Riders on the Storm

More accurately Riders OF the storm.
Life is a continuously spinning vortex.
We are caught up in it’s never-ending spin-cycle, sometimes the spin is slow and continuous, sometimes, like when you put a heavy towel inside your washing machine, the cycle surges and bumps round for ages.. But the spinning never stops, bumpy or smooth..
I  think to most people the vortex appears to be going faster and faster, as more and more useless information eats away at our valuable time.

What are those bumps in your spin cycle?

I was adopted age 14 days old. I’ve heard other adoption horror stories, but mine was one of love and light. A wonderful and loving family, never wanting for anything, love overtly expressed – what a lucky life it’s been.
I have no fear of death, I could go now with a big grin on my face happy to discover the next game!
The Bump in my life came when I was in my fifties.
I recognised in myself that I always liked very much to be in relationship with another.
My first marriage was twenty five mostly happy years, my second sixteen exceptionally happy years. I have always been reasonably centred and optimistic, and that helps to keep life spinning smoothly for a family and a partner.

I spoke to many of my Qigong Therapy clients over the years; I was able to see how small details in their lives had been the lens through which they had lived their entire lives.
Take an idea formed in childhood like “I’m shy.”
This idea affects how you might do at school, the friends you might have, the kind of job you feel able to accept and the partner you might meet.
This story can then be subconsciously communicated to your children, and the cycle continues.
I worked with a lot of people to expose their story, and to help them to realise if they could cut it down in size, that they could pass through that to true healing.

But crucially, I have never looked at MY STORY.. If I’m honest, I didn’t really think it was important. I’m healthy and well, why bother..?
In the back of my mind I knew that all the clients I was working with had been healthy and well, until they weren’t!

I tracked down my birth mother. I expected that it would be a cataclysmic moment of change for me, but actually it was very uneventful -she was just a lovely old lady, we became friends.
I thought the story ended there.
I recent times, from retreat to retreat, and with the help of an amazing close friend, I was able to see that “That wasn’t that” – after all!

Why do we try to control other people? The answer is our own insecurity.
My family and ex-wives always used to marvel that I was always able to get what I wanted – in the end..
My father noted my ability to keep going until I got the result I wanted..
I’m not a horrible controlling person, but a gentle persistence eventually amounts to the same thing. Water can wear down a mountain after all..

I’ve always led from the front. Set a strong path, kept going and hope that the others would follow.
If you are in charge, then you are in control -everything feels safe.
If you are in a stable relationship then it feels safe.

I have needed to feel safe all my life, because from the very first days, NOTHING felt safe.
You can see where my need sprung from.

If my birthmother didn’t love me enough to keep me, why should I love myself?
It’s better to find somebody else to love you, and therefore feel the reflection of safety and love in their eyes and heart.
It was a good solution for two thirds of my life to date. (One that has made me very happy, and also one that has supported my qigong journey through my understanding partners – bless them for their patience..)

Recently, I have been challenged to look at that pattern; a divorce, moving from the safety of my family home and my vowed intent to move to Portugal have all asked questions of me.
My new friendship has meant that I have continually been required to ask myself “Who’s running this show?” – “What do THEY want?” – “Why do they want it?”
Time and time again, I have had to look at the pattern of long-term neediness, and try to understand it.
I have often felt the bitter blow of rejection. This is like acid being thrown into the face of a person who need contact and reassurance.
My Teacher Lu asks us to feel that emotion (Not side-step it as I had become so expert at doing) to really experience it.
The massive bump in my spin-cycle came about 12 days into my retreat here in China.
I felt the emotion, and went deep with it. Really deep..
I spent a day just walking, I went to the local Buddhist temple to see if Buddha could intervene on my behalf, but he was only a wooden statue painted in gold..
My own Camino lasted all day.

Let’s take a slight aside here, and discuss how to heal!
I have never been somebody who sees auras, feels people’s Qi fields, and I don’t really feel I have special abilities.
I studied Medical Qigong, I’m a competent practitioner, who enjoys the “system thinking” of Chinese Medicine, and I think I’m good at applying the theory.
If I work one to one (Which I do very little these days) I can pick up blockages in people’s Qi flow, I’m sensitive to the ideas their bodies communicate to me.. but I’m NOT some sort of guru.. just competent.
When I’m asked to visualise colours moving in my body, or my body dissolving to the clouds, then only a lot of hard work and practice will allow my logic brain to let me get through to a stable “picture” – even then it’s a carefully crafted movie, as opposed to the wonderful reveries that many people seem to be able to muster.
I discover that I’m in a group of about 15% of our population who find this kind of thinking very difficult. (There another 15% at the “top” who can be too lost and too absorbed by this type of ability – and the further 70% sit in the middle as being “ok” at drawing these images..)
This being the case for me, I have always used my logical mind to construct visualisations. My Logical mind tries to do the reasoning, and then tries to do the fixing.
 I’ve always felt that there was a “soft-skill” just out of my reach that I could talk others into finding, but that was really difficult for me to reach myself.

So too with the big bump in my spin cycle.
I sat with it for a long time..
It went, in a simple way, like this…
“Your birth-mother didn’t want you – abandoned you, why should you love yourself (Or how do you even do that!?)”
Then I saw the slew of behaviours that hung off the side of that idea, the neediness, the soft control and other minor offenders.
I saw the emotions that these patterns released in me, the feelings of rejection, of being wrong, in something I thought I’d always done so well..

I applied my laser focus to crack open this final conundrum. My Mind is a sharp tool these days, should be no problem.
The issue was that this core tenet of my life was the size of Everest – in short, it WAS my life!
How do I smash my life and cut this open – we’re going to need a bigger laser!

Try as I might, walk and walk as far as my wee peg legs would carry me..
Nothing..
I got some great advice from my trusted advisor to be quiet, stop reasoning, and just decided to feel.
Just be with it, don’t think about it.. just let go..

That brings us to this very morning.
We were sitting in class, listening to a song by Rossio and Hui, two great Zhineng people.
Their Lyric “Every day I love myself a little bit more, a little bit more, a little bit more..” was, and has been playing around in my head for the last few weeks..
I suddenly realise that I wanted to make a change in the words.. “Every day I REMEMBER THAT I love myself a little bit more, a little bit more, a little bit more..”
I just suddenly realise that I really do love myself, and that there has NEVER been a barrier to loving myself, I had just forgotten this crucial fact!
My recent reading and Teacher Lu’s teachings suddenly came home to me.
I realised that there is NO separation. That oft quoted saying “we are all one” – is actually a really deep truth.
There was never a time that I wasn’t connected to my birth mother, never a day she didn’t think about me. (A lovely friend of her’s told me, after she passed, that my birth mother used to cry on my birthday every year..)
The same was true of my beautiful adopted mother.. I was always loved and connected.
My beautiful father passed so young, but I have always felt deeply connected to him also.

It was then that Dr Pang’s scientific system fell into place.
The whole of our Universe is made from one substance Hun Yuan Qi, and that we are all made from it, and return to it.

I saw the connectivity of it all, nothing is ever separate!
It was just this story that had caused me to feel separate.
I started to laugh! The simplicity of the stupidity of it..
A simple idea that could shape the path of my whole life! How absurd..
When I saw the completeness of everything, and the ridiculousness of this “tiny” limiting filter through which I saw everything – the mirror cracked..
The Storm abated.. I feel a huge oceanic calmness now..

I can feel the washing machine slowing down, the spin-cycle is over for now..
My breath and chest feel lighter..
It’s going to be very difficult for my ego to “pull the wool” over my eyes again, they really feel like they are open now!

Hao la.. (Everything is good already!)

I truly hope that this opening will facilitate some change in you too.

You can always find me and my classes online and we’ll be retreating in September 2024 in France, if you wish to experience these kind of life changes..