Quantum Chi Adventures, Part 1

Deep Listening: Returning To Center Through The Sound Of The Chi

By Connie B. Shaw, Johnstown, Colorado

How many T’ai Chi Chih students awaken each day vowing to stay centered, to be mindful and to stay fully present to ourselves and others, only to veer off through the distractions of family emergencies, workplace pressures, to-do lists, commuting and relationships? All of us. But rejoice – help is at hand. There is a way to start the day with inner peace and to maintain tranquility (or at least calm connectedness) throughout the day so that we don’t end up flat, drained and unfulfilled at day’s end. Further, we need not wonder where the time went, why we are so tired and how we could have been so unproductively busy, without the expected satisfactions. How do we stop this frustrating cycle?

Where does fulfillment come from? It comes from being fully in each moment without daydreaming about the future or lamenting the past. It comes from noticing the breath, from appreciating the person in front of us and noticing their mood, appearance and essence and conveying that we accept them as they are now, without expectations. It comes from doing a task to our highest ability, each time. When we are present to each moment, to our Inner I AM Presence (Atman, Shekinah, Spirit), we can eventually hear a clear tone that is the sound of the Chi, or our own unique signature sound or homing signal. It can sound like a high-pitched television oscillation noise, or like tinnitus (though it usually isn’t), or like a hum heard in the head, near your ear or in the heart, with attention on the tan t’ien. Paradoxically, the Chi sound can be heard in the head when we are focused not in the head but on the belly.

If you fix on the tone, or clamp your attention onto this wonderful available-for-life homing signal, you will make several delicious discoveries:

• All things will be revealed, and your questions will eventually be answered, inside yourself.

• Life is a series of ongoing revelations that become more profound and comprehensive.

• You will like yourself more until you truly come to love yourself.

• You realize that you are not the body, the mind, the emotions, your TCC practice, your titles or attainments, and in fact, that who you are is invisible, and that you are the vastness of being, and connected to all other beings everywhere.

• When you veer off of center you can easily return by listening for the tone, which is called, in Sanskrit, the Sacred Pranava. Everyone has one, just as everyone has a heart. But not everyone has ever stopped to listen to their own heartbeat or to listen to their signature sound.

• The tone is a treasure that will help us to discern whether someone is trustworthy, whether our teenager is telling the truth, or whether our colleague has a hidden agenda. It can save time by letting us know in which grocery store aisle we can find the brown rice, or which way we should turn when we are lost. And that is just the mundane beginning. Am I in the right job? Is this the right mate for me? Should I register for this upcoming class? Every answer is available within when we form the habit of deep listening and reap the endless rewards that present themselves.

Some people may not be able to hear the tone immediately, but after practicing for ten minutes at a time, over a few days, every TCC student should be able to have success in finding the sound and staying attuned to it. For the next week, every time you awaken, listen for the tone, keep listening until you can hold the focus on it for five or ten minutes, then an hour, then a day and even in your sleep. Embrace your Chi and let the sound of the Chi nurture, guide, direct you. Luxuriate in it. Marinate in it. Discover that you are indeed love itself, walking on two legs, expressing as unobstructed Chi … a gift to all.