I have noticed that sometimes looks can be deceiving. Sometimes what appears to be real is not real and what appears to not be real is very real.
Let me explain…
A little over a year ago I started taking Qigong classes. I’ve sung the praises of Qigong here many times, but I don’t think I’ve ever shared my first experience. I had decided to go to a class… I’m the kind of person who will just up and do anything on my own… just show up. And that’s what I did with Qigong; with out calling ahead to speak with the instructor I decided to go to a class that day. I mentioned it to a friend earlier in the day and she decided to go with me.
We happened to be the only two students to show up for the class that day. Great! A private class! The instructor, Dan Ferrera, a very nice man, showed us how to “breathe” for the class and lead us through the exercises.
I had recently done a very expensive breathe work session… and this reminded me of that. So I saw value in the exercises. Dan discovered I was a Reiki Master and we talked a little bit about energy and that Qigong was the art of cultivating energy. He said that Qigong would improve my energy skills in Reiki. So I saw value in that as well.
But even though I saw value in the class and the exercises, I found myself resistant to them. My mind would not shut up… it was going a hundred miles and hour… chattering on and on about how stupid this all looked and sounded. “We sound like vacuum cleaners” it screamed at me! It was like a parrot and it kept squawking: “Your friend is going to think you are really strange if you like this stuff… this is just weird!”
So I had a problem… because in spite of my mind going nuts on me… on some level deep inside, I really did like this stuff! It resonated with me, felt like “home.” I was being reactive… and I didn’t really even know it at the time. My friend was not reactive, at least not that I could tell, she participated, did the exercises and when we talked she said she found it interesting. She wasn’t enthusiastic though and she wasn’t freaking out over it either. I, on the other hand, was both enthusiastic and freaking out!
It just seemed so weird to me at the time! Yet I was drawn to it! Now I look back in amusement! The “voice” in my head finally shut up, by the way. First it diminished some… and then as several of our other friends would come to class it would start up again and then die back down… I observed over time that some people seemed very comfortable with the energy and exercises and I guess I finally gave myself permission to be comfortable as well. I decided that perhaps I am really weird… and if that is so, it is okay.
Now I understand that the exercises we do are very valuable – priceless in fact! The energy is real and it has transformed me and changed my life… for the better! But the key for me here is that I realize that this is REAL! It is direct experience with Source! It didn’t “look real” to me at first though. Now I contrast that with things that “look real” but aren’t.
Like television shows… specifically “reality” TV shows! “Reality?” I think not! But we accept it as such, along with movies, and video games and all kinds of other things that aren’t real that we get all caught up in… like the celebrities lives in the tabloids! They aren’t real, but somehow there appears to be nothing weird about carrying on over them like they are! (Not that all fiction is bad, mind you! Indeed there are great works of meaningful fiction that are profound… but much of what we have in popular media or on TV today has no redeeming qualities at all. In Yiddish we would call it drek!
Take it one step further: the news! A seed of reality? Perhaps, but it is “spun” and played and replayed until it has a life of it’s own… and not real at all at that point. And then we get into the the whole “The medium is the message” argument that Marshall McLuhan made in the ’60s.
He said that a medium affects the society in which it plays a role not only by the content delivered over the medium, but also by the characteristics of the medium itself. How true that is! Maybe McLuhan was a prophet who foresaw the effect of 24/7/365 news networks like CNN and Fox News would have on society. In today’s society we are literally bombarded with “news” stimuli like no other generation before us! The constant drumbeat of bad news can make one crazy! And It does not present a “real” picture!
So often what is socially accepted as real is not; and what is socially thought of as weird or strange is real! The litmus test is Direct Experience and the antidote to the craziness is connection to Source!
