The whole world seems to be made of stories.

I’ve written in recent posts that I’ve been trying to engage in the challenge of redefining this world as something other than hostile, dangerous, and unknown. As I turn my mind in that direction, I’ve begun to notice how prevalent stories are; and how blind I’ve been to their pervasive influence.

What do I mean? Well, stories are about something. They create a process of relationship between one thing and others; they have a beginning, middle, and end. They help situate a person in time and place, and relate to other beings or forces or objects who are also situated in time and place.

I used to wish that I could transcend culture and context, and experience things with pure perception, to be in a world of universal truth. This is in fact the path of the mystic, to unify with the One that is beyond time and space. By definition, that One is eternal, nonlinear, without story but encompassing all stories. And this is the goal and the heart of many internally-oriented meditation techniques: to quiet the mind, to step beyond the ego-self that binds us to this time and this place, in order to access that which is transcendent.

But the instant you descend into a world of time and space, something must occur to mediate between that which has descended and that which is still eternal. This is language.

The instant you inhabit this world, language spins out and becomes story.

Read the full post

My recent post, “Emulating Evil,” touched on violence as a metaphor, or an extension, of the constant need to negotiate with something outside oneself in order to survive and thrive in this dark world. Lately, then, I’ve been thinking about martial arts. I’ve been thinking about my experience a few years ago with Chen tai chi master Gianfranco Pace, and how seeing his awesome ability made me quit tai chi. I’ve been thinking about observing Shaolin master Wong Kiew Kit a couple of years ago, and how his ability made me drop out of kung fu class for awhile. I’ve been thinking about how I didn’t think I had the heart to learn how to fight.

But I’m beginning to realize that there might be a bit more complexity in my response than I gave myself credit for.

Let’s take a step back for a moment. Martial arts these days are practiced by many as a hobby. Even the masters of the art, what do they use it for? Do they do anything with it other than teach students and compete among themselves? Most of them don’t. Their hand-to-hand combat skills aren’t relevant in war these days, or even in private self-defense. A punk with a gun could shoot a famous xingyi master. So martial arts tend to devolve into their traditions and competitions. Are these things what it’s all about?

Read the full post

For all of my love affair with instant results and instant feedback through the methods of acupuncture I’m learning and applying, it’s also useful to know that that approach has limitations.

In the November 1999 issue of the North American Journal of Oriental Medicine, Dan Bensky (famous in the Chinese medicine community in the West, for his textbooks on herbs) wrote an article titled “Listening to the Channels.” In the latter section, he discusses the fundamental assumptions of acupuncture, and specifically of meridian therapy. It’s worth quoting at length.

Assumptions

Part of the problem is that we work on assumptions that make us feel good about our work and ourselves, but do not necessarily help us treat patients more effectively. I would like to briefly address one of these assumptions. My goal is more to raise questions than to give any definitive answers, as the recognition of problems is the first step to dealing with them.

Read the full post

Trying to engage the immanent, the Divine in the mundane things of this world, means running headlong into that which is petty, dark, impure, and even evil. Spirit shines freely where things are already pure, but that’s not the way most of the world is. And maybe that’s not even the way the world is supposed to be.

In the Jewish mystical text called the Zohar, there’s a little parable that talks about evil. Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan paraphrased it thus, in his book Jewish Meditation:

A king once wanted to test his son to see if he would be a worthy heir to the throne. He told his son to keep away from loose women and to remain virtuous. Then he hired a woman to entice his son, instructing her to use all her wiles with him. The Zohar then asks the rhetorical question: Is the woman not also a loyal servant of the king?

Read the full post

My approach to mystical experience has, of late, evolved from a general opening to the Great Mystery to a more specific posture in relation to the Divine, almost of prayer. That sounds esoteric and almost Christian, but it stems directly from the discovery that the sensitivity and lopsided energetic accumulation that I’ve been experiencing in my body only feel properly distributed and balanced when I’m in communion with God. That is to say, I seem to have discovered a psychophysiological need to be in contact with the holy. Not unlike a healthy craving for good vegetables.

I’ve found that I seem to be less lonely and more harmonious in my soul when I take the time to contact something that’s higher than me and beyond me, and when I read things and perform practices that are based in that contact. The holy seems to provoke more holiness and that’s a good thing.

But then I run into what seems to be an age-old religious problem: the conflict between the transcendent and the immanent. The variety of mystical experience I describe is weighted toward the transcendent end of the spectrum, i.e. God as something that is beyond this world, or if He is in the world, then He is obscured by it as much as expressed in it. It feels positive to have that kind of relationship, in some ways — it simplifies everything into a single thing, an almost visible white thread connecting me with the heavens.

Life isn’t limited to that though. The other end of the spectrum of opinions on the matter of what is Divine is the immanent, which emphasizes that Spirit is in everything that’s manifest, and therefore it is those things that need to be worshipped. Think animism, think druids, think shamanism.

Both are true, although some people will emphasize one or the other and perhaps even take it to extremes. I prefer the measured approach.

Where I run into problems is on a practical scale.

Read the full post

I recently wrote to a leading primitive skills instructor in the Southwest, who had this to say:

There is no sustainability in the southwest just from current populations alone. Most everything is trucked in, and “development” has replaced using water for farming … The surrounding communities have plans to pump the main aquifer that supports the [local] river with a 30 plus mile long pipeline, etc. etc. etc.

That said, it depends on what you want, how much you know, what you’re willing to put up with, and so on.

Water is a critical concern for us all around this area, so it is not the land of milk and honey, which is one of the reasons I like it. If you’re a Fremen, as in Dune, consider it, if not, consider your options carefully. This is not an easy place to be “sustainable.”

I tried the wilderness warrior route and I can’t hack it. If I don’t get three square meals a day, my blood sugar starts going haywire. My body wasn’t born with the best constitution. So I think I have to really carefully consider going to a place where I know I’ll have to work hard physically to survive in the long run.

The Pacific Northwest is looking increasingly attractive.

After I graduate in December, Abigail and I are planning to move. We haven’t known where, but we had tentatively narrowed it down to a town in the Southwest and a town in Oregon.

Just a few days ago we kind of playfully decided that we would move to the Southwest. It was a light decision from a brief, casual conversation, but felt like a step toward making that final commitment.

Then Abigail was browsing on some real estate websites and found the house of a guy we had met when we visited. It was for sale.

It was kind of a shock. He wasn’t the only factor in our attraction to the town, but he was a significant presence in that town, because he was one of the main figures at the center of a progressive community of ecologically sustainably minded people.

That whole area — Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Colorado, southern California — tends to be pretty dry, containing a lot of desert, to one extent or another. And that had been my main concern in moving to the area: It didn’t seem like there was the water to sustain the region, especially with such burgeoning populations in that triangle of Las Vegas, Phoenix, and Los Angeles. Knowing that there was an ecologically-focused community in that high-desert town made me feel better about it.

I e-mailed the guy after we found his house online, and he confirmed that he was in fact moving, and not just out of his house, not just out of town, but out of the entire region, for precisely the reason I feared: He was concerned about long-term sustainability in the area. Specifically, rising oil prices combined with the lack of a local agricultural economy made it likely that transportation of essential resources such as food would become critical.

And guess where he was moving to?

The exact town we were considering in Oregon.

Read the full post

This weekend I graduated from the Toyohari program in Japanese acupuncture and meridian therapy.

I have to say that it really revolutionized the way I practice acupuncture, and has honed the way I feel qi. I remember that during the first few months of acupuncture school, I had no idea how to feel for an acupuncture point, and it was never made that clear to me; and, indeed, the more common Chinese method is not really that precise. A couple of my classmates recently went to China; I saw a video they took of a Chinese doctor inserting needles, and they were these really thick, long needles being plunged quickly and without sensitivity into the abdomen of a thin woman and stimulated mercilessly. And that’s the way people are used to doing it in China, and by many practitioners in the States.

Nothing wrong with that, of course. It gets results. But it’s a different philosophy.

For me, I’ve acquired the ability to run my finger very lightly along a channel and feel whether there’s qi at a point or not. It really does feel like a pooling of energy — there’s a buzzing, a softness, an aliveness that’s present when the point is active. How do I know it’s really active? Because when I feel a good point, fellow Toyohari practitioners who are taking the pulse will tell me that the pulse feels improved when I’m touching that point.

It’s an exquisite, sensitive, and refined way to do acupuncture, and fits my character and constitution, as a practitioner — and as a patient!

So now I have some more tools under my belt to use.

The next stop for me is something one step even more esoteric. I plan to take a program on medical qigong being offered locally by a national organization. I currently practice a style of qigong I find really beneficial, but see no way to apply it in treating others, and don’t feel very drawn to the martial arts stuff that’s emphasized by the instructor. So I’m trying out a different style which is aimed specifically toward patient treatment.

This stuff seems very weird and fluffy and not like anything that should work according to everything that’s taught in the Western world. But when you start seeing severe pain vanish within thirty seconds of applying a non-insertion needling technique, then many more things seem possible.

In the human digestive system, we need to ingest a certain variety of nutrients to stay alive. Generically speaking, we need to eat carbohydrates (sugars and starches), proteins, and fats, as well as fiber, vitamins and minerals, and of course water. Different foods will provide different proportions of these nutrients, and of course, regular, well-balanced meals are the foundation of a healthy digestion.

So that’s nourishment on the dense, material level. Here’s my thinking: On an energetic, psychic level, we have the same kind of needs. We need to absorb psychic energy that’s quick and easy to digest, like simple sugars. We need to absorb energy that’s more difficult to digest but more nourishing in various ways, like complex carbohydrates, or proteins, or fats. We need trace amounts of specific types of energy, like vitamins and minerals.

The psychic analogue to simple sugars is the type of resonance that’s mentally and emotionally easy to digest. That’s interaction with that aspect of the world that’s most like ourselves — other human beings and their products: light conversation, easy company, entertainment like television shows and movies or reading. Just as everyone has different dietary needs and preferences based on their constitution, chemistry, and dietary upbringing, everyone has different psychic needs. Some people will be easier to “take” than others. Some social activities will be nice for some people, too “sweet” or not “sweet” enough for others.

Read the full post

I play lip service to the idea that all things are meaningful, that “everything happens for a reason.” But I’ve realized lately that my behavior and my actions reflect a deep underlying belief that the world is, essentially, a random, chaotic violent mess where anything and everything could happen. And the only way to defend against randomness, chaos, and violence is to expect them, to build them into my psyche, so that at least I won’t be caught by surprise.

And this is a dead end, because I find myself trapped in a corner, victim to the very chaos and violence I fear, unable to escape because I have at some level embraced them in order to maintain a sensation of safety. Keeping an eye on “the enemy” traps me as well as my enemy.

It’s interesting reading some of my old posts, when I use the metaphor of dancing with the hurricane to describe my process of growth. The process involved becoming free enough to move freely and even gracefully amidst tremendous pressures. But what I am beginning to realize is that many of those pressures have their roots in a very deep and very old set of beliefs about reality, so invisible that they masquerade for reality itself.

Read the full post