Justin Stone’s Teaching On Heightened Awareness

Justin Stone had an impressive background. He was a musician and composer, a jazz pianist who in the 1940s had his own big band, and a writer and composer of best-selling children’s record sets. He was a financial analyst, a world traveler, and a scholar of Eastern philosophy. He was also an artist and poet and the author of eleven books. Above all he was a teacher. He considered the creation of T’ai Chi Chih (TCC) in 1974 to be his most important achievement, and he dedicated the rest of his life to teaching it.

When asked what he was most grateful for, Justin replied that he was most grateful for the teachers who had been a great inspiration to him, and others he’d met on the spiritual path. He believed that people came along at exactly the right time. That was certainly true for me. I met Justin in the Fall of 1988, at a time when the life I’d planned was falling apart. I was disillusioned, discouraged, and exhausted, in need of a new source of energy and a new direction.

I had just started taking TCC, and Justin was in Albuquerque to teach a weekend workshop on heightened awareness. “Heightened awareness” was an imperfect term, Justin said, because there was actually no such thing as higher consciousness or awareness. There was only consciousness. But because pure consciousness was blocked to varying degrees in different people, it was helpful to speak in terms of higher or lower states of consciousness.

He said that heightened awareness began with mindfulness, or “bare attention.” The more we practiced, the more alive and joyful we would feel. Old habit energies and patterns would dissolve. Ultimately, we would understand the interconnectedness of all living beings in one consciousness. There was only one life and one essence, and everything we needed was already inside us.

That weekend we learned exercises and forms of meditation to raise our awareness. My favorite was Satipatthana, or “Way of Mindfulness.” First, we closed our eyes and watched our breath for a while, then we noted our state of mind. Next, we turned to sensations and feelings and noticed them — the hardness of the chair, for example, or the sensation of air on the skin — as well as our reactions to them. Then we added sounds — a ticking clock, cars in the distance — and noted our reactions.

Finally, we opened our eyes softly and took in the sights, also paying attention to our reactions to them. At last, we put everything together, breathing, sensations, sounds and sights, as well as our reactions to them. The experience was beautiful and blissful and powerful.

Justin said that all life was a purification, a process of uncovering our own treasure. Many people on the spiritual path had been led there by a sense of futility. They had followed the advertised route to security and happiness, pursuing goals like material success and relationships, only to come up empty-handed. The reason was simple. As Justin put it, there was nothing “out there” which could be added to our lives to make a difference. The Kingdom of Heaven was within, and we lacked nothing.

Justin taught that there is one universal mind (or “heart-mind-spirit”) and that all forms are made of the same life force. This cosmic life force is reality, and the goal is to become one with it. We can do this if we let go of our attachments to whatever we believe will make us happy and stop resisting whatever we think will make us unhappy.

The only way to get a glimpse of reality is to see things as they really are, without a shred of hope that they will be different. We each inhabit a private world created from our own desires and self-interest. This creation is an illusion of the mind, and it prevents us from entering the peace and joy which is our true nature. “Not seeking” is the way to wake up and come to life, to live the beauty of the present and to know, with gratitude, the joy of being.

As for old habit energies and patterns, Justin said that TCC could change habit energies and create new ones. As Justin explained it, a habit energy (vasana in Sanskrit) could grow too strong and become a tendency (samskara in Sanskrit), which might last through many lifetimes. Examples of undesirable tendencies were uncontrollable drinking problems, explosive temper outbursts, or spells of despondency.

Practicing TCC could break the destructive cycle, changing the intrinsic energy as well as the thought process. This was due to a principle Justin called “the reciprocal nature of mind and Chi.” When the quality and intensity of the Chi moving through the body changed, the state of mind changed. The reverse was also true. In Justin’s view, this was the great secret and basis of real healing.

Justin taught that the highest form of spiritual practice was integrating it with everyday life. He illustrated the point with a story about his own life. He had left Japan to go to the Himalayas of India, to live and meditate with yogis. He wanted to experience the Indian tradition, which was to renounce the world and meditate in some far-off place. This was in contrast to the Japanese Zen approach, which was to achieve enlightenment and then go back into the marketplace and live like everyone else.

After living in the Himalayas for some time, Justin observed that the yogis he knew who had abandoned their former lives did not seem more content. Then one day he remembered the words of his Zen teacher, telling him to be the “big hermit,” because it was easy to be the “small hermit.” Renouncing the world made meditation easy for the small hermit. It required a big hermit to stay centered and peaceful when he went back into the world and had to interact with people and events, challenges, and distractions. Justin left the mountains the next day.

That weekend in 1988 was exactly what I needed at the time, and it changed my life. Today, as I do my morning practice, I give thanks to Justin Stone and TCC. I can feel my heart opening and becoming one with the great heart of the universe which beats it. This one great beating heart gives life to us all, in whatever form we may be.