Trust, Being Calm and Living in the Unknown
Hello fellow Qi Gong practitioners. I’d like to share a wonderful story (well, for me anyway) about putting the teachings of Ren Xue Qi Jong into practice.
Since the November retreat last year my life has been quite strange. After having had a massive shift in awareness around emotions, (ie, that we don’t actually need to experience negative emotions at all), and really experiencing from inside my body the reality of how the Qi of emotions damages the organs and drains energy, I’ve been integrating this new information (state) and living more than ever before in the unknown.
One of the biggest lessons I came away from the retreat with was to stay in a ‘calm, relaxed, natural and joyful state’ no matter what. In other words, not be attached to what is happening ‘out there’. After the retreat, I had my quietest month ever with clients; I put it down to Christmas, despite the fact that the year before was my busiest month ever.
The quiet continued into January, which I put down to New Zealand summer time, everyone’s on holiday etc… and then into February – by now I’m beginning to realize something is going on here. I considered looking for some other work but did not feel drawn to do so, and decided (again) to risk trusting that whatever I was doing was right. All the while, I was focusing on staying in a ‘calm, relaxed’ etc state, which most of the time I was managing to do.
In February I decided to contact Yuan Tze for some advice, as things seemed to be so out of the ordinary. His advice was “Be careful that you don’t allow the temporary drop to affect your view and your attitude, especially to get worried or anxious. These things can really work as negative information that will affect people’s decision to come to see you. So it is important that you recognize the value of your work and have a very positive attitude. Your positivity and confidence will put out positive information that will attract people”.
I also asked about the topic he covered on the first day of the retreat; about ‘trust’ and going to a deeper level of trust, and how when we get to the door there is a sentry there with a machine gun. His response was “When we try to move to a different level of Qigong state which is new and unfamiliar, the guard will be on alert and try to stop us from going there. This is the pattern we all have – fear of the uncertainty or unknown."
The trust comes from knowing that when we are in a good qigong state which is the healthiest state of life, we should trust that everything that is going to happen will be a good thing”.
This was the missing piece of information I had been looking for. As soon as I read it, I felt a wave of relief sweep over me.
“Oh my goodness, all I have to do is focus on staying in a calm, relaxed and natural state, and TRUST that even though I am completely in the unknown right now, only GOOD things can come because this is a NATURAL state to be in. Ie, I am working in harmony with the laws of life and only good can come of this”.
(For any of you that are into the Abraham Hicks stuff, this seems to be the same as what they mean when they say “You’re only job is to stay in the vortex”).
I found it quite interesting to notice how my habit was to allow my work situation to control how I felt: eg, if a client rang up to book, I would feel good. And if a client rang up to cancel, or I had no clients, I would feel bad. And it occurred to me how much I was allowing external circumstances to dictate how I felt, ie, the attachment to whether I thought something was good or bad. So I decided even more to focus on not being affected by the outer circumstances and to just keep in a calm, natural state. (After all, let’s be honest, it does feel good doesn’t it?!)
I also was beginning to feel that I was being pushed (not asked) by some part of me (the Universe / whatever you like to call it) to change direction and for the first time ever to create my own brand of health programs and workshops. This was pushing major self-value and self-doubt buttons in me. Despite the fact that I hardly had any money coming in and the old ‘voice in the head’ would come in and say “you ought to go and get a proper job, anything, whatever will pay the bills” etc, I felt it was the right thing to keep going with planning this new venture. I just kept practising staying in the calm, natural state.
I also happened to watch the DVD where Yuan Tze is talking to the new instructors about teaching others for the first time, and how doubt may come in. I was fascinated when he said “Feeling under-confident is the false you. You need to find the true self. Worries, under confidence and fear are your ego and show you are only concerned about yourself. Let go of worrying about yourself and instead direct your attention to people who need help.” ‘Fascinating’, I thought to myself, ‘my self-doubt is selfishness’.
This week was the quietest week yet – two clients, and then one cancelled. And yet I didn’t panic. For some strange reason I did not panic. I just kept on with the calm, relaxed natural state, coming to the conclusion that for the first time ever I would have to get a cash advance on my credit card to pay my rent. In 35 years of paying bills, this has never happened. In the past I would have panicked, stressed, been anxious, worked even harder…Instead, I took time to do my Qi Gong practice and stay calm, and quietly accepted that this was how it was going to be.
Then tonight, I came home and had to pay a bill online. And incredulously as I looked at my bank balance I noticed it had shot up overnight. An unexpected tax rebate. Wow, I thought, this stuff really works. Thanks Yuan Tze! May we all continually be inspired to live in harmony with the laws of life. Trust, trust, trust. Where’s your sentry, has he put his gun down?
PS – In summary, these are the nuggets of information I am hoping to share by posting this blog:
- Life lessons do not come as a theoretical piece of information that we can simply understand intellectually and things will be different. Life brings us practical, hands-on lessons which we only ‘get’ by living the experience of that lesson. This can be a challenge until we learn to see the gift in the lesson.
- One of these lessons I feel is that we are being asked, even forced, to live in the unknown, which is really the present, the great mystery of life. This means we cannot be in the past with regret, resentment or anger, and we cannot be in the future with worry or doubt. We have to be solidly in the present. This requires:
- TRUST. Trusting ourselves and trusting life. Trusting that we are totally connected to all that is, we are all that is, and therefore everything has to be ok. This requires that we
- Follow our inner guidance, our intuition, and that we trust it. This requires a training of our inner guidance system, which I like to call our heart-mind and abdominal brain. This guidance does not come through the intellect, we just find that we do things without knowing why at a head level. Initially this will feel quite strange.
- Staying calm, relaxed, natural and joyful is both (a) our essential nature and (b) an essential practice if we want to be truly happy and at peace. This takes discipline, as the mind will want to rule. Again, it’s a matter of living from the heart and gut as well.
- Letting go of attachment to feelings, not just objects. As far as I can ascertain, this is one of the major lessons of the great sages, such as Patanjali in his yoga sutras. The lesson of not being attached or affected by anything that happens outside of us. In the coming years, if natural disasters and economic crisis are to continue, this is a very valuable skill.
These topics and more will be the subject of many of my new ‘Art of Health’ workshops. Here is a taste of some of the titles:
- How to stop worrying and start living
- How to keep it together when everything is falling apart
- How to live in the Now
- How to stop the inner critic
- How to train your abdominal brain
- Lessons in trust
- How to be at peace in a stressful world
- And more…
Originally published: March 3, 2010
