the one translation that does not corrupt the original. For example, Light on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali by B K S Iyengar is such a jewel. The Sutras of Patanjali are the oldest known writings about Yoga. This one work has been translated by many "spiritualists" in order to validate their own dogma. However, in my opinion Iyengar's translation is evidence of a human heart touching truth. It takes a great yogi to know a great yogi.