BECOMING ALIVE AND CONSCIOUS
One of the greatest benefits of practicing Tai-chi and Zookinesis is that you experience life more intensely. Your body seems much more alive. Your senses and your mind are sharper. You can feel the living energy of your surroundings. Students often say, “I never realized I had hips before,” or they can finally feel their backs and how flexible they can be. They feel part of the world of life around them because they are more aware of the life inside of them.
There is a Zen expression, “The inside and outside are made of the same flesh.” When you change inside, the world around you seems to change as well. And so I am going to suggest an internal change of perspective that may help to change the way you look at the world around you.
Within the body are trillions of minute processes within each organ, cell and even within the parts of the cells. Most of them take place at speeds and with precision unimaginable to us. It all takes place without our great intelligence or leadership. Yet we don’t usually think of the body itself as conscious.
With all this intricate precision the body is capable of, when I ask a student to just move an arm or the hips in a simple movement, the student feels very awkward. It may take months until he can move that part of his body with even basic competence. And yet he feels more intelligent than his heart or liver, or than a single cell.
We are amazed by the complex interactions of many species and habitats. If we look out at the cosmos we see great precision and complexity in the interaction of planets, stars and galaxies. And yet, as individuals, struggling to get through life, understand its complexities and even move with a minimum of grace, we feel as though we are the only intelligent globs of matter in the universe.
Many ancient cultures, though, believed that consciousness was a natural force, part of every animal, plant, rock and habitat. We now call them “animists”. They felt that the force of intelligence was the unseen mover in all the activity of the universe. It was not a “God” based perspective but simply included the force of consciousness along with what we now would call the four forces of the universe (gravity, electro-magnetic and strong and weak nuclear forces).
They searched for the forces of intelligence and creativity in their surroundings and so felt a bond with every animal, plant and rock. They searched for the forces of creativity and intelligence within their bodies to keep these forces strong so they would remain healthy. To them, consciousness was as much part of their world as was matter. Matter did not create consciousness.
Now, what does this have to do with health – the main subject of this blog? If the inside and the outside are made of the same “flesh” (as in the Zen saying) and you look at the world outside of you as if it was dead, then you tend to become dead inside as well. When the science of physics looks at the world as dead objects moving about, then the science of medicine looks at the body as unconscious organs and cells, functioning automatically. By removing the possibility of consciousness from everything in the world but our brains, the world and our bodies become dead to us.
This is not a religious perspective. What would be the point of praying to something? You are conscious and everything else is conscious. What is praying to what? It is simply a way of bringing life back to our world, including to ourselves.
As we now move into the Spring season, try to feel the energy of life intensifying. Feel not only the warmth of the sun, the sound of the birds and the smell of the flowers, but the “feeling of the intelligence of the world.” Let the warm intelligence of Spring penetrate your body, your feelings and your mind. Realize that you are not separate from the rest of life, either as a glob of matter, or as a center of consciousness
