Blind Faith and Modern Life

It’s going to take utter faith and determination to get through this!
(It doesn’t matter what this “This” actually is!)

How do we “get through” anything? It often seems that if we can just get through the next few days/weeks/year, that things will be better.
It’s about enduring the pain, until it stops.
Nothing lasts forever, and even the tightest situations in our lives resolve themselves eventually.
The question is “Is it the resolution that I actually want?” or not.
(Don’t forget, Death could be seen as a resolution too!)

There’s a lot wrapped up in this story:-

What does it take to change our fortune?
What’s required to shift our perspective?
How do we “manipulate” the world to our ends, and indeed should we even try?
What about the enduring, during the bad times, how do we handle that?

Belief

Let’s just quickly dig into belief.
Belief is what occurs after ideas that have been presented to us, eventually harden into a system.
We use belief as a short-hand for a stack of ideas, piled onto of each-other and then compressed, like a scrap-book of papers and leaves, under a heavy weight.
Religion is a pretty good example. In a world that is essentially unknowable, it offers us a structure.
“Be good, and God will look after you.” We all know how often it can disappoint, but with no other offerings, we often stick to it.
“In the end God will sort it out”
Few of us ever have any personal experience of God.
It’s just a question of repetition and fervour.
The more you hear the stories… the more your trusted ones fall back on the stories, the fewer the other options that appear, you default back to belief.

Science is also a Castle built on Sand.
It’s Belief, stacked upon belief.
Things that don’t suit the system get quietly binned or banned.
The Earth was flat, until it wasn’t..

I ask you to have belief that Qigong will heal your Cancer, Diabetes, Heart Disease or chronic back pain. If you buy my story, then it makes the actual healing so much easier.
I tell you of the hundreds of people who have changed their lives and health, that I have met and guided. If you think I’m a credible person, and a truthful story teller, it makes it easier for you to model this change in yourself.

It’s easier for us to get behind something that we trust and believe in.

Fortune and Destiny

Let’s now look at fortune and destiny!
How did you get to where you are now?
It was a series of questions and their answers.
Life is always a series of choices.
Like computing, it’s a YES/NO structure. Choose one path, something happens, choose another, and life takes a different turn.
How much of this do you consciously guide and how much does its own thing?
We are told that only 5% of our thoughts are actually “visible” to us, so clearly there’s a lot going on that we don’t consciously follow in our lives.
The suggestion I’m making is that we like to think that we are “making” the decisions in our lives, but often we are stumbling blindly along, reacting rather than planning.
Do you need good fortune to make it through the troubles?
I would contend that awareness of your situation is more important than blind faith, or dumb luck.
Your destiny, your path through life is a series of decisions.
Make them carefully and in a considered way, and then you won’t need dumb luck.
It’s true to say that one can become bogged down with over-thinking a decision.
I have a simple strategy.
I use a pendulum. I get very quiet and very focused.
I ask myself “Will it be a good idea for me to do this?”
(If I have my pendulum, I hold it out in front of me, and watch which way it swings.)
If I don’t have it, I ask myself the question, and listen for the first answer.
In my opinion these both come from my own innate inspiration.
If I ask you “in this situation, given no barriers, what would you do?” Nine times out of ten you’ll instantly have an answer. It’s this instantaneous answer that is the most clear, and the one you need. You have to learn to trust this the most.
At some deep subconscious level, we know very well what the best course of action should be taking. We just rarely give ourselves the time to listen, or the belief that our innate self will have the right answer.
Often as soon as we have the answer, the cognisant mind will leap in with one hundred reasons why we shouldn’t follow our intuition.
Ignore it, be brave and follow your intuition.
If you can nudge life fifty one percent in your favour and not the other way around, you are already winning, already moving forward in a positive way!
Forget luck and belief – you know it all already!

What’s required to shift our perspective?
The older we become the more the tendency to fall back on the old patterns that we have always used.
It actually takes much more energy to come up with a new idea, than it does to default to old patterns.
We spend so much time in defensive and “Short-cut” thinking that there’s no time or room for anything new.
We must all have an old relative, who’s first words are “No!”
The more our brain loses the ability to reconfigure itself, the harder it is to come up with new ideas.
The Process is called Plastination. This is the ability of the brain to break down cellular configurations, and use the material to make new pathways.
This is why we are now being told all the time to learn a musical instrument in old age, or a new language.
It literally keeps the brain more flexible.
That’s why I always add Qigong to this list of things to do in our senior years.
Flexible body and flexible mind! You’ll be the envy of all!
(My best advice is get started young, and keep going!)

In order to shift our perspective on life, we need to be open and less judgemental.
As life goes by things happen to us and around us.
If we conclude that the world is a hostile place, then we build patterns that will continue to affirm this.
If on the other hand, we decided that “Things” just “Happen” and we don’t take it personally, then we won’t feel “assaulted” every time “things happen.”

From the last “Idea” above, if we are making better life decisions, then the “Happenings” start to change in nature. Good things replace the bad. We also view “things” in a different way, in a less judgemental way, then the negative value decreases.
It takes a determined effort to seek out the positive, and to repeatedly do that, again and again. Anything that you do becomes a habit after a while.

Often people find that withdrawing themselves from the News agenda helps a great deal.
Act and think local, confine your interactions to people whom you feel bring a positive influence to your life.
By artificially building positivity into your life (I subscribe – and with full disclosure, am a fully paid up supporter of Positive News magazine..) you can gradually gain a change of perspective. The World isn’t as bad a place as you might at first suspect!

This perspective shift will bring its own mental and physical health benefits.

Manipulating the World to Suit us!

Should we even consider imposing ourselves in such a way to bring about a certain outcome? The more “skin” you have in a game, the more it hurts when you lose!
Life seems to be a constant battle and tied up in this can be a series of crushing losses.

It’s all about our levels of expectation.
We have a habit of setting the bar exceptionally high for others (while often falling short ourselves – and letting ourselves off with ease!)
As they say “Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed!”
Or “It’s your expectations that give you pain, not other people or circumstances!”

There’s nothing wrong with setting an intention.
“I hope that my colleague will succeed in getting the business for us..”
If your view is actually “It’ll be a disaster if he doesn’t win us the business..”
The outcome of the deal is beyond you, your personal reaction to the deal is another matter. One outcome leaves you thinking “we need another plan” the other “my life is crushed!”
One is certainly more healthy and flexible than the other.
The only difference between these is your own expectations.
Stay flexible

Don’t constantly pressure “the World” to give you things. It will only disappoint you.
A note here for Western Spirituality, and the school of manifesting.
Most teachers tell you that you can have anything you want, and that all you need is a good “Mood board” and a mantra to repeat with religious fervour every time you brush your teeth!
This is indeed a Universe of total bounty. I agree that anything is possible.
My only question is “Do you actually need a Palm Beach sea front house?”
As the world apparently burns around us, wouldn’t our manifesting be better spent on helping each other, rather than selfishly grabbing more stuff? – Just saying!

As to manipulating reality to suit your ends..
I think it’s better to align yourself with your True Nature, and leave the Universe to bring you what IT thinks you need, rather than what the Ad Men of Maddison Avenue think you actually require!

Enduring

Finally we have the question of getting through the tough bits.
What good is Qigong when every time you bend over to pick something up, you hurt yourself!?
I remember trying to explain to a student who had injured their knee..
“Try to distance yourself from the immediate pain”
To which she shouted “You try to distance yourself from the F**king Pain!!”
In essence I was correct, in practice, very wrong!

There’s only so much grinning and bearing we can do.
Things like Knees, Hips and Backs feel like such long-term issues.
Sometimes they break in an instant, and take such a long time to heal.
My assertion is that something has led to this happening.
Maybe you were rushing through life unthinkingly when you fell?
Maybe you were disengaged with your job, or life or relationship when the accident befell you?
Perhaps you’d spent years sitting in the same chair, with the same stress, not exercising well, and accepting the abuse of your colleagues.
Perhaps you’d ignored your body’s cries for help, the excess weight gain, the headaches, the pains that you medicated away?

All of these are choices with consequences.
We can change anything we want. Whenever we want.
What’s the worst thing that can happen?
If the answer is, “if I change this, then I’ll die..” Then maybe you have to ask yourself if your time has actually come.
Have you stopped listening well enough to have brought yourself to the edge of disaster?
Only you know if it’s too late to try to change.
If your “first” answer to the question, “Shall I try to save myself?” is YES, then come on, let’s give it a go!

But what of significant pain?
Well there are always ways to ameliorate the pain on a short term basis.
Use herbal muscle rubs, use back or knee supports. Take the occasional homeopathic painkiller, or even prescription painkiller.
Sometimes we just need a break, to see us through.
Sometimes we have to rest up and accept that there’s no other sensible course of action except let the body heal.
In order to access proper healing, we need to spend long times asleep, and also in deep meditation.
When we hit these downtimes, then the body moves into healing mode.
The Nervous system moves from Sympathetic to Para-sympathetic mode which promotes all healing.
You can’t heal yourself when you are working and thinking! Healing is either ON, or OFF!

What about the idea of dis-association with Pain?
We know that James Bond was trained to not give away state secrets when being tortured.
Even the threats of being neutered by a laser beam, or having a swim in the shark pond wouldn’t have shaken or stirred him!
There is an idea that holding your Trueself back from the experience of the pain will help.
It’s an advanced technique. (As mentioned, one my student with the hurt knee couldn’t access that in short order..)
I’m sure you have heard stories of someone who you have thought has amazing self-fortitude?
People who have dragged themselves from Icey crevasses on mountains, who have walked out of a plane crash in the jungle, people who have dragged themselves across a hostile desert. These people all pushed through, because they had no choice.
So too with you, sometimes it’s possible to use some short term measures, and then change your attitude to the pain.
Rub on some cream, get on with it, reduce the things that are likely to trigger more pain, and gently take time to encourage self-healing as often as possible.

In Zhineng Qigong, we use a wonderful exercise called La Qi.
You sit and visualise your pain and problems dissolving away as you gently part your hands (about the size of a football) and then as you bring them back towards each other, you visualise and imagine a perfect healing.
We quietly say “Kai,” to open the hands and “Huuu” to close the hands, although it’s not required.
You can find a full description and an Audio file on my website’s Resources page if you’d like to give it a go!

Belief Again!

Finally, another word for Belief!
Having discussed (Disrespected) Religion and Science earlier, I’d rather cheekily like to say, it’s fine if you’d like to believe in the healing powers of Qigong.
I’ve seen it work many, many times!
Wow, how convenient for me!

Don’t lose faith! Many times people have come to the end of Western Medicine and have felt they have no options left.
In my humble opinion, that’s only because the West has disregarded the evidence and efficacy of Chinese Medicine (Five thousand Years of research, pushed to one side!)
My mind is open, is yours?!
Come and meet me on the other side!

Hao Le! (Chinese for Everything is Good already!)