Taiji Day 324: Internal Sense of Chi

I’ve talked about how I felt like I was on a plateau for a long time, and I’ve got no sense of when I would cross over to a new level.  Turns out, breathing has a lot to do with it.  Yesterday I did a long, slow tai chi process; and today I did the same thing. And as a result, I felt the rising internal sense of chi that I associate with ‘reaching the next level.‘ Is it really reaching the next level of practice, or is it what Jason Miller calls the difference between state and stage?

That is, when I experience a sense of rising energy within me, is that energy part of a sense of moving up to a new level of awareness and capacity? Or am I simply becoming aware of a higher level, but not actually reaching yet?

It may be helpful to describe the sense of rising energy or chi I’m speaking about.  It is a sense of warmth and tingling in the limbs, particularly in the extremities.  It tends to appear mostly in the upper body rather than in the lower body, and is often accompanied by a sensation of a ring of energy around the head, above the ears. I don’t feel this sensation every time I do tai chi, but in fact whenever I am progressing to new potential, I tend to experience this sensation for a few sessions in a row, and then it gradually fades as I adjust to the new capacity.  Then, it fades away completely, and I don’t experience it at all — although other people who are chi-sensitive can feel it in me, I have a hard time noticing it.  A while later, as long as several months later, I feel it return, it last several days, and then departs.

Part of the reason the chi-sense may have re-appeared today may have something to do with what I did last night.  My friend HR asked me and my lady to participate in the Farmington Witch Project, an evening commemorating the last victims of the witchcraft panics in Connecticut 350 years ago. With some other friends, we performed a short ritual at the start of the evening. We weren’t all of us witches by any means, but our ritual worked with four elements plus Spirit; and, as we called up the four powers, Air, Fire, Water, Earth, and finally Spirit,  I felt myself become a column of energy, fully integrated from earth to sky.  Filled with chi, made of chi. Boom.

Of course, the sensation didn’t last.  It never does.  Reaching a spiritual state, but not arriving at a particular stage.  A sense of being a channel or a pipe of energy to fill the cauldron of a moment in time, and then the cauldron tips, and the energy washes out and away, passing through the assembled people at the gathering.

And of course, the sensation itself is a kind of ego-trip.  It’s not the thing itself, but rather a sign of the stage to come.  It’s only when the sense of chi passes away, in a sense, that a particular state becomes normalized, that it becomes part of ordinary, everyday reality.  Others who are chi-sensitive may sense the power inherent within you, and respond to that, but you yourself cannot feel it — because it’s become normalized so much that it’s invisible to you yourself.

So, in a sense, the ego trip is the awareness of a new spiritual state within you. The stage is the sense that this is the new normal, and that the ‘old’ normal has passed away.

So great a cloud of witnesses

So great a cloud of witnesses
Originally uploaded by anselm23

Via Flickr:
I drew this today in conjunction with my friend Chris/toefur, who commented on how much I knew. I took my most recent piece of artwork, the second decan of Libra, and tried to chart the influences upon it, at least in the mortal world. Even as I type this, I’m realizing that at least part of my artistic practice is informed by Gordon White of www.runesoup.com who helped me understand the magical process of sigils and sigilization (and I’ll be adding that to this drawing in a moment). Peregrin’s By Names And Images in here too. But exoteric teachers, from Mrs Duchovny in second grade, to Mrs. Cannon in fifth, Mr. Kelly in tenth, and even my dad and my grandparents, all make an appearance in the knowledge base of this image. I’m surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses — ancestors and spirits of place and what Anne Cubberly called at our dress rehearsal on Friday night, “luminous beings”. Andrew Carle (@tieandjeans on Twitter) said that he’s more of a recombinator than a creator, but that’s a lie. De Combinatoria is taking existing pieces to make something new— but the skills and the instruction and knowledge base that underlie that recombination are unique to any individual. And what design programs like the one at my school are theoretically invested in doing is

• A) helping kids acknowledge the power of their unique experiences, and
• B) translating those experiences into creative actions aimed at a goal.

So, Makers and Designers — take your last project and identify its components. Recognize where the bits and pieces came from, and acknowledge your creative influences. Know who and what entities helped you complete that creative project, and thank the people who made it happen.

The image on Flickr has a ton of embedded links, so it’s worthwhile to click through and follow all the lines of thought and influences that went into making this post and this sketch.

AODA renewed

the altar at the center of the druid grove… in my living room.

I’m a member of AODA, a fraternal society founded in 1912 in partnership with a parallel organization in Britain. Its official name is the Ancient Order of Druids in America. And frankly, I don’t think I’ve ever met another member in the flesh. I’ve passed close to them, or through the same space as them, but I’ve never really known them personally. Nor is that about to change.

But one of the things we members are asked to do is to mark the solstices and equinoxes. So last night, as part of my open house, we held the ritual. It was not a full meeting of the order, nor the full investiture of power, I think. Someone came for the ritual but had to leave early, and we abbreviated the work considerably so that he could attend and not feel anxious about leaving on time.

Earth, Air, Fire, Water: they mattered greatly to my grandfather the MIT-trained chemist. He kept that table of elements on his desk until the day he died. I always thought it was a printed page, but it turned out to be a photo of an illustration in an incunable — an early printed book.

Anyway, four elements. A call to Spirit. An acknowledgement of the rights of all existences, not just our own. A sharing of apples, in honor of the harvest. And a prayer for the turning of the year. Followed by a lovey feast of chicken and squash, salad and apple crisp, cornbread and cole slaw.

I’ve let my druid practice lapse more than a little in the last year, but I’m thinking it’s time to renew my AODA membership and get back into the regular work.

Friday Tip: Join Organizations

One of the truisms about teachers is that we don’t get out much, particularly boarding school teachers.  We’re locked into pretty rigorous schedules from September through May or June, our time is limited and precious, and we don’t have much time to spare or to offer to others people’s programs.  Most of the teachers I know have time for one other activity, whether it be Church, Masonic lodge, community theater or chorus, or something else.

It shouldn’t be that way, and not only shouldn’t it be that way, we can’t allow it to be that way. Teachers need to be a part of the community where they teach, and fully involved in the range of activities the community has to offer.

Why?

Because that’s how we begin the process of pulling communities into re-engagement with their schools.  You tell someone, “Oh, I’m not going to be at chorus rehearsal this week; I have to pull together a lesson on Napoleon,” and you discover a fellow tenor is absolutely mad for the history of Napoleon, and would like nothing better than to come in and meet your students and talk about the short French general.

You’re correcting papers in the coffee house one Saturday, and the nice lady who occasionally talks math with you wants to teach young people how to write thank you notes, because she’s miffed that kids don’t know how to do that any more.  That’s how these things happen — and it requires that we be out and about in the communities where we teach, so that we meet people who are available, interested, and engaged.

School Redesign: Discussion & Assembly

There are some people who think that we’re going to be able to scrap schools as we do them now, and do them anew.  That’s not going to happen.  Every Monday for the next few weeks, I’m going to be taking a look at the list I generated in this post, about how to renovate a school’s physical spaces to take on the challenges of 21st century learning. Last week I examined the idea of performance and practice in the redesigned curriculum, so this week I’m going to look at how we get to the point of performance and presentation: discussion, research, and assembly. 

• Discussion groups

One of the things that we should expect of teachers is to be facilitators of conversations.  Students learn best in environments where they get to have a voice, and add their ideas and opinions to the communication.  Some of these discussions in new schools should be book groups — “come to Room 209 today for a round-table talk on The Killer Angels” while others could be discussions of films about to be screened or recently screened in the theaters, or discussions of performances of music, or science experiments. The whole idea is to create spaces where people are going to communicate, practice communicating, and engage with others.

Discussions and conversations don’t happen when everyone is sitting in the same kind of chair.  They happen when there are stools, couches, comfortable floors, chairs, sofas, arm chairs, wingchairs, shaker chairs, Chippendale chairs. There need to be coffee tables, dinner tables, side tables, end tables and more.  

• Research space

Conversation doesn’t happen in a vacuum.  Students are also going to need spaces for research, both in groups and alone. Some of this space will be traditional library areas, like reading rooms and stacks for the storage of hardcopy materials.  Some will be spaces with large screens, for reading and manipulating multiple bits of information and framing topics in both big-picture and little-detail ways. Maybe you could even teach math in the ways recommended in  A Mathematician’s Lament (and a link to the book on Amazon.com). 

Some students with advanced projects are going to need study carrels that they can make their own.  I had one writing my graduate thesis, and found that having a small room to retreat to, to leave Post-It® Notes on the wall, and my books open to the right pages, was really helpful.  Students in 8-12 may have need of such spaces of their own.  Maybe we should think about providing some.

• Social space (conversation, snack bar, etc.)

Conversation and research doesn’t just happen in formal settings.  Schools are going to need informal settings too.  The brain needs a rest, to think about other kinds of problems, to work through other kinds of issues, and to refuel.  Any new school should have spaces for eating and talking where conversations can take place in  a leisurely way.  

Think about the last time you had a good idea in a restaurant.  In a café.  In a bar (though I’m not suggesting alcoholizing our schools!).  In a snack bar.  In line at an ice cream stand.  These ventures should also be student-run, so that students get experience being waiters, cooks, and food service managers.  It’s real work; why shouldn’t they have practice at the managing of it, as well as the low-end service jobs they usually get outside of school? Why shouldn’t it be allowed for them to join the conversations that occur in their spaces?

• Project assembly

Most schools have an art room.  This new kind of school will need several. There need to be places for students to assemble the physical materials of their projects — poster boards and advertisements and science projects and wooden screens for their performances, digital labs and studio space for movie making, metal shops for fabricating props and tools.  Maybe they’ll even have a lab for 3-d printers.  They need painting studios, drawing studios, and yes, even musical composition labs.

• Galleries

Not every project is going to end with a performance or a presentation.  Many are going to end with a display, or a piece of art, or a film.  These pieces are going to need gallery space — places where the work can be set up, showed, displayed, screened, viewed, tested, critiqued, examined, re-examined, and inspire others.  This is normal, and it should be built into the experience of everyone who is in school — put together a gallery show, and show us what you’ve got.

So let’s consider.  Again, we’re looking at a school design that calls for presentation, conversation, and discussion.  The curriculum is explicitly directed at learning collaboration in multiple environments, working with a range of materials and sources, and doing research alone or in groups.  A radically different idea to how we do school now.

Sweatlodge Enclosure

I’ve just come back from the grounds of the sweat lodge where C. does her lodges for women. C and are away still at Daughters of the Earth, but some time ago, C pointed out that a lot of people come to her sweat-lodge looking to take something away, and very few understand that it doesn’t contain anything you can take away. It’s very much grounded and rooted in place, and if you take too much away from that place, it becomes a non-place like McDonald’s or a Wal-Mart: largely the same as every other McDonald’s or Wal-Mart, stripped of its unique coordinates in the space-time-spirit continuum. The lodge is not a take-out place, it’s a community spirit-kitchen and spirit-dining-hall. Sometimes you come as a guest, and sometimes you come with the intention to set a meal for others.

Ritual 2.0: Fire Inside

I’m starting up a new series of entries on my LiveJournal related to ritual. I’m calling this Ritual2.0

The last night at SpiritFire, we the participants were asked, “how will you take this fire circle home with you in your hearts, and keep it burning all the year?” That may not be how the question was phrased exactly, but it was the essence of it, and it’s been burning in me the last two weeks.

A lot of folks (OK, five) have suggested to me that they’d be interested in being part of a group that did relatively short but intense ritual work once a month for the coming year. The group would be gender-mixed, small (under 10 people), and would probably meet in at least two locations. It’s also possible that there would be two or more groups doing parallel work in multiple areas, including northeast Connecticut and central Massachusetts. I/we don’t know what this would look like yet.

What this is, is an RFC (Request For Comment):

1) would you be interested in such a group?

2) would you commit to participating in such a group for twelve sessions?

3) What ritual elements would need to be present in such a group?

4) what practical elements would need to be present in such a group?

If you can see this post, you are one of a small number of people who are being asked to contribute to the discussion on this particular post. I ask that you comment anonymously, if you do, so that your ideas can be considered separately from whatever drama may currently attach to your name or livejournal handle.

if you would like to be taken out of this particular filter and not included in future discussions related to what I’m calling here, Ritual 2.0, please let me know, as well, and I’ll leave you out of future posts on this subject.