Teaching & Healing: a Full Circle

March, 04
In Level Two of ZY Qigong practice, we let our energy naturally raise from my Lower Dantian to activate our Middle Dantian—middle energy center in the heart area. These exercises activate and strengthen our emotional empathy. We work on building our Middle Channel, and get external information beyond ourselves, we gain wisdom. We work on our second respiratory system through Body Breathing, and we gain physical empathy for others. We work on our yin-yang ball of qi as a tool to gain empathy and understanding in all above ways. We literally feel others’ pain, and joy.

Then we grapple with all these pain others feel, physically and emotionally. We eventually learn that we can feel others’ pain all we can, but we cannot change the pain—fundamentally. We can help lessen the pain, but we cannot change the people experiencing the pain. We cannot change the course or circumstance of their lives. It’s absolutely their choice in whether they hear or not, see alternate routes or not, take up the helping hand in changing direction or not.

We can feel their pain, but we cannot attach to the pain, to the people, and to the outcome of their circumstance after we offer help. We can feel the pain whether we decide to say or do something or not. We can say or do something, but be okay with any kind of response—whether it’s utter ignoring, not hearing, or hearing with utter indifference, or hearing with angry attacking response, or hearing and misunderstanding the advice while believing that they got it…

Once you choose to teach, to heal, you cannot be attached to the responses. Stay with your integrity, and detach from your ego. Of course this is an utmost difficult thing to do. Because even when we first sense someone else’s pain, our own pain get hooked and dragged up from our past. Then sometimes we can start with the right intention of lending a helping hand, but our kind advices all of a sudden began to be charged with our own emotionally pain, fear, anger, despair and sadness.

Or we began to pour our attention onto the other in an obsessive passion to try to get away from feeling our own pain. We make others our projects of hope. We get utterly distraught when they sense our own emotionally imbalance and run the other way. Have you noticed that you can say the same exact words but have totally different intentions behind them? It’s all in the intention. And the intention could change from good to evil from one moment to the next.

How can we be aware that we are coming from the right intention? We can ask ourselves, “From where I am now, am I doing what I now know is right? Is my self watching my ego, keeping it in check?” The definition of what is “right” will change with our own growth and understanding. That is why it is important to give ourselves space and time to learn from our interactions with others, to understand their pain and our own, to assimilate the learning, to integrate into oneness. Let go of rigidity. Let go of resistance to change. Let go of fear based controlling. Let go of divisions in the mind. Become oneness within. Know what is right in that moment. And have integrity.

Once you have practiced Level Two exercises, you almost cannot avoid teaching and healing because you feel others’ feelings, and their pain. When you are outside others’ confusion and can see the whole picture, when you can see where they are coming from and where they are heading to, how can you not say anything, not do anything? The clearer the picture you see, the more responsible you feel, and the less likely you will turn your head or leave the person behind when the person is actively seeking help. You become more empathetic to even strangers, because they are no longer strangers when you feel them. All their sufferings and enjoyments take on new vivid dimensions.

This is when you also feel responsible to root yourself, so you can say or do something from a deeply connected place, and stay connected through and beyond the response you will get. That’s why I always tell my students that teaching and healing roots and grounds me. They take me out of my own dramas. I become more even, balanced emotionally and physically, little by little. We come into a full circle of learning and helping.