TCC: Divine Demolition: The Unraveling of (Vasana) Conditioning

“What do you mean we should be living in the feet and the belly?” I mentally shouted at our T’ai Chi Chih (TCC) instructor, Marie. Nevertheless, I tried it, and it has changed my life and outlook, and experience of myself and all else. The TCC process of anchoring attention in the feet and in the belly has “knocked me off my perch.” In late February, while doing the weight shift of Rocking Motion, I suddenly felt a further unraveling (which had begun a few weeks prior), which revealed my vasanas, or conditioning/habit energies, and the unconscious life-strategies and “protective coloration” that sprang from them. (Vasanas make all of us act like robots, without realizing it, as I clearly realized experientially.)

The involuntary unraveling of the vasanas seemed to free me from them. I felt as if I were helplessly being “peeled,” like a human-sized orange. As I watched the energetic unfolding happen, as the observer, I felt great compassion for myself and others. I realized that each of us has thought, felt, and moved from our particular programming. We could not have been (or done anything) differently than we have been programmed to do. It’s just Being that is important, in each Now moment, not clinging to any experience, but just letting it be as it is. No busy-body meddling with it, or with anyone, or anything. If I get back into the head, the unraveling stops. Back to the feet and belly.

I feel deep compassion as my criticisms and judgments fall away when interacting with others — realizing that I am they and they are but aspects of myself. How clearly I see and feel their emotional pain, as they express from their conditioning, as I have done habitually. I am feeling again and again that each of us is both Atma, as well as Paramathma, (the Bubble and the Ocean), All That Is, which is everywhere.

I realize, too, that this “Waking Down,” as Saniel Bonder calls it, being aware in the feet and the belly, cuts us away from the imprisonment of vasanas and sets us free. Also, the ego will continue to assert itself, in different guises, trying to control me and to keep me from God within, or True Nature. Yet ego/shadow/not-self is powerless, if I ignore it, by staying grounded and being aware, as love. I am presence. I AM THAT I AM. I am that which can’t be spoken, and so is everyone else.

Life is an ongoing journey of staying grounded and present to the presence, with attention in the feet and the belly, and the journey gets more subtle and more satisfying as we sit/stand/walk firmly as True Nature, as who we are, as Reality — in being real and true to the Chi in its many aspects.

Merely observing the unfolding can be interpreted by my mind as painful, too, unless I stay in the observer position and move through it, in a few minutes, usually. In spite of my having had many Samadhi Activations, over decades of Kundalini Activations, I felt that there was one more veil. This is it: awareness of the imprisonment of the vasanas and watching them fall away, like passing clouds. Simultaneously, there is an inner upswelling divine love that embraces me and allows me to fully accept all of me, and everything that has ever happened in this so-called (dream) lifetime. 

In the highest Reality, nothing has ever happened, nor could happen. Past is past. Now is now. As the Chi moves through me, unblocked, it gives voice to whatever needs to be said or done in the present. It is powerful. It is not my business. What others do or say is not my business. I also notice that the satva guna, or tricky “spiritual” habit energies of over-doing/over-helping/over-giving are being seen through and reactive co-dependence is vanishing, like a vapor. As I watch that tendency with awareness, it disappears. No doubt, the misidentification of “being a spiritual person/selfless server” will return until co-dependent impulses collapse. No matter. Waves of bliss sweep me and subside and sweep again. Sat. Chit. Ananda. Being. Awareness. Bliss. Being morphs into Awareness, and then into Bliss.

As I keep attention in the feet, and in the belly, and the weight shifts of TCC, all is revealed. It shows itself to be nothing (no thing) and everything simultaneously. I am carried along. Who is this “I,” being carried to what, by what? And if the egoic mind shows up in yet a new disguise which it will surely do, so be it. Leave now, we continue to say. Back to the feet and the weight-shift.

All in the outer is in flux, but within, there is only stillness. If outer events disturb this stillness, the clear directive is: Back to stillness, back to the grounding of the belly and the feet. There is no arrival point in this journey— just on-going revelations.