Interesting exercise from qigong master Michael Lomax:

Go to your local “really big discount shopping store”. Get into your “qi state.” Go into the store with the single realization, Everyone I meet is me at a different state of development. Use your seeing abilities by putting your gaze halfway between yourself and the person you are seeing. Do this for about 10-15 minutes as you wander about the store.

This should bring you to a whole new state of awareness. But it can wear off after some time of “walking in the mundane” so one could repeat as often as needed.

I wouldn’t endorse the life of the bloodthirsty Mongols like the author of this site seems to, but on the other hand he’s got a point about their physical abilities.

Forget having a toned body or running a marathon. Fitness forged in, and for, real function is what I’m after.

From ColdSiberia.org:

Wherein lies the importance of the physical prowess evinced by the Mongols? What lessons do they have to offer here?

Unfortunately, many spiritual seekers and others have traditionally believed that the physical faculties, the bodily abilities and powers are of secondary importance in comparison to the mental and spiritual sides of things. Universe itself does not vindicate this outlook. Everything has originated from the same Source, and granted that Cosmos as a whole is the dwelling-place of immense spiritual powers which have made every manifestation in it, there is no justification for any dichotomy between “physical” and “spiritual.” All phenomena have, in the last analysis, the same origin.

Moreover, we humans should not believe that technology and artificial solutions can make Man happier and more complete in all areas. On the contrary, technology, when applied excessively to areas where bodily activity have been crucial to our evolution, tends to deprive us of invaluable abilities and possibilities. Virtual reality with concomitant stimulation of the brain might be able to simulate participation in sports and other physical activities. Still, without consistent exercise our body will not become strong and trained, hence we will lose the possibility of fully using our physical selves. As a result, we can no longer enjoy the exquisite sensation of possessing and using a powerful body, and we will have deprived us of a whole territory of human ability and knowledge, which is more extended than one might think, since the mind/body unit is indeed a whole. Like the situation in a society of individuals, the capable condition of each of the constituents benefits the whole unity.

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I think I’ve finally reached a point of actually beginning to consider taking some action on this whole fitness thing (yes, I’m a tortoise with this stuff).

The first step for me has been to go back over all of my past efforts to see what failed me, and it always came down to motivation. Motivation is a mental thing, and a social thing, and so what I realized was that I did not find, mentally or socially, a reason to be physically fit in the conventional sense of the word, because I was already fit in the Darwinian sense of the word — fit for this environment that cools and heats my air, provides my food, and transports me long distances with little effort.

However, neither the conventional idea of physical fitness nor the minimalist Darwinian sense provides fulfillment, so there remains something lacking, a purpose around which I should orient myself.

This has been the crux of the matter. Like it or not, lifting weights with the concrete aim of getting chicks is a more definite and manageable goal than learning martial arts in the hopes that I will someday be involved in an epic battle of good vs. evil. But a driving purpose centered around physicality has been something difficult for me to uncover, so it’s taking some painstaking effort to get through it.

In the end, it turns out to be quite simple. I feel most fulfilled when I enter into contact with the Great Mystery, with Divine Principle, with liminality.

I want a body that will sustain me in that effort.

This means the ability to:

• Eat a wide variety of foods without ill effect.
• Sit or stand for an hour without pain or discomfort.
• Walk and run long distances without pain or discomfort.
• Endure extremes of temperature and weather conditions without faltering.
• Enjoy keen senses, including good vision at both long and short distances, and at night.
• Maintain awareness in the midst of physical effort.
• Defend myself from danger.
• Have full and free range of motion, and move in such a way as to prevent injury.
• Heal from injuries quickly.
• Sleep restfully, awaken easily.
• Go through my day with vigor and vitality.

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In pondering liminality and its relation to fitness, motivation, culture, and that whole line of thinking, I was realizing that the convergence is this:

To me, my body and physical being represents the liminal.

Being “spiritual” is who I am. Thinking, reading, intellectualizing come naturally to me. Introspecting and exploring my feelings and beliefs is second nature. But physical work, labor, exercise, and activity lie beyond the boundaries of the familiar. I have had no preference for them, no encouragement from important figures in my history, no support for them in my culture.

But let me be more specific, because that last point may not seem quite accurate. To be sure, there are so many messages floating around pushing the whole “lose weight” or “have rock-hard abs” thing. But this is not what I’m talking about. In fact, in some ways those images of physicality are exactly that — images. And as such, they don’t truly belong to the realm of the physical, but to the realm of the mental.

And this contributes to the problem. So much of my physical activity has been top-down, as in, I begin from a place of concept and I move toward actualizing that concept. This is fine and natural until I also observe that, from the other end, I block any impulse naturally arising from my body and moving upward in the other direction, from actualization to awareness and abstraction.

This is why I could spend a year in the woods without really understanding that I had back pain.

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In George Hansen’s sociological study of paranormal phenomena, The Trickster and the Paranormal, he makes the case that these phenomena, or “psi,” are relegated to the margins of society, not because of lack of evidence, but because of the structure of society.

He argues that paranormal phenomena point to a broader reality that is beyond the ordinary framework of human society, and that because of this, it challenges traditional hierarchical authority and rationality. This explains the paradox of the tremendous resistance it suffers and the tremendous public interest it enjoys.

Even if one is a complete disbeliever and attributes all reports of psi to fraud and delusion, one still needs to explain the lack of establishment support in light of the massive public interest. After all, many forms of psychotherapy have flourished despite scant evidence for their efficacy … Similarly, billions of dollars have been expended on medical procedures that were later found to be of dubious value.

Hostility to psi is usually attributed to ideologies such as materialistic rationalism, but that is entirely insufficient to explain it. The matter is not primarily an ideological dispute. The source of antagonism toward parapsychology is much more fundamental; it is a consequence of the structure of society. Of this, almost everyone is unconscious.

Hansen rests much of his thesis on sociologist Max Weber’s work, and one of the central tenets he draws on is essentially the idea that power, yes, social power, is supernatural in origin.

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For the past few months I’ve been practicing a nei gong system that promised power, fast. I am not, generally, interested in superficial aims like power, but the opportunity came up and I felt that the qigong systems I had been learning were not entirely working for me, primarily in terms of my health goals. So I switched to the nei gong.

Yesterday I had another contact with my instructor. As I’ve noted in previous critiques of various people, communication style, didactic method, and organization are important to me. I’m willing to overlook some flaws if the method bears fruit, though.

But at four months in, the method has not been bearing fruit. When I consulted my instructor, his suggestions for lifestyle change suddenly brought home to me that this miracle method wasn’t going to be the miracle I was looking for. I had been trying to obviate, or at least to put off, some deep work that I needed to do in myself. That, combined with some personality quirks that begin to feel difficult to me, has led me to decide to put it on the back burner for awhile. I won’t write it off, but I need to rethink my whole strategy, since my practice was initially based on this method being “get rich quick.”

Instead, I’m going to start practicing a method I learned a few weeks ago at a workshop, a system called jing dong gong, or Stillness-Movement.

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I wrote a couple of months ago about the realization that I was very fit for the environment in which I grew up, and that I further chose to become a habitat specialist in the academic, mental habitat in which I resided.

I turn my attention now to forms of media — not “the media” as in the mainstream news organizations, but “the media” as in the forms of technology that united our communications as a culture: printed material, radio, but especially television and Internet. The media is the giver, an all but invisible but ever-present uber-entity that dispenses and allows connection among individuals, hovering over us like a metaphysical Tyrant or Gnostic demiurge, silent but powerful.

I see the role of the media as one of the major obstacles to my outward growth, and, at the same time, one of my greatest allies. The benefits are more obvious, for who can decry the sheer amount of information made available by the Internet, and speed of communication now possible?

The great destructiveness of the media is not really in the technologies themselves, but in the culture that celebrates and worships the media to the extent that it does. And the culture is this. Jerry Mander, in his 1970′s classic, Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television, wrote:

Most Americans spend their lives within environments created by human beings. This is less the case if you live in Montana than if you live in Manhattan, but it is true to some extent all over the country. Natural environments have largely given way to human-created environments.

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… is that even if they work, they leave the person feeling manipulated.

i just had this done on me. Some guy called selling something. There’s a common sales tactic in which you try to get your victim to agree with you by saying “Yes.” The idea is that the more you’re forced to agree with somebody, the less resistance you’ll have to them.

So this guy calls me up and starts asking me if I do auricular acupuncture, if I do herbs. He’s trying to get me to say a series of “yes” answers. I can tell he’s leading up to something. And that’s the thing. No matter how theoretically effective or psychologically persuasive your tactics are, everyone can tell you’re selling something.

I’m beginning to come to the opinion that the best sales doesn’t look like sales at all, because it’s really not. The best way to market is to project oneself authentically into the world, specifically without any attempt to suck people in. Let the presence alone be the influence.

Of course, this is still arguably marketing; but then, from a certain point of view, almost any communication can be a sales pitch. Peyton Quinn, in Freedom From Fear, describes the “sales pitch of my life” — trying to convince two gunmen who robbed his liquor store not to shoot him.

I say slick salesmen get their reputation because they know they are being inauthentic. And I want to avoid that completely, while still projecting my presence outward into the world. And that’s a matter of discovering exactly how to be authentic in this world of trauma and illusion.

I’m jealous of those who’ve lived a “normal” life. My doing, in some ways; I’ve progressively chosen paths that fall into the margins of the mainstream. But you could say that I was conditioned to it, too. If my childhood was not particularly notable from a social critic’s point of view, nonetheless it was filled with little traumas for me, and some of them not so little.

Perhaps the most clearly telling set of memories I have are of my first year in the Gifted program. I was placed in Gifted in second grade, and once I week I left my regular class and went down the hall to a dark little room at the other end of the school, to spend an hour or two with a couple of other kids and a teacher named Mrs. Fitzpatrick.

I don’t really remember all that much of what went on there, but I remember Mrs. Fitzpatrick being strict and unsmiling. I remember that it always felt dark and lonely. I remember that I felt cut off from anything I knew and at the mercy of this mean woman, and that this was supposed to be a privilege. Maybe I’m making it melodramatic; after all, the worst thing that happened to me was being yelled at. But it was the atmosphere, I think. A little bit creepy.

I don’t have clear memories, but I do still have a diary that I was made to write each week. And one week I wrote that I hated it here. I wrote, “I hate Mrs. Fitzpatrick.”

I laugh a little now, realizing that this diary was not, as I had thought back then, private. That it was read, by Mrs. Fitzpatrick. I wonder what she thought. I feel a little bit sad for her.

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I’ve not written much about my efforts to start a business, because I haven’t found much of deep interest in writing about the details of choosing paint or buying equipment or decorating an office. They were just things that had to be done.

I’ve finally finished that stage of things, though. Now I’m on to the more difficult task of finding patients to create a sustainable business.

But what I really want to do is place that task into context — not the context of the economy, but the context of liminality.

To influence another person is a mysterious process. I know that some people, advertisers and salespeople in particular, have it down to a science in certain aspects, but they do it by limiting their frame, their understanding of their targets, to seeing people merely as consumers, and viewing everything about a person’s psychology through that frame.

My goal is deeper. Yes, I want to influence people to come and partake in my business and thus make me money, but I want to do it by interacting and influencing them in a way that makes them better. And I’d like to do that even if it means I don’t make as much money. Ideally, of course, financial success would be an easy byproduct of positively influencing people, but sometimes they’re in conflict — for instance, if a person is in dire medical need but has no money to spend.

I believe that, at root, there are profound problems with monetizing health care, or placing a value on a basic human right like health care that is exclusively monetary. But today I don’t want to get into those ethics. That’s the subject for a future post.

Today I want to talk about influence as a liminal state.

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