thePlace

A delirium envelops me – from lack of sleep. The allergy I contracted from Bali added to the heaviness of my eyes.  Unsure of from what, just swelling and light peeling of the skin around my eyes.  They are the most sensitive parts of my body, the first to be afflicted whenever I expose the body to any trifling of inhospitable conditions, MSG especially.  My bothersome susceptibility is to be blamed.

 

The 7 hours of long wait seems like another life time.  I’m unredeemably stuck and very much doomed.  My first try with JAL and my last.  No more cheap flights.  The horrid flight to Bali 6 months ago is another forbidding reason not to fly JAL.  Narita is a dowdy kind of  town, a place I would not go out to.

 

I’m depleted, no mood to walk around airport shops, even if I do, my inanition would have prevented it.  I have my sun-shades on; otherwise, the glare of the shops’ spotlights would hit me like a clenched fist.   Nothing appetizing to eat – I had 3 apples since arriving in the morning. 

 

As usual the dog-tiredness would not make me sleep a bit, not in the lounge, not in this overly air-conditioned area. So, more writing.  The eyes would have to endure more misery.

 

Thinking about the qi, thinking if I should raise the vibration.  The Narita airport must be a huge block of electromagnetic field fueled by giant electrical machines.  Sifu said not to practice qi in such a place. But I feel my being incarcerated in a dark and heavy place, chained, mind clustered, heart fainting….

 

I wish qi would come and find me.  Like it first did through sifu 5+ weeks ago.  After he opened my points that day, I barely slept for 3 nights. The vibrations kept me going as if the qi in and around me have been aching to open up to each other for eternity; the flames of spontaneity once let loose, danced in eternal songs.  The dance swept me up like flying sparks, glinting, unable to stop.  ‘i’ was burning in a bright light of qi, luminous and unwillingly shining – in a blaze, burning everything. Leaving nothing, yet everything stays.

 

Everything else is inconsequential.  The void in me filled up to the brim, dreamlike, happy and full of energy.  It lasted, like a whirlwind, swept through the dry land. 

 

Those 3 days, in spite of all the last minutes activities, I found the quietness, the voidlike quietness.  If only for a brief moment, I tasted it. I knew it was the qi but didn’t confirm it with sifu until later.   As I practice, it comes and revisits me, now and again.  Not as intense, a lot more subtly – when I practice in the sough of the wind in the Space, when I am in the presence sifu’s qi (if he has the time and fancy to send me some powerful bolts), when I meditate after the qi exercises.  The feeling of lucidness, the beauty of its simplicity, the it-ness.  No more ‘the I”, no more the perceiver – just be.   And lately when I learned to spin the points half-instructedly, I accidentally floated into the void - quite a different out-of-body experience. 

 

In the Mahamudra Upadesa, Tilopa says, cut the root of mind and let consciousness remain naked, self-quieted, self-existing, luminous essence of mind is the mahamudra, the unborn essence of mind….

 

Back in Bali, in much the same bold spirit, I absorbed sifu’s emailed instructions, I imagined his words, tried to grasp the deeper meaning of his directions.  I started with Tao qi meditation daily.  When I asked him when I can learn to fly, Sifu said it would take me a year to master the Tao qi meditation.  In other words, don’t even think about it! 

 

There were bad and good days of practicing – my mind wandered off fleetingly, the chameleon on the coconut tree caught my attention, the kids ridding the buffalos down the paddy field made me laugh, etc.  There were a couple days when I had to practice in the bus, one or two other days when I could only think about practicing….

 

On 28 June, Sifu said I should add the Shaolin qi gathering exercise. 2 days later, I told him I felt the qi in my dantien was overflowing (as confirmed by the shinseh). On 30th, sifu took me to the next step of basic healing breathing exercise; he said in his typical brusque email fashion, “You can do qi healing already, now that you have qi in your dantien.”  -  I save sifu’s instruction in my laptop for references when I gnaw over the practice of qi, etc. 

 

The same day, I started sending healing qi to a friend that has inoperable cancer in the US.

 

Came first week of July, I answered sifu’s questions and gave him details feelings and steps I do.  On 11 July he asked me to spin the qi from soles to Baihui and down to palms.  Took a couple of days to digest the spinning sensation. On 13 July, I tasted the radiation of qi from my skin.

 

On 17, sifu wrote “spin the following points 1. yongguang (at your sole), the huiyin, the dantien, the middle dantien (between your breasts), the upper dantien (your third eye), and the baihui.  Keep the qi spinning at the points.  Start spinning one at a time.  After that, spin all together and keep them spinning and when you exhale, use their energy to come out of your palm.  Tell me your progress.”  I did and I accidentally floated out because of an email gap.

 

In Singaraja I had to be chauffeured to an internet café, and not every day I could have such a luxury.  Sometimes, the Place took too much of my energy, I couldn’t even face the slight discomfort of cold mandi when returned in the chilly evening wind– not just the iciness of the well water but the bites that go with it…hence the gap of instructions.

Yesterday, the day of leaving Bali, Ayu ran her hands around my body when I was spinning.  I asked her if she felt anything and if she did, what. She said with wide-eyes, ‘plak, plak, plak, kuat sekali(really strong)!”  I think she meant the feel of electricity or something like that.

 

In a breath, that’s the qi adventure thus far.  A long long way to go still, and sifu would say I having even touched the tip of the iceberg…. 

 

Now that I’ve described the feeling of qi, it’s not too unlike one of the mushroom trips I had in the Philippines.  Wanted to be alone, I walked down to the lower hill towards the sea,  meditated under the sun looking out over the powdery white white sand, the hills on the east side and the forest behind me.  Everything was lucid, an inexplicably clearness that makes one weep.  I saw the qi, the wave of energy that came upon me from the ocean, the sun, the forest…and me rising with it, being one with it…. I smiled; it was pure bliss, a little more graphic, powerful and vibrantly red.   And the message was, ‘I must learn to die….’

 

And here I’m still in the Narita airport, few more hours to go and absolutely famished!!!