Concentration Journal
This was not as pleasant as my last concentration. I started off happy, maybe a little hurried. My throat was a little scratchy and bothered me the whole time. I could not concentrate for very long. I felt tired and a little sick. I did not drift off into sleep, though, which I sometimes do when I’m tired meditating.
My eyebrows were still tense. I had to unfurl them several times. While trying to concentrated, I realized why I like Tai Chi and other practices so much. I like how they change you. They change you into a channel for whatever skill it is. In the case of Tai Chi, there is one practice where you just stand there and relax. The idea is that eventually, you will be so relaxed that energy will bubble up through you from the ground. That energy will cause your body to sway and jerk. You have to find the line between relaxing and not moving, and letting the energy move you. It is a fine line, but after a dozen classes, you can learn how to do it.
It’s the same with stream of consciousness writing. You eventually get to where you can write what you are thinking before you even know you thought it. The acting class I was at tonight had us doing the same thing: you need to say what you think as you think it without thinking about it. It’s a tough line to find, but you can attune yourself to it and find it.
That is distinctly why I did not like my Kung Fu experience. For the record, I practiced almost 3 years. I earned my Black Belt. But I never felt like I had developed a subtle sense of anything. I wanted the practice to transform me, but I now look at it as just a workout. I learned a lot, but it was not giving me the experience that I wanted. I wanted a block to intuitively happen when someone threw a punch at me. But my teacher never brought us to that point.
It is why I like Dance of Shiva. It’s a practice that requires a lot of repetition and you develop an intuition about who you are as a person. You are forced to face lots of your patterns and habits through the practice. And by practicing, you get to transform yourself.
It is everything I like in a practice.
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