251. Genchitaofu Baguazhang’s Jingong Loop - 艮氣道福八卦掌の勁功圈

The Way through Baguazhang - 八卦掌道

Honestly, I don’t know how the Taichi guys came up with the idea that Jingong 勁功 is a spiralling type of energy. I, personally, have never experienced it spiralling anything. It just sort of is there, coming and going depending on the size of my proverbial cup. Most of you by now should be familiar with the proverbial cup: If you want to learn anything, you must first empty your cup. But did Bruce Lee ever tell anyone what happens, as a matter of experience, when the cup is empty? I guess not. Well, here’s what happens: You’re either broke or at your lowest point or complaining that the dream didn’t match what you signed up for. Most of us, who have experienced the pain of having followed his advice, rarely talk about it because it’s kind of like a Right of Passage. Oh well… At least now I know another way, a better realised way. Whatever the size of your initial cup, when a person goes down the internal martial art road, however full your tiny cup may be, the art of cultivating qi actually expands our cup first and then we are able to fill it with new knowledge. Imagine your first cup being the size of a thimble. Whatever was inside, once expanded out to the size of a coffee cup, it will be as good as empty. And once it is full again, the coffee cup will expand again. Maybe this time it is the size of a paint bucket. And on and on it goes. The process never ends until we chose to stop cultivating our qi. And so, now that I have told you this, you must be wondering how I know this? I know I would want to know, as least for consistency’s sake. Well I know because it is in my nature to find out and experience it for myself, so that when I talk about it, I am giving the listener firsthand knowledge. It is up to the listener to take what they hear and use it as a comparison to their own experience. It’s the listener’s choice. Anyway, it continues on like this: Once your proverbial cup is full with qi, for a brief while it overflows. This overflowing of qi can be summed up as having an abundance of Jingong 勁功 and this is where the magic around us happens. Shit gets done. We’re the boss. We da Man. We’re Moses in the Land of Milk and Honey. And I know some you know exactly what I mean. And then, mysteriously, the well seems to go empty and we’re back to cultivating our qi again. We wonder if we had sinned, or abused our powers. How we think about these things depends a lot on our beliefs. We wonder what we did wrong but in truth all that happened was that in the background our cup expanded like a sudden growth spurt. Something likened to running on empty, but that is an illusion. If this is what has been happening to you, then it is time to start closing the loop so that your jingong 勁功 cultivation feeds back into your qigong cultivation in a continual cycle. And it starts with realising what is happening.