Your Mind Is Your Power

If you've been feeling powerless lately, this is to remind you that you're more powerful than you know.

So many of us can tell a story about how Cosmos Qigong returned us to health and vitality. Indeed, it is remarkable that such a simple art is so powerful, and yet, restoring health is actually not the final aim of our Qigong practice. At its highest levels, Cosmos Qigong helps us merge with the supreme reality that there is, at a subatomic level, no difference between you, me, or the screens that separate us while I write this and you read it. Some cultures call this meeting God or Allah, or attaining enlightenment. Getting to this stage presupposes consistent practice, health, internal force, and having a powerful mind. I don’t know about you, but these days I feel like cultivating my mind has become necessary to my mental health and survival like never before.

While I really don’t want this blog to be a political statement, it’s hard to talk about joy, health, and vitality when there is a giant elephant in the room jumping up and down. Things aren’t easy for a LOT of people right now. Last month when I was getting ready to teach Qigong for Stress and Anxiety, I actually sat down and reworked much of the material as I felt like I needed to make it more pertinent to where we find ourselves both as a nation, and as a global people right now. Then I ended up scrapping all of my changes and leaving everything the same. Nothing needed to be changed. The reality still is that even in the most difficult of times, our Qigong practice will help us cultivate our minds so that we are able to make better decisions about where to put our attention, about what is real and what is just clickbait, about when to let our emotions express themselves and when to be dispassionate.

True power lies in a powerful mind.

The ray of sunshine amidst a dark storm I’ve found is that we are being forced like never before to choose how we want to be. Whether we want to spread happiness and (not toxic) positivity, or be negative and talk about how angry we are with each new ridiculous development that hits the headlines of our news feeds. Many of us have lots of justifiable reasons to be angry. But where does that anger get us if every day we’re reaching into the bucket of ‘everything is awful’? It’s easy to enter into a Qigong state and feel like everything is beautiful when life is easy. But the training that will propel your heart and mind forward to an extraordinarily high level comes when things are hard and you have to insist on the best from your life.

Current mood is a lotus flower blossoming in the mud.

I’ve probably made this and similar statements no less than 10 times in my posts since November. It's is a bit repetitive I know, but sometimes hearing something in just such a way that helps us through hardship. Hopefully there’s something like that in here for you.

I’ll leave you with a little parable written by the Buddhist teacher and thinker Tara Brach several years ago:

“Mohini was a regal white tiger who lived for many years at the Washington D.C. National Zoo. For most of those years her home was in the old lion house—a typical twelve-by-twelve-foot cage with iron bars and a cement floor. Mohini spent her days pacing restlessly back and forth in her cramped quarters. Eventually, biologists and staff worked together to create a natural habitat for her. Covering several acres, it had hills, trees, a pond and a variety of vegetation. With excitement and anticipation, they released Mohini into her new and expansive environment. But it was too late. The tiger immediately sought refuge in a corner of the compound, where she lived for the remainder of her life. Mohini paced and paced in that corner until an area twelve by twelve feet was worn bare of grass. Perhaps the biggest tragedy in our lives is that freedom is possible, yet we can pass our years trapped in the same old patterns.”

We can’t change the world around us, but we can change how we think about it and how we interact with it. And while there might be mud all around, we can lean hard into our practice, build our powerful minds, and let the lotus flowers bloom.

Peace.

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