223. Qigong Art of War - The Proverbial Empty Cup
I am truly glad and grateful that my baguazhang martial arts journey initially had nothing to do with qigong. If it did, I think I would either be a tree hugging peace loving hippie or trying to cultivate enlightenment on a diet of meditations, pine nuts and springwater. But as the universe would have it, there is nothing in the cosmic rulebook that says it has to be so. Nor do I want it to be so. Because whenever the path I'm on starts going in that direction, my life starts manifesting in a very interesting way, that goes a little like this: 1) My life becomes tranquil, which means it's kind of boring; 2) Everybody starts thinking I'm cashed up, which really means my source of income is drying up; 3) I can now live off the mystical dew of a single raindrop, which really means my fridge is running low on food because I have no money to pay for food; 4) People start disappearing because enlightenment is not normal social conduct, and...; 5) Nothing happens. No adventures. No misadventures either. And after a while it gets stressful. Really stressful. Stressful because reality is not matching up with the sales pitch. And that is the reason why I tell you guys about it. I kind of fell into the qigong business, even though it wasn't my intention, because I dislike the way it is just assumed that because I do qigong, I'm supposed to go out and heal everybody. That last bit is a twin struggle that my wife and I have. A real yinyang conundrum. Because she's from Hong Kong, it makes sense to her that a qigong master is like a medical doctor, and should help heal others. Yet at the same time a qigong master should not sacrifice themselves for well-being of others. Yet, at the same time still, the cures should be a hit. And I'm supposed to know what I'm doing and have all the answers, while at the same time again declare that my cup is empty. The thing is with qigong from an internal martial arts perspective, especially baguazhang, is that one's proverbial cup is both full and empty at the same time. When we do baguazhang, we are both cultivating the qi and drinking that qi stored in our Dantian. At a certain point, there is no longer a need to empty our cup. When our cup is full, the cup itself grows and expands to a new larger size. And what we thought was full, now only contains a trickle. And so we start filling up this enlarged yet mostly empty cup as well. It is a continual ongoing process, with each stage refilling being about learning something new and greater than what came before. The process never ends like a fractal pattern. Through the path of baguazhang transformation, I now understand that the way in which the cup grows and expands is just as important as filling it. And it grows according to your goals and aims around the martial arts and qigong. Now just to be clear: There is no zero to hero. Nobody can skip a stage of learning and realisations. Not even me. We all start at the bottom and work our way up. Even if you have been jumping between martial art styles and chasing whatever is next popular, Heaven doesn't care. It sees every style you have dabbled in as a step up in understanding and that you by your actions has chosen to learn in the way that you do. It may mean that you may never achieve a black belt or win that trophy, but you are walking your path. For the rest of you who are a little clearer in your direction and have an expanding cup to fill, one's qigong journey is defined by the end goal you have in mind. For example, one of my qigong goals was to drink the Elixir of Immortality, which is fictional. At the end of that journey, what I got was a Cha-no-yu ceremony at a Japanese teahouse, which of course is real. Matcha drunk during a Cha-no-yu ceremony marked an important stage along my baguazhang qigong journey. At the time of the event, I did not know this but now I do. So what's all this got to do with the Art of War? Everything and Nothing.