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Pete and I had been talking about his new girlfriend. I had known him for a long time and listening to him, I couldn’t help but thinking he was making the same moves as before. I didn’t say anything though. He continued telling that he had never stopped loving one of his former girlfriends, although she had ignored him completely over the years. The next day, I sent him a message about this ongoing love. He answered with the words in the title above.
His words caught my attention immediately. Being a qigong trainer, I am very much interested in the world of energy and consciousness -since qi is considered to be a combination of the two. After having read plenty of ‘holistic’ books and having practiced qigong for weeks, months, even years, I have come to conclusions that may not seem reasonable to some of you. But truly, I do no longer believe the words that inspire most researchers nowadays: If you can’t measure it, it doesn’t exist.
Don’t judge too hastily
Thank God for the frontier scientists (and no, we will not go into the question if He does exist or not). The ones who dare to walk the path of ‘not knowing’. The mathematicians who draw the conclusion that our Universe must be a hologram. The physicists who proclaim that there must exist at least 10 dimensions. The Yuri Kronn’s and Amit Goswami’s who study consciousness. Thanks to these courageous explorers we are able to become conscious of new concepts and understand more of life. Many still review the new paradigm that has been formulated by these explorers as a fable, but I invite you not to judge too hastily. Wasn’t also Copernicus disgraced for his theory that not the earth, but the sun was in the centre of our Universe?
We have left the weird stuff out
I’d like to take you back in time. Before Copernicus. Before Aristarchos even (the actual first astronomer to propose the heliocentric model around 300 BCE). Let’s go back to about 5000 BCE. In this era no written text existed yet. Agriculture was just being spread from West Asia to Europe. The wheel was invented in flourishing Mesopotamia (nowadays Iraq). Just think of it, THE WHEEL WAS INVENTED…! We as a species, were still very natural beings. We were mainly experiencing, instead of having thoughts about what we had experienced. But it would not be long. Mental capabilities were on the rise. Man was about to discover astronomy, medicine, copper striking, mathematics and writing.
In the millennia thereafter we would develop ourselves more and more through our mental capacities. We would become civilized, meaning that no longer did we want to associate ourselves with the ‘savages’ we had been before. Luckily though, some people still embraced the ancient knowledge that had been gathered by mere experience. And they passed it on from father to son or from master to student. In both China and India these experience- based philosophies of life became intertwined in their traditional medicine- and movement arts. Both cultures have for sure influenced other regions of the world - Mesopotamia in those long gone centuries, the Mediterranean area and rest of Europe in the millennia after that. But as time passed and knowing became increasingly popular, the ‘weird’ stuff of those cultures was left out since it did not resonate with the developing worldview of being civilized.
Are we something other than physical?
Of course there have been ‘weird’ teachings and rituals at the other side of the world as well. Following the era of the mysterious Olmec people (nobody knows for sure were they came from and they seem to have been pretty gigantic), the Toltec resided in Mexico between the 10th and mid-12th CE centuries. The Toltec are considered to be ancestors of the Aztecs. In Aztec traditions we find tales of the remarkable shamanic knowledge of the Toltec. Luckily, some of this knowledge has survived up to our times, partly due to Carlos Castaneda, a Peruvian anthropologist from the 20th century.
Much to my surprise, the Toltec view of the human body and its interactions with the world around it, has a lot in common with the Chinese views found in the qigong traditions. Both traditions see the body as a result of another body, the energetic body. To bring about changes in the body, one therefore has to work on the energetic level. Can you imagine yourself being something more than physical? Or rather, something other than physical? It isn’t easy since the brain triggers us to believe that we -and the world around us - are made out of matter. Furthermore, all of us are brought up believing some specific information -like it’s impossible to see through a wall or that your DNA is responsible for your illnesses- so we hold on to the idea that we live in a material world -having a material body.
But just think of yourself as a vibrating cloud containing uncountable wave frequencies. (In modern medicine actually, doctors measure some of a patients frequencies when recording an ECG or EEG.) And think of the possibility to be able to see these energy frequencies. Not an easy task, is it? Again, don’t judge too hastily. Don’t say this is impossible because you don’t ‘know’ it. In Toltec tradition one could be trained to become a seer and those seers were able to view the energy state of the world around them and influence it. We all have heard of people who can see auras or chakra energy right? Thought it was an exceptional gift? I did for a long time until I became aware of the possibilities to train these gifts.
Letting go of believing anything
There ’s no need to learn to see auras or energy patterns, why would you? But it could be of much use to have some concept of the energy body. If you would just be open to the idea of an ‘extended’ or an ‘extra’ body, you would influence it right away. Because the energy body is as much being influenced by thought as it is by experiences of the senses. Your immediate surroundings influence your energy body too, just as a great, vast source energy field in which all life emerges. Yep, this weird concept of a source field is being included in all three old cultures: Indian, Chinese and Toltec. And note that it was experienced before it was known. As a matter of fact, we still haven’t measured it today, but the frontier scientists have postulated that the 96% of the unknown Universe, named dark matter, might be a consciousness field from which all things come to be. Doesn’t that sound familiar?
Kenneth Smith ’s book ‘Awakening the energy body’ gives a great picture of how the Toltec saw the energy body and how this picture relates to views about energy and energy medicine in our modern days. To put it very simple, the Toltec believed in a conditional energy field -the one that is kind of hardened form by the conditioning rules that we live by- and a natural energy field -one that consists of unbound potential. Some lines from the book: ‘Any given reality generates conditional fields. The underlying conditions of a reality establish the boundaries of what may be actualized… Unless we actually participate with the conditions forming a reality, it remains in the realm of potential.’ So if one has accepted the condition that it’s not possible to see through a wall, he won’t be able to do so. This condition is, let’s say, translated in his energy field. On the other hand, when you are able to expand into a greater energy reality, letting go of believing anything and loosening the need for knowing, you allow the natural energy force to entrain your personal energy field. Remember that I said earlier that just believing you have an energy body would influence it right away? The same goes for the interference of the natural energy body. It will change your perceptions immediately.
Beware of your cohesion field
And now, to get back to my friends’ saying that apparently behaviour is inferior to energy… He was very much right. In the Toltec belief system, reality is a human- made construct which is based and at the same time limited by the cohesion in ones personal conditional energy field. And cohesion is established by everything you have learned, either by experiencing or by imagining. The process is ongoing but most people have established a pretty solid conditional energy field by the time they come out of puberty. So whatever you have learned about the act of loving as a youngster, that is what will be contained in your energy field.
Anytime you meet someone that you find fit to love, the cohesion of your energy field will be ‘ruling’ your behaviour. But then again, also the person who fits into your model of a partner, only does so because your judgment is being ruled by your energy field too. So now you understand why merely deciding to find another kind of partner next time -after you broke up with the same kind of person twice already- won’t work. Real changes will only come through changing frequencies in your conditional energy field.
Fortunately one can learn to do so, even if you’re not a Toltec descendant. You might want to read Smith ’s book. Or you may want to find somebody who can teach you to expand into the realm of potential within the natural energy field. As mentioned before, Indian and Chinese philosophies contain this kind of training too. Actually, this is where my specific qigong practice is all about. Although looking through walls is not yet one of my abilities -never had my focus on that one really- many remarkable changes have taken place in my life. I’d say, give it a try, open up to some ‘weird’ stuff and enjoy the changing life.
Love,
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