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Creating Bridges: Spirituality & Philosophy: |
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Life Energy
Suppression & Health
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by Bill Douglas |
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Stress and pressure are life energy that is damned up within. Our reality is like an ocean, a bio system of life energy currents that flow in enormously complex webs of mutual support pushing, pulling, rising and receding. If we open to that flow and rhythm we can surf the waves of energy and do unimaginable things with our lives that are in tune and contribute to the health and healing of all of life. If we don't pressure will build until we change. We will change easily and subtely, or we will actually eventually expire from the pressure and change through decay and absorbed back into the earth's biosystem as worm food, etc. Change is inevitable, how we change is up to us.
I am a Tai Chi & Qigong teacher by trade, an occupation which I love. However, when I first began teaching I poured every ounce of my energy into it [teaching Tai Chi]. But, I wasn't enjoying my Tai Chi classes nearly as much as I am now. What's different?
Now, I am pouring my life energy into endeavors that call me to action without restricting them to only my livelihood. I am living multi-dimensionally and allowing my inner voice or life energy to direct me.
Currently, that means that I am a peace, justice, and environmental activist, and recently with other activists worldwide formed the 911visibility.org project to support the 9-11 families in their struggle for truth. In fact I just helped organize a local event for a woman named Ellen Mariani, a woman who's husband Neil was killed in the World Trade Center attack of 9-11-2001. Ellen and her attorney, the former Deputy Attorney General of Pennsylvania, are suing President Bush, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, Vice President Cheney, and others under the RICO Racketeering Act for having foreknowledge of the 9-11 attacks, willfully allowing them to occur for personal and political gain, and engaging in a criminal obstruction of the 9-11 investigations since then. She has turned down the $1 million govt. pay off money to file this suit in the hope of stopping the endless illegal wars and civil liberty roll backs being done in her husband's and the other 9-11 victim's names.
Why is this related to my normal natural health and spiritual growth writing? Because I noticed that at the event we hosted for Mrs. Mariani, that many people who heard about Mrs. Mariani's suit were outraged and livid . . . but did not sign up on an activist list to get involved in supporting her efforts to fight for truth. They reminded me of a good friend of mine who, like many of us, follows social and political developments with a keen mind and is increasingly disturbed about issues like the green house effect, the human costs of the U.S. war on Iraq, and other issues.
Yet, like many of the people at the Mariani event, my friend absorbs huge amounts of disturbing information, and yet refuses to take action. My friend has chronic high blood pressure and chronic back pain.
I don't believe this is any accident. Blood pressure is related to life energy pressure. When we absorb information about ills in our lives, city, or world, it creates pressure within. This is good and healthy, because it's purpose is to cause us to go into some type of action to begin to rectify the situation. That is the purpose of pressure, to alert us to the need for adjustment and change. However, when that pressure does not stimulate change in us, and therefore in our environment or world . . . it builds within. It constricts blood vessels, and constricts muscles which can pull delicate vertebrae out of place causing chronic back pain, for example.
Of course that stagnation of life energy causing damage within results in damage without in our world. Anyone with open eyes can see that our world cannot sustain the massive overbalance of spending on military weapons, and the massive global poverty that diversion of resources exacerbates. Even the World Bank just issued a report warning of this. Meanwhile a recent Pentagon study acknowledged that global warming poses one of the greatest threats to world peace as rising tides will lead to flooding, climate shifts, and geopolitical instability that may arrive in less than 20 years.
Of course this could all change, if we as human beings, and community and national and world citizens decided we should shift our focus from endless war spending to practical problem solution spending. How does that occur? By each of us flowing the energy of our lives, or life energy, into educating and activating others in our community of the dangers as well as the solutions, such as in the case of the green house threat, promoting solar, wind, geothermal, and other renewable energy conversion options which are available and viable solutions we should all learn more about. In the end these will be much cheaper than fighting wars to control oil fields, and they don't produce CO2 which is the source of the green house effect causing global warming.
So, as we flow our energy into activism, it relieves pressure from our circulatory system and nerves and muscles. That same energy release permeates our community as we write, listen and talk to our neighbors and others, joining with organizations of others, sharing our vision of a healthier world. This enacts changes that in the end collectively heal our world, again while healing our physical being through pressure release. By moving energy and sharing it with others, it moves the pressure off of our heart and circulatory system to move it toward the stuck part of reality or society that needs to be moved by that energy. As we become more adept at living this way it gets easier and easier to hear/feel the signals at earlier points and move the energy earlier with less and less pressure on our own being. This is the opposite of "pretending" not to be aware of the pressure. Many think by turning on the TV or radio and distracting themselves with noise to deafen themselves from the building internal pressure they'll avoid it . . . NOT!
Yet, activism can seem overwhelming when we think of solving the world's problems. But, if we approach it in a Zen way, by doing what we can and enjoying the act of doing it, we often look back and see we've climbed mountains while all we were aware of was taking a nice walk every day. Also, by liberating our consciousness from the delusion of powerlessness we affect the global psyche quite effortlessly.
In a great book called "The Hundredth Monkey" it explains a study on island monkeys who had never washed their fruit before eating it. However, one monkey then was observed washing his fruit off in water before eating it. Soon other monkeys picked up the habit. But, what stunned the researchers was that when a critical mass of monkey's on one island had adopted the fruit washing habit . . . suddenly monkey's on surrounding islands began doing so as well. Monkeys who had no physical contact with them had been affected by their changing habit.
Physicists have shown us that particles can be influenced by particles far removed from them. There are forces that move faster than light. Our thoughts may affect others in other places. By becoming personally empowered we may actually contribute to a global awakening that shakes off the heavy shackles of delusion that make us feel powerless and irrelevant in the modern world.
The truth is we are anything but that. We can dream the world we want to create and let the life energy of that vision flow through us to build a new life and new world. It is really the only healthy way to live now and for our future. Tai Chi has been a wonderful life tool for me, because it has taught me how to "loosen" my mind and body so that the spontaneous flow of life energy can pour through me into wherever life shows me energy needs to flow. It is a wonderful and fulfilling feeling to live for the healing of the world. When I tap into it, I feel tremendous. When I buy into the myth I am only here in this life to consume, I unconsciously have to tighten down on my life energy, and my health is diminished.
We are here in this life for great reasons. Let's loosen, and open, and see where that flow washes our lives.
Bill Douglas
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Bill Douglas,
Tai Chi & Qigong Author |
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Bill Douglas is the author of the #1 most popular T'ai Chi book in the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States.
He can be reached at smartaichi.com His work, called "visionary" by the world's top T'ai Chi experts, is entitled, "The Complete Idiot's Guide to T'ai Chi & Qigong."
Bill is also the presenter in Britain's #1 best selling T'ai Chi DVD, Anthology of T'ai Chi & Qigong: The Prescription for the Future, and author of the acclaimed inspiration book, The Amateur Parent - A Book on Life, Death, War & Peace, and Everything Else in the Universe. It is available at www.smartaichi.com, and at amazon.com.
Bill is also the Founder of World T'ai Chi & Qigong Day:
worldtaichiday.org
and World Healing Day:
worldhealingday.org
now celebrated annually in 80 countries and recognized by the United Nations World Health Organization for it's healing work.
He is a media source on a host of natural health, social, & environmental issues and has been interviewed and/or published by media worldwide, including The New York Times and The South China Morning Post.
smartaichi.com
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