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I wanted to heal and to have the healing be as natural as possible. So while on Hainan, I went to a
website (www.naturalchimovement.com) that was listed at the back of Tienkos book and sent an
email to an address I ,found on the site, asking for what I wanted.
Tienko and I agreed that from that day on, he would work on me remotely every day and I would write
about my experience of being the recipient of remote chi healing. My job seems to be easier than his,
to write down how it affected my days. I will also continue to practice Natural Chi Movement every
day. For more than a year, we each did what we said we would.
Returning Home
Returning to my apartment with bags full of groceries hanging symmetrically from my arms, I realize
that something is different. Tension in my chest disperses. My lips curve to smile without a command
being consciously sent from the part of my social brain that has evolved for this very reason.
My smile continues.
Not good. When you smile at people on the street in Poland, they sometimes take it as an act of
aggression. It is so unusual that it threatens them.
Still, I smile. Well, something smiles.
I am lighter and lighter, more euphoric. I feel as if Im coming to some borders and hitting against
them. Something blocks the process from overflowing outside of my mind. There is one thing I would
like to break the limits of normalness.
My body is light and vibrating.
I enter the kitchen, put the bags down, sit down, and look at my wife. She is cooking smiling at me.
When she smiles, it resonates with my mind-body state. Now I laugh. I cannot help it.
She looks at me and frowns.
I tell her, Honey, this is a strange state, one you wouldnt find described in a proper scientific book of
psychology. Youd have to refer to fiction to find any mention of it.
My wife says, Honey, Im starting to worry about you.
Part of me still controls it. I try to comfort her by saying that.
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What I dont say is that I wish that part of me wasnt controlling it.
Nocturnal Realization
My body leads me to moving while I practice Natural Chi Movement. It suddenly comes to me that
this is the right way to do things. To live more naturally, one needs to reverse the chain of command.
Let nature give the orders, and let the ego obey them. Remove the ego from the captains deck.
leave places we like, losing touch with the world of younger generations. Our experience teaches that
Nature is Change.
Yet we dont think so.
We resist. We get anxious. We revolt. We insist that there are non-changing entities. An example?
Well I, the agent of the whole experience, am one of the non-changing entities. Denying the reality
of change results in even greater suffering. In real life, unlike in some sports, we cannot form our
hands into a T sign and demand a moment of reprieve. Nature gives us no option like that.
Is resistance to change the only strategy possible? How would it be to speak the most universal
language on Earth the language of transition? Would speaking it fluently mean befriending change?
And finally, would it result in experiencing the joy of change?
I have read this passage many times. When I read it through my Natural Chi Movement experience, it
says something new to me. Natural Chi Movement is all moving one hundred percent. Even if I stay
motionless, there is something moving on: my breath, the atoms building up my body, chi.
I am a constant transformation, perhaps not from butterfly to man and the other way around, but just
from one body-mind state to another. It does not really matter from WHAT to WHAT is being
transformed. What matters is THAT I am a process of transformation.
Zhuangzi, you should not be surprised or confused. You are what you identify with sometimes man,
sometimes butterfly. If you do not identify with either, you are neither of them. What dreams is as
illusionary as what is dreamed about. It does not matter which of the two is a butterfly.
IN & JAN
Jan is
I was about to start writing the story of one of my clients by stating his age and profession. After
two words Jan is I realized that would be wrong. Jan is not his age or his profession, and my story
is to illustrate exactly that point.
Let me start again.
Someone looking at Jan from outside his neighbor, lets say, or a journalist writing for some reason
about him would see a handsome man of fifty-five; owner of a nice house in Warsaws suburbia and
a small successful graphics company; father to twelve-year-old Ja and husband to Julia, a beautiful
forty-five-year-old actress and Jas mother. He is also a stepfather to Julias two teenage kids Ania
and Jerzy from her former marriage to a man who disappeared abroad a long time ago.
A successful man, living his comfortable suburban life. A HAPPY life.
Is he?
He himself says no. That is why he came to me for a few sessions of Mind-Body Bridging, the method
I use to work with clients.
When he starts telling his story, you stop wondering why you dont see a smile on his face when he
drives his Volvo.
There is no affection in his marriage. He thinks his wife is with him for his money. His company is not
doing so well in this time of economic crisis. Thats even worse than before when it was profitable but
made him unhappy. To answer his clients needs, he says he betrayed his artists soul. He lost the
wonderful feeling of being a creator that he had in his youth. He no longer thinks of himself as a
painter. He just works and earns, and he would like his life to be more of an adventure.
He dreams of having one real conversation with his son, instead of a series of fights. He would like to
divorce his wife but is afraid that would affect their son badly.
Is he then AN UNHAPPY one?
He himself says yes. I do not think this is the case either.
Recently he told me this story. A week ago he took his wife to a fancy restaurant in a beautiful
mansion outside Warsaw. He made sure no one would disturb their meal in a corner of a garden. His
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plan was to talk with her, as they had not talked for years to make sure that she loves him or to get
clear that she doesnt, and subsequently to decide whats next in their relationship.
He started by saying how much he cares. And then he stopped.
She was not interested in that kind of conversation. She directed the exchange into the usual trivia. He
tried again, but she made sure their discourse stayed shallow.
He gave up. But as he agreed to her terms on how they would converse with each other, he suddenly
felt something.
Here is how he put it the words of a graphic artist: I gave up and let myself become involved in the
casual talk with her, and I felt as if I was being erased by an eraser from reality.
Interesting choice of words, isnt it?
Erased from reality.
What actually was being erased?
His story of being a successful man? No, that story remained in the banalities of their conversation.
His story of being an unhappy man? Not that one either. That story was a shadow to the first one.
Whatever was being erased was neither of his two stories. Yet it was what he himself considered his
real, true self.
We are not our stories. You realize that while you practice Natural Chi Movement. The choreography
of the movement does not originate from your biography. It comes from some other source. We are
one with the process of life. And when something cuts us off from the process of life be it a trivial
conversation, or thinking habits, or worrying about what will never come we no longer are.
And if so, can real experience be restored by some meditative means? Can we design a device, or
better yet a line of devices that help induce the process. My first session of Natural Chi Movement
was a returning to the freshness of a childs experience. In subsequent sessions, that was not so. What
should one do to get rid of adult thought-filtered perceptions for longer periods of time, to experience
wonder again?
At the moment, that question remains for me unanswered.
In-vacuuming
Here we are again, waking up in the morning. Myself, my wife on my left side, and Gilbert within. In
the morning, Gilbert assumes his nasty form. He fills up my whole trunk with a dulled, stable, slightly
vibrating ache. A feeling as if there were a vacuum inside, making sure that no well-being or energy is
left un-sucked. Not the nicest thing when you must get up and continue living.
I will not entertain the depressive part of my psyche with imagining what kind of terrible and
incurable illness would cause such pain, since I noticed some time ago that this line of thought does
not color the rest of the day pinkish. I will rather wait for the pain to lessen. I know that my awareness
makes the pain slowly cease. If I am lucky, Gilbert will never fully wake up. Awareness is for him
what a lullaby is for a baby.
Sleep, Gilbert. Sleep.
Not this time, he answers. Dont be selfish. Let me have something of the day. And so the clutter
in my head wakes up, to its own, semi-independent life.
Am I becoming crazy, having my imaginary dialogues with Gilbert?
Yes, if talking is the interaction of two existing selves.
No, if words are just one form or aspect of some basic communication process that goes on all the time
within a human being and between a human being and the environment. One of the meditative
experiences I had makes me believe that the second explanation is what is happening with me.
A note from my meditation notebook from May 2011:
It is late night, and I am the last one sitting in a chair and meditating in an empty room. Most people
that came to this retreat in the Czech Republic to learn meditation from the Burmese master Saydaw U
Tejaniya are already sleeping.
Silence.
I notice good equanimity and strong awareness within. Then I have this impulse: to go to bed. I decide
not to. Why waste such a nice awareness? So I keep sitting.
Seconds pass. A new impulse to go to bed comes. This time I see that what wants to go to bed is not
me. Just a few seconds ago, I would swear, it was me wanting to sleep. The realization comes: this
first me was a lie, a mask, a trick by which the process of life (mind-body in environment) tried to
get a desired result to put this body to sleep.
The Process of Life speaks many languages, depending with whom It talks. When It talks to a self, it
uses words or pictures or feelings, because any self can only understand words or pictures or feelings.
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These are entities, which self can relate to, since it only gets into relationship with something that
confirms its existence. Self does not understand other languages, such as the language of silence. It is
also blind and deaf to the native language of the Process of Life, which is the language of transition.
The Process of Life is intelligent. It could keep sending me messages: Marcin, go to sleep. This is a
natural thing for a tired body to do at this time of the night. Act rationally, man.
I refuse by saying: I know. I am tired, but I need to keep meditating to get enlightened. I am not so
young any more, you know, and time is running.
To avoid my resistance, the Process of Life disguises itself as mySelf. So the first impulse to go to bed
expressed in my consciousness as words suggesting going to bed and the feeling of tirednesswas
seen as mySelf wanting to go to sleep.
A few seconds later awareness allowed me to see through the disguise. And when the impulse came the
second time, I knew it did not come from mySelf.
Self is just a languageor, to put it more precisely, a multi-language built out of words, pictures, and
feelings. It is not a subject speaking the language, or a container in which the language is spoken. Self
IS the language. Self is just a message, which the Process of Life installs in discursive areas of
consciousness. It is a tool to navigate in reality. And it is not necessary.
Pavlovs dogs probably believed that it was their decision to produce saliva when they heard the
buzzer.
Gilbert is not part of this whole disguise, because I am aware of his fictional nature. Gilbert is just a
coping strategy to allow me to produce a slight inner smile from the bitter jokes he and I exchange to
deal with the pain.
It is a safe procedure. As a measure to remain sane, I need to lecture him from time to time about his
fictional nature. And so I do now in the morning, when he tries to lure me into thinking about all those
horrible diseases I must have.
Must be cancer, he whispers. The symptoms match. He hopes I will forget that I was never trained
as a medical doctor.
You could be right, I say to Gilbert. Except that you do not exist. You are just a voice in my head,
and I allow you to speak to have some fun before I open my eyes and see all the shadows of grey
behind the window and think of all the usual dull stuff to be done. You are just a hereditary cause of
increased bilirubin found in up to five percent of the population that I fancy to anthropomorphize.
Hereditary causes cannot speak. They have no selves, or for that matter, no mouths.
Youre right, Gilbert answers unperplexed. I cannot speak. And I am not a self. But we are not that
different, you know. Thats right, you can speak. But you are not a self either.
Tienko on Skype, during some longer conversation on other topics, says casually: The awful feeling
that wakes you up will soon cease.
I am afraid to engage into the subject. Or perhaps it is Gilbert who is afraid.
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Since reality is what changes all the time, alternating painless mornings with painful ones,
understanding should also change. You cannot understand something once and for all. I had this
concept that I was ill, and now thanks to Natural Chi Movement and Tienkos efforts I became
healthy. It might have been a good concept for yesterdays morning, but it is not good enough for
todays.
And here it is, my Identity System, ready to defend the truth that I was healed, using spinning thoughts
as a weapon. It argues that todays pain may be just an illusion. It wants me to defend yesterdays
position, even though my consciousness has changed, and I do not believe it now. When I get bored
with I am still healthy, my Identity System assumes the opposite position: I will never be healed. No
difference for him. He just wants to have a position, since a position guarantees his identity. There are
no positions in reality, so my Identity System is in constant need. When you are a constant lack, you
need to produce tension.
And it is not true that I have not gotten something. I have learned that illness and health are just like
man and butterfly illusions on the two side of an ever-changing process.
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Is a need to have all-experience explained and expressed in words an obstacle when it comes to
integrating Natural Chi Movement into my life? Would it be possible just to move without
understanding what it means?
To be free and to be certain these are contradictory aspirations. To be free is to be uncertain in a
special way. To be free is to be uncertain fearlessly.
So now, Gilbert, welcome back. I do not have to hate you. After all, you are nothing but a ridiculous
level of bilirubin. I no longer need to pay exaggerated attention to you. I am not healed, but my
consciousness has changed. In the future, I may get completely healed from you or I may not. It does
not matter.
Perhaps now is a good moment to stop writing this text. Writing is a process and not writing is a
process as well. What if I cease putting letters on the page? Nothing really. Writer, not writer
butterfly, man. Does it matter? Life continues to write itself freely.
Your Old Buddy, Marcin
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For more information about Natural Chi activations and healing, please visit
www.NaturalChiMovement.com
or email us at
info@ naturalchimovement.com
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