Personally... from the President

The Power of Gentle

My yoga teacher has been on a big campaign lately with his students to make changes slowly. Why? Because if you try to "change everything today", you're going to fail.

This is certainly NOT to say that change is a losing proposition (and the cynical among us may say "people never change"), but it is to say that change, when it does successfully occur, is due to persistent, small advances.

In the I Ching, the Chinese Book of Changes, there is a hexagram (symbol pictured right) that is relevant here. It is "The Gentle", and it arises from the concept of wind, and the energy of penetrating. The admonition within this hexagram is: "THE GENTLE: Success through what is small." And in the discussion, Wilhelm says, "Penetration produces gradual and inconspicuous effects. It should be effected not by an act of violation, but by influence that never lapses." I love that. Influence that never lapses. It is the gentle, consistent, ever present influence that carves down mountains into hills, and polishes river rocks into smooth discs.

Thus, in this way, as my yoga teacher has been saying, it is the only way to lasting change. To try to change a lot of things quickly is essentially a violent act, and those conditions holding the circumstances you want to change in place will surely and shortly reverse this violent attempt. Diets are a perfect example. Sure you can lose weight really fast in several ways, but all of them, because they are fast and require rapid change, are almost certainly doomed to fail. There is simply too much counter habitual momentuum to offset without a great deal of force.

David R. Hawkins, wrote an entire book about this subject: Power vs. Force. True power, he says, is staying power, and staying power is achieved by steady, unwaivering energy that is in harmony with the forces of your life. Force, on the other hand, is essentially violence. It goes against the flow of momentuum, and requires a lot of energy.

By making small changes, easily incorporated into your daily routine is the best way to effect total change over time. And when you are changing, you must make time your friend.

For example, you've finally become fed up with your level of physical fitness. The worst thing to do is to run to the local gym, spend a thousand bucks for membership and shove aside everything else to make room for 2 hours a day of workouts. Even if you were able to do this for a short period, 1. Your muscles would be sore and in shock, 2. Your family and friends will start whining about what you're doing--or downright ridiculing you, and most importantly, 3. There will be days when you logistically can't make it happen, or just don't feel like it, and then become discouraged and shortly you'll conclude it was a "dumb idea in the first place."

Here's a better way to ensure success. First, chose the smallest thing you KNOW you can do EVERY DAY. Maybe it's walking for 5 minutes, or spending 1-2 minutes when you first wake up in the morning doing stretches. Then, once that has become a habit, move up to 10 minutes of walking, or 5 min. of yoga in the morning. Before too long, you'll be doing these things effortlessly and starting to feel your level of fitness increasing. This may spur you on to wanting to make a bigger change. Don't do it. Choose the next smallest thing that seems like barely nothing, and do that day in and day out. You'll know it's become a habit when if you skip a day, you really miss it. If you DO skip a day, do so without judgment. Simply return to the routine.

This approach is how Nature herself changes. Sure, there are storms and earthquakes and landslides and such, but they are violent, extreme events that once they are over, the effects are slowly and surely worn down by the gentle routine of water and air moving inexhorably around the Gaia sphere.

As Vietnamese Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh, advises: "Drink your tea slowly and reverently, as if it is the axis on which the world earth revolves--slowly, evenly, without rushing toward the future." And so by also making changes in this way, you harness the true power of momentuum that is already available to you to become everything you want to be.

In vibrant health,

Boyd Martin, President
Subtleenergysolutions.com

Personally from the President

Re-assembling the Scarecrow

Several of my neighborhood friends embarked on a "group date" the other day for lunch and a movie--"Oz the Great and Powerful." It was a very enjoyable romp through a seamless continuation of the Oz world created by Frank Baum and famously unleashed upon the world in the 1939 movie, "The Wizard of Oz."

I personally was relieved that the 2013 movie was not a cynical, dark, overly polarized version Hollywood seems to think sells. Yes, the characters are one-dimensional and the drama is milk toast, but, hey, it's OZ, people! ...and it was particularly fun in 3-D.

Lately, I've been continuing my adventure with certain pain issues, and in my quest, I returned to a shaman friend of mine for some cranio-sacral therapy and her unique brand of seeing. After the session, I suddenly saw myself as the Scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz, during the scene where he has been attacked by the flying monkeys and ripped apart. "They took my arm and they threw it over there! They took my legs and threw them over there!"

The spiritual metaphor for me, is how the soul can also get ripped apart, leaving a part in a 1980 trauma, a 1993 ecstasy, or a 2001 earthquake--or even in past lives. Over identification with traumatic or dramatic events can "stick" attention, preventing fully coming into present time.

My intention for the shamanic session was to retrieve my creative center, which I felt had been scattered. It has been like having all the equipment to create a painting, but the brushes are in the bathroom, the canvas is under the bed, and the paints are in the garage. But you don't know that, so when inspiration strikes, there's no way for it to express. I said to my shaman friend, "I feel like I have an entire warehouse of amunition, but nothing to fire it with, or at!"

Many of the processes or life lessons I've gone through end up being about freeing unconscious attention from some past event where I was deeply affected, but didn't realize it. I usually spot a sort of disconnect between outward and inward experience. It is as if one movie is playing out within me while another one is playing outside of me. This is the realm of the ego and its trusty cohort, the mind. All the socialization, past judgments, and past decisions about "how life is" all go into this inner movie we mistakenly call "life."

Sages through the ages have all told us that Life itself is without judgment, without decisions about what is "right" and what is "wrong." These are entirely human-created and it all rolls into one big common movie we call Life on Earth.

Can we truly know what Reality is? Yes. Just by being aware of the question, it proves it is knowable. The thing is, we get so distracted because as in the Scarecrow, "they threw my arm over there, and ripped off my leg and threw it over there" that we think that is what life is about.

In this episode of the Scarecrow for me, I did retrieve arms and legs and my creative center. And I gained a new mindfulness about where my mind automatically goes in the course of any given day. Where does my attention go? How do I feel when it goes there? By paying attention, more of the Self is retrieved and now available to pour into the beautiful artwork we all can be creating called Life.

In vibrant health,

Boyd Martin, President
Subtleenergysolutions.com