Perhaps you've read this already?

If not -- perhaps you should.

Not just because, in my humble opinion, it's brilliant, but because it creates some context for what follows.

In other words, so I don't have to keep telling the same story again and again; there are other stories I would rather tell again and again, and which indeed I will.

While you're at it, unhitch your belt a notch or two, and maybe read a couple of these, too, if you're a bit lean and hungry for more of that, so to say, context the diners at the other table are mmm-ing and jawing about:

Your Voice Carries Well, Forgiveness and Compassion, Cultivating Flowers.

Any more notches to unhitch on that belt?

Don't tell me you're full, or worse, my proverbial Mr. Creosote; I promise that, if it's not waffer-theen, what I have to offer you is at least as salutary, if not as salvific, as that other Wafer of Good Repute, and is served in that same spirit.

Yes, Sah!

So, in Plain English, such as I have learned Her, here follows, digested, a bit of that context I hope you ingested.

Perhaps it was the mention of Mr. Creosote, but this talk of ingested and digested context put me in mind of this:

"At Duke lane a ravenous terrier choked up a sick knuckly cud on the cobblestones and lapped it up with new zest. Surfeit. Returned with thanks having fully digested the contents."

Just playing.

OK. Plain English.

I worked at the Spring Forest Qigong healing center for a little over four years. I've been practicing the Qigong itself daily for a little over five. Boy, has it changed my life -- as, indeed, working at the healing center did.

For the better, I assure you.

So much so, in fact, that I can't encourage you enough -- go learn it for yourself, however you can.

I trust you can find their website without my pointing you there.

I told you here that, leaving aside the "personal dimensions" of work I was doing there, the work I was being paid to do was to answer, well, thousands of emails, hundreds of phone calls, and, from time to time, to do some creative work, mostly in the realm of writing and birthing some smaller ideas into being.

What I'm telling you is -- it was a real education.

And, though I am not claiming I'm a Master, or that I'm the most knowledgeable Qigong practitioner (even in the Spring Forest Qigong world, which is not the whole Qigong world), or that the Certified Trainers, Instructors, and Practice Group Leaders, whom I heartily encourage you to connect with, practice with, and learn from, would not have a lot more to share with you, perhaps of greater personal value to you, than what I have to share with you here...

What I'm saying is, I was in a rare position to do some learning that a lot of people never do, or are never in a position to do.

Even that, I'm learning, is only a foundation, but that's neither here nor there; as Master Jim Nance would say, always use your beginner's mind.

After maybe 25 years of experience healing at a high level, that extraordinary Master is still a beginner.

What did I learn?

Well, let me remind you, as I said here, in this Qigong, we say the main cause of the Qi blockages that lead to every imaginable health challenge is unbalanced emotions, and pretty much everyone I talked with and wrote to brought their particular, unique recipe of unbalanced emotions to that table I feasted at for four years.

To maintain balance, positivity, and energetic integrity wading through those cross-currents was an education in itself.

I learned about types of people.

Gurdjieff talks about "types," but I won't, other than to say -- for all the particular, unique recipes brought to my feasting-table, or any such table, still there are only a certain number of flavors, or types, of people.

Being able to recognize them, to discern their flavor, is a gift, and a good way to learn to do that -- is to feast at the sort of table I feasted at for four years.

And, because I got so many different kinds of people coming at me from so many different directions, all the time, with so many different questions, I got pretty good at giving them answers.

Meaningful ones, no less, so -- hold on a sec while I pat myself on the back.

Yeah, that's the stuff.

Anyway, the point of all this is this.

So, so many people -- and, I'm even talking people who "had been with" Spring Forest Qigong for 20 or 25 years, as they often told me -- clients, students, you name it -- did not practice the Qigong consistently.

And, by consistently, I mean every day.

But what I want to know, and to say, is -- how will you ever get good at anything if you don't do it every day?

Have you read this?

There's a story about Mohammad Reza Lotfi, a great Master of Persian dastgaah music -- to my mind (and more importantly, to my heart) the greatest Master of that music.

When Lotfi was a young man, another Master, a director of a school of music, saw him, heard him, and fell in love with him. I'm talking the spiritual love of a real Master for a student of the same Way, or of two aasheghs for the same divine wine.

So he said, Come live with me.

That's how Masters were back then; in fact, that's how Masters have always been.

This director of the musical school had a son. He gave an interview that I saw. That's where I got this story.

In it he said, Lotfi came to stay with us when I was 6 or 7, and for 12 or 13 hours a day, he'd sit in his room upstairs, playing his taar and setaar, and I'd stand outside his door just mesmerized by the beautiful sounds coming out from that room.

If you watch him in that interview, you'll see, or feel, that that boy, now a man, softens and his heart opens when he remembers those days.

How will you ever get good at anything if you don't do it every day?

And, more importantly, if you're not drawn to do it in that spirit, with that love?

I think you should pause and reflect on that.

Even so, that's not even what I wanted to talk about here.

What I wanted to say, based on my own experience with Qigong, based on my time working at Spring Forest Qigong, is -- you don't have to "understand" Qigong to benefit from it, whether for healing yourself or helping others. You just have to DO it.

Again.

You don't have to understand Qigong to benefit from Qigong; you have to DO Qigong to benefit from Qigong.

Don't make me clap the syllables out with you, Boo-Boo.

So, so many people suppose -- and this is particularly a Western problem, but also the problem of the intellectually-minded -- "First I'll understand it, then I'll really get it, and then I'll do it and benefit from it more."

That sounds rational enough.

But, it's not rational enough.

That's lower-order rationality. It can never be enough.

Master Chunyi Lin, founder of Spring Forest Qigong, has said, Qigong learning isn't like other kinds of learning. Qigong learning is 70 or 80 or 90% practice, only 30 or 20 or 10% reading and concepts.

Don't believe him?

Neither did I.

And, perhaps that is why for 10 years, after having discovered Spring Forest Qigong and intuitively felt its truth, its authenticity, and experienced the genuine healing gifts of Masters Chunyi Lin and Jim Nance... I didn't practice.

I mean, never.

And, wouldn't you know it? Those were a miserable 10 years.

In retrospect -- they were perfect; it was the path I was meant to follow to be who, and where, I am today.

Yet... I wonder, what if I had been practicing Qigong those 10 years?

What I've come to experience in 5 years -- where would 15 years have taken me by now?

This line of thinking, of course, is fruitless -- I only cite it in the course of discourse as an example, or a sign, for those with eyes to see, before moving on; as another Master said, "every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire."

I was intelligent back then. I had some understanding, too. But -- that didn't help me experience the healing benefits of Spring Forest Qigong, or to grow in my spiritual understanding, to attain to greater depths.

You don't need to understand; you need to practice.

Perhaps some of those who are reading this writing are like I was. I'm guessing, if anyone is reading this, they're probably intelligent, possibly even intellectual.

I'm not coming at you from the intellect, if you didn't notice, though -- there's a bit of that surface-dazzle to catch your wandering eye, to keep you still so I can draw you a little closer.

Some will have felt that, of course, and to them -- well, I don't have much more to say. They've already got the point, if from a different angle.

But to you Intellectuals, to you Needers to Know, to you Thirsters after Understanding, let me say: don't waste your time making my mistakes.

Don't wander the halls of this temple mesmerized by the echoes of the music you hear: let them draw you onward, inward, to their source.

Let them draw you to practice.

I wish my poetry were enough to persuade you; but for you, I know it's not, you Needer to Know.

I have heard that, in olden days, mothers would dip a teething toddler's pacifier in whiskey to ease the pain of the teeth that had begun to break the gumline.

If my words and works have not pacified you yet, I sprinkle on a few drops of that numbing Intellectual Sauce, to aid that end.

Plain English.

Right.

You want to understand Qigong, right? You want to Go Deep? You want to understand what the Masters mean?

Consider this.

First, I'd recommend you practice the Five Element Qigong Healing Movements and the Small Universe Meditation daily, period.

Again, I trust you can find your way to the store without my holding your hand.

Master Lin has said publicly -- I've witnessed this, more than once, -- he has students who've just practiced those things diligently, consistently, and have advanced as much as many students who have attended his higher-level meditation retreats (Level Four, Level Five), which -- by the way -- might also cost you thousands of dollars to attend.

Those two things -- a home-study course and a meditation, -- you can pay, say, $150 for and use the rest of your life, to heal, to stay well, and to go as far and deep in your spiritual practice as you want.

It's ALL there, the foundation and the pinnacle, in those two little practices, and I could spend another 2,000 words telling you about that here -- but I won't.

When I worked at the healing center, sometimes people grumbled about cost; I never understood that. If you understood what I just told you, $150 is nothing to pay for something that is priceless.

As I often wrote there -- one always pays for expertise.

And what I'll add here is, one doesn't always pay for it with money, and one should always be grateful if, indeed, that's the only price that's asked.

But what I'm saying is -- by practicing your Five Elements and Small Universe daily, leaving aside the health benefits you enjoy from that, the peace of mind, the wonderful emotions that flower along the way, what you're doing is cultivating Qi.

Qi is not just energy; it's energy with consciousness and intelligence.

Gurdjieff said, I am more of a materialist than the materialists.

What he meant was, even what we call "spiritual" is also material.

What I'm saying is, with the daily Qigong practice, you are cultivating a certain field of Qi around you, refining and purifying it, which means removing the coarser elements and retaining the finer.

As with matter, so with consciousness -- with this daily practice, whether you notice or feel it at first or not, you are refining your consciousness, removing the coarser elements and retaining the finer.

Do you know what that means?

Aside from the practical element present in any practice -- do it enough and you learn about it, -- with Spring Forest Qigong practice in particular, the more you practice, especially with the right intention, the higher the level of consciousness you cultivate.

From that, comes the understanding.

First practice, then understanding.

I've said enough; now, practice.

13 April 2022