Happy Thursday to You!
I had a very busy day yesterday; I didn’t have time to do my morning tai-chi, but when I have a choice to “force it in” or “go with the flow”, I don’t force it.
The key issue with chi cultivation is consistency. If we create space in our lives to love and care for ourselves regularly, as part of our daily spiritual practice, we naturally have enough connection to spirit that we don’t feel insecure, as though we’ve cheated ourselves.
I did manage to get in a good solid lunge workout in though. I’ve back up to lunging with 225 pounds again and it feels lovely.
I feel like I could stand my water bottle on my butt after a few sets of heavy lunges. I coupled my lunges with Swiss ball Supine Lateral Ball Rolls and reverse crunches on the Swiss ball for five mini-circuits.
When I got home, I checked to see if my new rock stack had endured the squirrels “inspection” and it had, which was cool.
I enjoyed a nice evening tai-chi session before my PPS coaching call.
Our PPS call was great last night. I had the blessing of Barney and Julia sharing how PPS coaching and lessons have helped them through their life challenges and aided their growth and Self-realization.
It really helps to get such good feedback from those that actually apply the lessons. It helps others to know that the lessons do work if applied.
After that, I was fortunate enough to enjoy some amazing steelhead trout and vegetables Vidya prepared for me and it was AWESOME! Thanks Vidya! Thanks Mother Nature!
Then, I began another piece of art while watching a cop show. Then, off to bed for a good dreamless sleep!
Tonight I’ll be doing Q&A on Sean Croxton’s Underground Wellness Radio Show at 5pm pt. Join us, I always have fun and get asked lots of interesting questions.
TUNING THE HEART (Part 1 of 2)
Today, we are peaking in our intellectual development. Our whole world (at large) has become so information based that it (often unknowingly) has risen out of the heart to occupy the head.
A head without a heart is but an iPhone! When it gives you what you want to hear, you enjoy it or may even feel as though you “love it”, but when it doesn’t give you what you want, you may throw it across the room in frustration.
With a little observation, one can easily see that as we spend more and more of our life interacting and living in the plane of mind, we begin processing experiences and relationships as data gathering experiences.
Friends become friends when they tell you “what you want to hear”; plants, animals, and legitimate issues of world health become “things”, yet, we tend not to allow ourselves to “feel them”.
If we get too close, we may feel the gravity of a situation.
To the degree that we haven’t learned to love, nurture and care for ourselves, we innately fear that if we give love, we will somehow be shorted of our own.
A simple way to determine how far into the head one has become is to witness how one behaves when they don’t have access to their phone, computer, books, magazines, TV, radio, newspapers and other common head stuffers.
To the very degree that one becomes stressed in absence of such data streams is a measure of how externalized their sense of self has become.
I have witnessed people sitting in the middle of beautiful resorts, surrounded by nature’s abundant beauty having temper tantrums because they couldn’t get an internet connection or a phone connection.
I’ve seen children and adults crowding the video arcade, and all the while, the most beautiful flowers are opening and the dolphins are jumping and playing along the shore just yards away and they never even had a clue, nor even an interest.
The only thing different for them on vacation is that they are sleeping in another bed.
MAGNETISM AND THE HEART
In my career, I’ve seen many of my students and others assume that because they had “more ideas” about this or that topic than others, that they have mastered that particular topic; that they could make a good living (often they think they will get rich!) as a teacher.
They may try running some webinars, create their own seminars, or write articles. Typically, when they don’t have people coming in droves to respond to their message, I end up being someone they ask: “Why am I not getting a good response?”
Generally, I inform them that they are confused as to what mastery really is.
They think because they can regurgitate lines from another’s writings or teachings (like a good parrot), that they are an “expert”.
I’ve had several make comments like, “Paul, I’m saying the same things you say, but I’m not getting any response?”
I often inform them that this is due to a lack of “magnetism” within them.
It is well known that when a musician composes music, are an artist creates art, or when a teacher teaches, their message or creations carry the energetic imprint of what is real, what is truly enlivened within them.
Magnetism is not a quality generated by the head. Magnetism is the territory of the heart.
People that are ultimately successful in life are successful largely because they are passionate about what they love to do and strive to be authentically who they are.
In his excellent book, The Art Of Being and Becoming, Hazrat Inayat Khan says (p. 160):
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“The heart will speak louder than words.
Our heart is also closely related to the people we meet, to such an extent that in industry, business, professions, science, politics, and domestic life, in every aspect of life, the people we meet are affected and influenced by the condition of our heart.
If the heart is out of tune, let a man be in his office, the factory, his home, among friends, in a club, in society, whatever he says or does not say or whatever he does, his very presence will upset the atmosphere.
Therefore the secret to magnetism, the mystery of attraction in a person, is solved by a study of the heart.
Very often we are uncomfortable in the presence of someone, or someone’s presence attracts us without that person having said one word.
We may feel as if we had always known a person, as if we had always been friends though we had never seen him before.
If we are in tune, we tune others also; but if a person’s heart is not in tune, then everyone in his presence also goes out of tune. That is the mystery of attraction and repulsion.
Very often we see that people attract one day and perhaps a week after or a month or a year later, there is repulsion.
The reason why that person attracted for the moment was that his heart was in tune; but then after some time his heart got out of tune again.
It is because of this that a person who was once attracted may feel repulsion another time; and because he does not know the reason he will always blame the other.
Human nature is such that man sees himself last. Especially if it comes to blame he never thinks of himself; he first blames the other.”
These are profound words spoken by a true master whose heart was in tune as a way of being.
I have read many of Hazrat Inyat Khan’s books and the books of many such masters whose hearts were in tune and when I read them with an open heart and mind, their very words create a vibration in me that harmonizes.
Once I experienced this reality, I began making it a practice to begin my day by reading the words of those that live in a way that represents who I aspire to be each day.
When I begin by tuning into a balanced heart, it is as though I have created a basis by which I can sense the flow of my own heart, my own love.
With that “morning tune-up”, I can better sense when I’m deviating off the path, de-tuning my heart-song.
I can feel the negative emotion arise when I’m stretching or ignoring the strings of my heart as an instrument of love.
The human predicament is not an easy one, not for anyone.
We are caught between the world of matter below and the world of mind above. In that predicament, we tend to vacillate between seeking sustenance in material things in one instance, and in seeking sustenance in ideas in other instances.
What is hidden between these two worlds or planes of existence is the spiritual plane.
It is hidden in the heart, which in the chakra system is in-between the lower chakras of animal urge and existence and the higher chakras which are generally slaves to the urges of the animal that can’t be interpreted by the head alone; the animal instincts themselves are pure but can’t be felt if one loses their natural gut instincts.
In the animal, there is less head-stuff to get in the way of their authentic gut urges.
When they are hungry, the seek food and when they are full, they seek procreation and then rest until hungry again.
When people whose hearts are out of tune feel hungry (for food), they often misinterpret their hunger for food (which is a form of nurture) as a need for more stuff.
They may mistake the need to feed themselves as the need to buy more, drink more coffee, eat more chocolate or chips, or to starve themselves more because they feel their body is ugly.
When people are hungry for love, they may feel that they need more sex, yet find that all the sex in the world doesn’t fill their need for companionship only codependency; they don’t realize that they must love themselves enough to become their own companion first before they will ever have room inside them for others.
This is a dangerous roundy-round that has led many to reaching a point of such despair that they fall in love with organized religion.
People who fall into this trap are so sure their life will always be shitty that they become attracted to the promise of everlasting salvation in the afterlife if they only accept this or that savior!
But can they truly accept any savior when they can’t accept and love themselves, or will the words of the savior ultimately just become another task to be completed?
More tasks from the savior leads to more “burden” for those that are seeking false hope. But the tasks not completed when handed down by the savior, in writing, voice, or otherwise, only become “sins”.
Then one is forever shadowed by their ego’s tabulation of sins and they begin to loose faith that even God will forgive them. Now the savior becomes yet another burden.
Jesus is reported to have said,! “Split the wood and I will be there; lift the stone and I will be there.” This means that the spirit of Christ is “everywhere“.
Start where you are. The littlest acts of self-love as self-care and nurture tune the heart.
This doesn’t mean little pieces of chocolate, or little cups of coffee, or giving people things to pacify them.
It means being honest about creating your dreams and living by their core values.
It means being honest enough to say “no” when you are aware that saying “yes” will take you in a direction that isn’t in harmony with your dream and your goals.
It means listening to your body with the authentic awareness that your body mirrors your mind.
Tomorrow, I will share some of the simple methods I’ve used and do use regularly as a means of healing myself so that I can more easily love myself as the basis from which I can authentically love others.
I invite you to start loving where you can.
Chen sook Fun is one of my HLC students. She walked into the room on day one of HLC 2 some years ago and I immediately saw her amazing energy field.
It was the first time I’d met her because I don’t teach very many HLC 1 classes. Her field was full of beautiful white light and took the form of a beautiful white rose in full bloom.
I expressed what I saw to her and asked her if she had a spiritual practice. She said yes, my master gave me a prayer to do each day and that is what I do.
I asked if she would write it down for me. She wrote it in Chinese and put the translation under it in English so I could read it. It said, “Use your Heart to feel what you know.”
She was all the evidence I needed that this simple practice could have profound effects. I have recited it too many times to count.
It was so profound an experience for me that I was compelled to draw the image that came to me when I was present with the words, which is the drawing above. The prayer is written in Chinese three times (one for Spirit, one for mind, one for body) and the four faces represent my own 4 Doctor Living Philosophy.
Today, if you’d like, you can share in one of my practices, you can use your heart to feel what you know when caring for our body, your mind, and being present with your spirit.
If you want to learn mare about how to do this simply and effectively, I invite you to study and practice my 4 Doctor approach which is available to you now in my multimedia eBook, The Last 4 Doctors You’ll Ever Need – How To Get Healthy Now!
This is a great book to learn from because it comes with audios, slides, and video clips of me teaching chi cultivation and breathing exercises right in the book!
When we Use our Hearts To Feel What We Know, the world becomes a much more beautiful experience!
Love and chi,
Paul Chek
