Crazy Dreams

I woke up in the middle of the night after a crazy dream… I was compelled to write it down and this is the result :):


Catching the world in plastic bags.

Reviving life by thinking and running around catching it all in plastic bags. Tons of plastic bags, fitting everything in it. Everything shrinking to fit inside.

Creating silliness and stopping to enjoy the things around us. But focusing so much on what is ahead or behind.

Chasing cars and trying to put them in a plastic bag. Pure silliness.

Chasing the long lost reality will get you nowhere. But creating your own will lead to the greatest treasures. The past is gone, create something from today.


planet_bags

I have taken December off from physical training.

Instead I have been meditating on yin. Trying to figure out what it means to do something you love, without focusing on an end goal. Doing for the sake of doing, instead of doing for the sake of achieving.

I made some considerable break throughs this week, but the most important one is I have found my laugh.

It was hidden deep inside the moment, no longer thinking of how I would be training next, or day dreaming about the day I start my own school. I found myself in the present, interacting with those around me with no buffer time. (You know, that time where you spend trying to decipher hidden meanings from the conversations and the responses get catered to the scenario…No? You dont? oh… well there is a snippet of my brain for you.)

My mornings have been consisting of compassionate awareness meditation. Allowing my monkey mind to express its frustrations and its need to drive forward as to better understand where all that is coming from. Still a lot to uncover, but I have started to discover some of the fear and the insecurites that have been rooted in a lot of my long term training.

Fear of seeming weak, fear of letting my body fall apart, fear of being seen as unfocused and well dumb. Its has been rooted in there for so long that I kind of forgot that I should look at it.

The funny thing is, as soon as I realized it and allowed myself to accept it there was a physical weight that lifted from my shoulders. I started asking myself, what do I feel like doing right at this moment? If I had no THING to do, what calls to me?

Suddenly, I had\have space in my mind and was free to laugh and joke with strangers waiting for the train.

Much like Super Adam, the drunken me, I was laughing and having a good time with people I was never going to see again. But, not only strangers. I have been more engaged and present with people I have known for much longer. Able to laugh and joke freely, from the heart, like I haven’t done in ages without the aid of alcohol.

It has been truly liberating, I will continue with my mediation and see where I end up at the end of december.

Oh! I also forgot to mention, my cough and all signs of flu\sickness have vanished. I think have been bottling things up and forcing things instead of trying to listen. Just like Malcolm said, but don’t tell him I would hate for it to go to his head.

Authenticity

I have been digging deep the last couple weeks to figure out what it is keeps me continuing to practice.

Usually, I actively avoid doing that when it comes to something that I love, for fear that a deeper analysis will show that I am doing it for the wrong reasons. Or that I just cant get behind the reasons any longer often resulting in my interest fading or disappearing all together and me feeling lost again.

Reasons have varied over the years, to meet people, to stay in shape, to prove I can or even to be seen as hardcore to the people around me. Things that in some form or another become inauthentic under a more focused light. Motivations that just seem to be reaching, grasping, stretching, striving for something that I am not already or approval from something external.

Whether it be worth in others eyes, or my own.

Whether its an image of health that has formed in my mind, or an obstacle that I refuse to be afraid of and get hell bent to obliterate.

Things that steal me from the present, help me ignore what I am going through now but saying to myself “Once I get in shape, I will feel more comfortable with who I am” or ” When I get this thing done, life will be easier from then on”.

But, all to often I find that years go by and nothing has changed. That same feeling or issue sticks around and I find myself searching yet again for something to help keep the present buried and hidden from analysis.

But, Tai Chi is truly the tool I have been searching for all this time.

It’s practice has brought my mind from the future into the present.

Its movement slow, to bring attention to every micro moment. To breath it, experience it, to embody it with every fiber of my being.

Its intention soft, to expand awareness beyond tension. So that thoughts, energy, awareness can move cleanly through the mind, body and spirit without getting hung up on the snags of unconscious rigidity.

But most of all, to be comfortable with who and what I am in this moment. Let the frustrations of what I don’t know melt away. Let the knowledge of my ignorance evaporate and instead of fight it, embrace it.

Comforted by the fact that skills will enhance, knowledge will change and movement always happens through practice and time, but today, today will never come again.

I will never has this perspective again. This filter in which I see the world will only shift every day, so, I try to embody it and live through each moment of its evolution rather than try to force it to become some image I have for it.

So THAT’S why I practice Tai Chi. For the power and knowledge it brings me to this and every moment, that’s why I continue to move forward in the present.

Because each lesson, each practice session, each meditation doesn’t bring me anywhere. They don’t put me in a different place.

No, each method strips a layer from the years of painting over my authenticity.

 

Authenticity

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For those that have subscribed to my YouTube Channel, you may have noticed that I put up my first “Tai Chi Discovery” video.

These videos are going to be focused on little epiphanies I have during my practice, or tools I have discovered one way or the other that have helped me get deeper in to the practice itself.

My intention is to capture my process in learning Tai Chi. I have found that information from masters or proficient practitioners is relatively easy to find, I have yet to come across anyone diving deep in to the actual learning process.

So, thats what I am going to do!

I hope that it will illustrate the depth and complexity of the art and bring attention to it from a different angle in order to bring more people to the understanding of how deeply it can change their life for the better!

All else fails, I will have documented my process so that I can look back and remember the struggles as I pick up students of my own some time in the future.

Here is the latest video and I have more in the works!

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