I was in the monastery for about two years before beginning the Mu koan, just learning how to work with the breath and the energy, and I feel so grateful for that time.

These days I am not talking specifically about Zen very much. But the bones of the training are with me at every moment.

I hope this video inspires people to feel into their own process, and see what is trying to happen. We don’t all need to go to a monastery. But we do need to become profoundly honest and allow our entire being to meet life.

When we finally see it, all of our programming will be seen through. Our perspective will change. Allow that process to drive through you, until our true nature is finally experienced. Then we’ll refine that for decades.

If someone lacking talent such as me could touch this, then anyone can. I just became so utterly fascinated in it, until it felt like an arrow of momentum was driving me into the source of all things. And I gave in to that momentum. I found an ability to honestly walk that path.

And now I am sharing from this place of absolute faith. I don’t mean I’m perfect, at all. I’m still growing, still maturing, still making mistakes. Still saying the wrong thing to my wife… It is all wonderful and ever humbling. But I can assure you that it is all worth it.

But I’d like to challenge our assumptions.

We don’t need to hold ourselves in any special way

We are naturally empty in mind and body

relaxed, open

Our natural state is wide open and expansive

Our natural awareness, huge, uncontrived, peacefully responds appropriately to what is happening

No image or idea can touch this

We can’t put a leash on it,

can’t steer this or manipulate

intention is an obstruction in this

like a vacuum, empty, clear,

No thoughts

We don’t need to kill our thoughts or control them

No amount of effort will chase this down

Our eagerness has no foothold

In the unknowing, knowledge spontaneously arises

No technique produces this

No model or map tracks it down

We chase outwardly and it disappears

We grasp inward and it was never there

And yet the entire being is mobilized in it

moving freely, everything comes to us

buoyant without calculation

freely responding in any direction

this light expands as a matter of course

Our bright true nature

We don’t have to do anything special with the mind, with the awareness

Just allow it to emerge from the source

Functioning from this empty zero, emanate from the source

The body too need not be created, not reached out to, but will expand from this source

Sealing in the present moment, mountains move, in the sublime unknown, everything becomes illuminated

None of this is a concept but something digested with consistent sincerity

In our intimate experience, divisions will vanish, divine principles will naturally bubble up and be digested

We will gradually feel this in our entire being, know its flavor thoroughly

Know how to touch this impossible delicate golden thread

always there

Samadhi will cook us

Inside and outside will merge

Self and other will meld

Periphery and center will coalesce

We will act in harmony with all things as they arise,

Because we’ve absorbed, been driven into to the source of all things

Held in empty sublimity

Everything is empty and yet luminous

We may feel like an unborn ghost walking around at first

Like we don’t exist

As we are dissolved into this essential

We’ll walk around in discovery

And then when we move, the universe will move with us

As we’ve touched the artery of all of life

Everything will reflect this light, nothing is excluded

And yet, we’ll be in the midst of everyday life

not holding ourselves tightly, not controlling, not a slave to the ever changing

merging with all things and knowing them

Insights will continually emerge from this source naturally, as we’ve touched the fabric of all things

Naturally brightening the world with this clarity

Practice has to be real. In the thick of it. Not abstract. In our very lives. Homegrow, if we’re ever going to take it off of the cushion, out of the retreat setting. I’m writing this at 4 am, in the brief moments before everyone wakes up in the house, in a somewhat messy room, carving out time for sitting, in this nascent morning light, before taking my daughter to school. In this body, in the elements, the universe unfurling. Touching the marrow of this life, not making this wrong and that right. Not worshipping this religious trip or that one. Finding truth in each sealed moment. You must become the fullness of each fresh moment being born. Learning to connect with this mysterious process bubbling up. Touching it every day, even though it is impossible.

It seems in my classes that people are learning the intimacy of how to interact with their experience. Some are too aggressive and vulgar. Others can’t find a way to give themselves to it. Some are a pressure cooker, can’t go forward or back. It’s a laboratory of discovery. Learning how to meet reality. Do I need to make this happen? Or do I check out? What is the sweet spot of touching this and allowing it through me? Maybe it is not even about me…? We all need time to do this. There is no bypassing this. It’s a cellular process. It takes a long time, but you’ll catch a fever and know it is working.

I’m a practice guy. I’m not interested in theories. I can feel where you are coming from. If it is a purely mental idea, I’ll have no interest.

All of the true masters have gone through this long digesting process.

People come to work with me and they are looking for a technique or a mindset to attach to and ride into. Often they have done lots of meditation, learned lots of techniques. They are looking for a view or an angle which they can plug-in their normal way of interacting with their awareness. Maybe they think this is another technique to add to their tool bag. Or it’s a particular strategy of using their awareness to to shape their experience. If they are used to forcing their life in sports or work or life, they think they will just force this. But in truth, especially as we go deeper, here we are experimenting with allowing the tool bag to dissolve, and seeing what emerges out of that. What happens when I am not holding onto anything at all? What happens if we invest more in loss, in the unknown?

Once you’ve touched this, better to hide under a rock or a bridge for twenty years for this process to ripen. To digest and ripen in this unknown. We’ll have a long time of allowing the process to overthrow our small habits. This is the practice of dying. But once we’ve truly touched this source, the process is inevitable.

Maybe you are living two lives

One is the face you put out to the world

trying to keep it together

to be nice

be good

be liked

And the other is this intense life

maybe you can’t quite feel it

and yet it is driving you

And the two are in conflict

so you want to feel one way, and yet you really feel all of this

pain

frustration

sadness

anger

intensity

wildness

Maybe we blame it on ourselves.

Maybe we blame it on the world and how messed up it is

For some of us, at some point, this other life hits a critical mass

where we can’t fake it anymore

maybe something triggers a crack in our control holding it back

seeing death or tragedy or illness

and like a tidal wave,

it can’t be denied anymore

If we are lucky, we find spirituality

And we think, maybe I’ll do spiritual work, meditate, etc, and with that, I’ll find a way to control that wild intensity driving me.

I’ll find a way to stop it, to block it, to crush it.

All of that conflict is in the way of life

And we go to learn techniques, breathing techniques, meditation techniques, theories, philosophies

but there is this haunting feeling, as we go deeper, that what we need to do is face all of that.

To finally look it in the eye and allow it to emerge.

To feel our bodies and begin to work with these primal energies

the same primal energies moving planets across the sky

and we see we must be honest

we must find a way to feel

find a way to let all things emerge

to feel it all and allow it to be there

to drop the guards, drop the masks

to discover true trust

To become naked before God, naked before the universe

This is as huge process

And it will begin to feel like all things are emerging from the same source

so there need not be contradiction between life and this most primal aspect

Seeing my teacher, it was the first time I saw someone who had let all of that intensity through them

And I saw the immense power in a life with all of that Great Life Energy expressing

All of the wisdom that came with it

And I knew then and there that this was my path

Finding a way to be with this huge energy and

Complete Radical Honesty

Come walk with me, like holy fools we’ll wander through the forest crying and dancing

All of this takes practice. It takes feeling into what is happening. It’s not an idea, but must be digested physically. You can do it. It will take time. All of the true masters of old have been through that process. I have little interest in discussing this until it has been digested internally.

This is a sample Morning Zoom Class. Let's restart here. Let's look at whatever we think we need to be doing to meditate, and look anew. Let’s feel it in our cells, not just in our heads.

We go through some body orientation stuff, work with some Zhan Zhuang, some simple Qigong, etc.

How can we, in our own way, begin to find a way to interact with our experience, with this present event, in a connected way. And the rabbit hole just keeps going deeper.

for you

right now

Maybe you don’t want to feel it

Something wild and beyond understanding

Most likely it scares the hell out of you

It’s there

in the grocery store

on the subway

right now as you read this

Something always happening

You maybe can’t quite feel it, can’t interact with it yet

But it is there influencing you all of the time

How are you dealing with it?

What is your strategy?

Are you running?

Controlling?

Distracting yourself?

Are you living half ignored?

Finding pleasures which numb you or pull you away temporarily?

Do you force your life and rage at this feeling?

Are you overachieving to prove you are okay?

Or fawning and giving up in overwhelm?

But what if you could creatively find a way to feel and look at what is happening?

What if you found a venue, an inner laboratory, to find a way to creatively look at what is happening?

What if you gave yourself permission to look right at it?

Without subtly steering it?

You’ll make lots of mistakes

You’ll misfire, you’ll get fried, you’ll fall down

in the midst of learning to feel and be honest facing it

but it will feel real

It will maybe feel like the most important thing in life

your only chance

Whatever venue you use to explore it, don’t get clogged up in that culture

Continually be honest

Keep reinventing

Keep curious

Be brave

In time, because you have found your own way,

you’ll discover truth can be verified from within

because you have touched the thread of everything and know it intimately

You won’t need to look somewhere else

because you’ve digested the truth in your entire being

I’m not talking about being self centered

All of that will drop away as we feel into the light of all transparent reality

This realization is not owned by any religion

See how unlimited we are in this huge moment

You can do it

This post was originally written in 2018. It’s one of the most important posts I have written.

A friend recently asked me to help clarify the tanden, also known as lower Dantien.

This is a big subject. I have written about it before here. I will try to briefly convey a sense of what it is like to feel the tanden, develop the tanden in sitting and everyday life, and what it is like when the tanden matures.

The tanden is an energy field in the abdomen. It is a major focus in traditional Rinzai Zen as a way to deeply embody the energy and wisdom of Buddhism, and to fully integrate that wisdom into life. But one need not be a Zen student to gain great benefit from getting a sense of it.

In the tradition I was taught, in zazen, seated meditation, we are first instructed to do sussokan. Sussokan is concentration on the breath, often counting the exhalations, breathing in and out of the belly, which fills the belly with energy. Sussokan includes extending the exhalation out completely, and letting go of the preconceived ideas and stored up memories in this process. Over time, sussokan is a technique to help develop the tanden, as well as an excellent practice to enter samadhi.

So, most of us hear the instruction to extend our breath out completely and we go sit and we push with our breath out as far as we can, and we force it. The practice is actually about becoming the sitting more and more, becoming the activity. It is about Focus. But we mistakenly think it is about force. So we sit there and try to develop tanden ki with our force, instead of the energy naturally growing and settling into our belly. The forcing of pressure on the belly makes the energy rise up and create more tension in our system. This is completely normal and it happens to basically everyone at first.

However, as we sit with sussokan longer, it becomes clear that this type of force does not work. We can’t create harmony with our body/mind by putting in a type of anxious force. And we look around and see the experienced people who are really beautiful sitters. Their zazen is soaring and reminiscent of an eagle in flight. And they are incredibly relaxed. Sublimely relaxed. And we wonder how that is possible. We realize it must not be force.

Feeling the tanden is elusive at first. In the beginning, one just tries to imagine something down there, a couple of centimeters below the navel, and extending three dimensionally through to the low back. Sometimes, at least at first, it is easier to feel the tanden in the low back (koshi in Japanese) than in the front on the belly. It begins often as a little flutter, or a little heat in the general area below the navel. Later it feels like a taut ball of energy.

Over time, with much exploration on the cushion, in daily life, we begin to orient our lives more and more to moving from the lower back and belly. When reaching for a cup, we stay rooted, relaxed in our lower body, our upper body is floating above. We reach out and it is as if our hand is reaching out from the belly. From the tanden. Settling into gravity, our ki slowly becomes less fixed in our upper body or head, and more and more settled in our lower body and belly. Our thoughts, too, begin to settle as the ki settles into this ball of energy in our tanden.

Sitting, we see that as we unify with our breathing, and the present moment, our breath naturally begins to extend on its own. And we see that if we are not fully in our bodies, not really there, our ki will rise up. But, with time, through sussokan, as our ki settles and grows, it begins to permeate our whole body. A kind of glowing ball begins to grow in our belly, and the energy begins to fill our entire body. Doing long retreats, we will be going along concentrating on our tanden, and by day five, it sometimes feels like the tanden has disappeared. But in fact, it has grown and expanded as the ki has grown. Such is the dance and play of getting to know the tanden.

When the ki begins to grow, it can be a tricky time. We have to continually be aware of the tanden for a while, as this energy makes us full and taught. If we take our awareness off of it at this time, other centers of energy, like the volatile emotional heart energy, will become unstable. The tanden acts to settle the ki. To bring stability. For me, during this time, as I was working with settling this ki in my body, for about two full years, I was very emotional, very volatile. It was like I was walking around in the middle of open heart surgery. Very raw.

In this tricky time, it is not about focusing on the tanden in spite of all other sensations going on in the body. This is a common misconception. Rather, to keep ones awareness on the tanden while allowing all sensations into our awareness, opening up all of our senses. So it is not about pinning our awareness into a spot in our abdomen, or closing down and becoming small. Rather, with an open awareness, to keep sensing everything and allowing it to open. For instance, we all have huge heart energy. In order for our body and tanden to really open up, we have to allow our heart energy to fully express. If we don’t, the energy in our bodies will be dull and without passion, without life.

Over time, stable awareness in our tanden becomes second nature. Walking around, we notice our breath is always extending, always doing sussokan. Our ki is always rooted in our tanden. And as other emotions come up, often intense, they are not so fiery, not so wild, as the tanden is there all the time settling the system.

Later the ki in our bodies begins to extend more and more around us, as the barrier between self and other is dissolved. And so our awareness also extends. Or as Omori Sogen Roshi put it,

“Zen is to transcend life and death (all dualism), to truly realize that the entire universe is the “True Human Body”, through the discipline of ‘mind and body in oneness’. Miyamoto Niten (Musashi) called it iwo no mi (body of a huge boulder-going through life rolling and turning like a huge boulder), Yagyu Sekishusai named it Marobashi no michi* (a bridge round like a ball- being in accord with the myriad changes of life). Besides this actual realization, there is nothing else.”

Zen without the accompanying physical experience is nothing but empty discussion. Martial ways without truly realizing the “Mind” is nothing but beastly behavior. We agree to undertake all of this as the essence of our training.”*

So, the tanden is a technique, an orientation to unify body-mind, to deeply embody this work. As the tanden matures, often after some kind of breakthrough, it is no longer just something to focus on in such a concentrated way. It is as if our awareness integrates the tanden, and all actions spring from that center. Our awareness extends, and we feel the context of each situation as a way to harmonize with everything. Just like that huge rolling ball. This is what it is actually like to be centered. Again, we feel the tanden as a continual contextual framing of our awareness. The awareness is not a static thing, it is continually shifting. Over time, we can begin to read others intentions through this awareness, read situations very quickly, not be easily thrown around by every situation. We see the flowers and our awareness reaches them as our tanden and we meld with them. As we are walking, that great rolling energetic boulder is constantly framing our awareness in a fresh way.

So slowly, little by little, keeping our awareness just below the navel, and on the lower back, we will begin to transform from the inside out. Where there was once a little flutter of light, a little heat in our belly, gradually it becomes a great unifying way of being. This is a never ending process. Thanks for reading. Comments and questions welcome. Please share this if it was helpful.

*Omori Sogen: The Art of a Zen Master By Hosokawa Dogen

I then took that into life and saw that every moment, in every situation, the universe was pulling me into this truth

I took a long time testing and wondering if I could stop it

if I could trust it

What if I broke all of the rules? Would it still be there?

I’m not talking about making up another story about it, but being it completely. Being completely honest to that

No escaping that

No possibility of escaping that

This is what intimacy is about

Being truly absorbed into the present moment

Watching it, being moved in it, moving it, embracing, loving

Being with it, inside of it

Naturally, without affectation

When we see that, in a way, our practice ends

Seeing the impossibility of ever not being held in this great care

We are no longer chasing something out there. Chasing the Buddha, chasing enlightenment

Everything stops, we see the inner workings of all things, see that adding anything onto them is impossible

See the immediacy and the essential aspect of all things

there literally is nowhere to go

We find a wondrous power in tapping into this

See that each mind moment is so fresh

each mind moment

so huge and all embracing

When I started doing the NDBM or, “The Standing Around” work, it was mostly to feel my body and allow it to let go of old trauma. It was to get into my body. To naturally unravel stuff in my body which had not been able to process out of my system. It is as if our psycho-physical system is in the middle of working out several traumas at once, is overwhelmed, and so it cannot complete any of those tasks, like a computer trying to load too many sites at once.

The standing is a way to simplify how we are relating to our bodies. Through simply standing, we attempt to go as streamline with our input as possible, listening to the body, allowing it to work itself out, without a technique, and allow the body to just give us output. We’ve spent our lives giving it input. “Stand this way!’ “Stick out your chest.” “Drop your shoulders.” “Look good for this important meeting.” “Be happy.” “Have good ki!” etc.

So this practice is a way to let go of any ideas of good or bad, through the body, and just see what happens for an allotted time. Maybe a half hour, or better, an hour. Often the process will open up something that has been stuck in my body in a way I could never have conceived. So, if my neck is sore, unraveling that might begin in my ankle and spiral through the body.

This process has been incredibly healing and beautiful for me. And difficult. In the beginning I would have strong wild emotions come out during, and after, the practice. Again, please read my former post about it.

Then, something else began to happen. And in a recent Zoom class, I’m so thankful someone brought it up, as he was experiencing it, too. This post is about that other aspect, a deeper dimension, which was revealed through the standing. I hope it might switch on a light for some of you.

As I stood there in my twenties in Japan, with no idea of how it would go, a bald skinny exposed nerve in samugi, I would try to let my awareness be open, open, open. I began to see that as I did that, in order to let my body open, after some time, my awareness would begin to naturally extend beyond myself to the environment around me. In fact, I began to see that what I thought of as my body, and my self, was so much more fluid and inseparable from everything around me. The trees, the pond, the birds, the people walking by. It was surprisingly natural to not stop my awareness at my body, but to allow it to deepen into the source of consciousness and the entire event at hand. To the entire event of the experience.

I began to get a sense of the environment, its feel and texture and flavor, and I saw that if I allowed my perception to match the feeling of my body with the texture of the environment around me, my body would become transparent, disappear, and I could feel all things around me as me. And in that, there would be a unifying of my consciousness with the source of consciousness. A dissolving of inside and outside. A oneness.

Where I was stuck in my body would often open by linking up my awareness to the environment, as we are inexorably linked and enmeshed. It was as if the body had never been, nor could it ever be, separate from anything again. As if my very healing meant opening to the situation at hand. So what we think of healing and the body is so small compared to our possibilities.

I felt deeply connected. Not in an idea, but as a tactile sense. It felt like grace. Like being embraced by the universe. Where I had been at odds with my life, I saw how, in a cellular way, I was at one with all things. That the source from which everything manifests can be felt and sensed and observed. As if everything is cut from the same cloth, and this can be conscious.

So, if the crow cawed, I would feel the sound inside of my consciousness, feel it as no separation from myself. If felt like echoing from deep within me, within my body. Seeing the moon, I had no idea where I ended and where the moon began.

More and more, I began to, in a sensory way, dialogue with the environment. And the non-directed standing opened that up for me, precisely because there was no agenda, no plan to get in the way of me naturally melting into the garden. It was discovered by accident. My life shifted from trying and doing to melding and receiving. And I saw that this was the most natural, that this unity was trying to happen all along.

New dimensions manifested in my experience. Sensing what others needed, intuition about what was going to happen. Like meeting the trees around me, hearing the pots singing in the kitchen, I could also meet the intentions of others, could know in my body if something were true or false, as it was a sensory, physical experience rather than an idea.

This simple physical practice also brought me to feel equally akin to dancers, healers, and monks and nuns, as it was so wild and creative and free-form. My ideas of spirituality had to open as well, as this was owned by no denomination.

I could also see when I was totally off, feel my emotions more clearly, let them go if needed. Not so trapped by them. This is of course a long integrative process! I’ll be fumbling around, eating from this feast until I die.

Doing this creative, natural standing practice was a gateway for me to open up. I started out of desperation. It saved my life. It awoke my zazen. It gave me great faith in life being lived through me. I think we all can do this, it is not something special. Please have faith that even in simple practices we can discover universal truth. Let’s discover what is beyond technique. A deep clear samadhi is our birthright.

Here is a great Jakugo with a similar flavor which hit me like a lightning bolt when I first read it, a young monk swimming in the mysterious pitch black ocean of traditional koan training. From Hsueh Tou (Setchō Jūken)*:

“As I step slowly along to the sounds of running water

My wandering gaze catches the traces of flying birds.”

You can do it! Thanks for reading! Please share it with someone who it might help or interest.

*Zen Sand: The Book of Capping Phrases for Koan Practice, By Sogen Hori

*This post was originally published on the Zen Embodiment Blog, April, 2020

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We have such talented people involved. It is so amazing to watch them change and grow and become more beautiful.

Joe talks about how the practice can become more subtle, and the practice of Non-Directed Body Movement can be a venue to see how to take our internal process into all of life. Instead of looking for some kind of movement, our whole being can gain the courage to open up to life.

Jun talking about how we subtly find ways to control and that the Non-Directed Body Movement is a way to drop that control and give in to something happening. This process trips us down below our normal level of what it means to surrender or let go.

Camille Talking about Non-Directed Body Movement, Being Okay Not knowing, and Transformation

Jane talking about using the Non-Directed as a space to explore curiosity. What is interesting to me actually? And what is our true strong desire?

Thanks for watching. Come practice with us sometime!

Core

We will have our Whidbey Island Retreat, October 15-19th. (Arriving on the 15th and departing on the 19th.)

Registration is now open. Spaces are limited. So I would not wait to register.

The cost for the retreat is $750.

Deposit ($400) is due at the time of registration.

The remaining $350 is due a week before the retreat (10/8/26).

The fees include food and lodging. Everyone will stay in the retreat location.

Registration must be completed by August 24th.

Please contact Rose Hess at rosehesscontact@gmail.com with any questions.

To register, please fill out the form below and send the deposit to secure your spot

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScCvRzIN1443mhOCCszCCZrFXhDvxbJGIwtFHNYlK9w4FOnug/viewform?usp=publish-editor

The best ways to pay are Venmo: https://venmo.com/u/Corey-Hess-10

International Transfers via Revolut: https://revolut.me/coreyi0jh

For a description of the flavor of these retreats, here are some reflections I wrote after a retreat in Demark.

Thanks!! I’m excited for you all to come meet my family!

Corey, Rose, and Teresa

You can do it! Hugs!

What if I did not reach out? For the answers, for control, etc. What if I did not reach out to understand? What if I did not seek the answers outside of myself?

Instead of reaching out, which may just seem like normal, what if I stayed where I am? ... Maybe it seems boring? Helpless? Maybe we feel out to sea? I feel strange? I am so used to reaching out that not doing that feels like imploding?

“Receive.” “Receive”. “We become like a great mountain” Over and over the Roshi would tell us this.

Many people want to know how to have ease in their bodies. Many of my friends, clients, zen friends. Someone tells them to put their pelvis in this position and that does not feel good. And so they try to put their pelvis in the opposite position, and that does not feel good. Then they try to let go and that does not feel good. How do they find the right position? How do they feel good in their own skin? How do they access a place of ease from within? In this post I will try to address this issue from the idea of receptivity.

My answer is, I don’t know about the right way. Because I think of it in a very different way. I can tell you about how I have found a way to be in my body, and how it has translated to my whole life.

The body has been a great teacher for me on what I will call receiving. If I can receive my body, I can get out of the way. I can let go of my conceptual notions of how I should be in a body, and allow my body to teach me how to be in harmony. This is a radical shift from the way we usually function in life. It is a 180 degree turn.

Usually we try to figure out or get a picture of how we want something to be, and then try to make that happen. We try to manifest it. This is a way in which we are trying to impose some order on our environment, our relationships, our bodies. We try to manipulate everything around us all the time so that we may have some feeling of security. Of course we need to plan things like when building a house. We need a plan to follow and then to create it according to that plan. But I can say for myself, this way of thinking about life never worked. It may work in the short term, but in the long run we end up feeling as if we are deeply missing something, or that we are trying to force something that does not want to happen. We intuitively somehow see that our brains do not know how to figure out how to give us real peace. It is the same for the body.

Long retreats, sitting from morning till night and sometimes through the night, in order to survive I had to begin to function in a new way. Instead if imposing my will onto my body which was in such pain, instead of moving from a place of going after enlightenment, energetic flow, huge states of mind, trying to make my suffering stop!, I began to allow something greater to come to me, to shift from doing to receiving. And it was so much better than anything my small brain could have created. Not only did my body heal, but my perspective on everything shifted. I became filled with energy which clarified my mind, brought my life into oneness.

We don’t do zazen. The universe does zazen.

And what does this receiving look like? It looks like not grasping for the truth. It looks like being still and quiet with the moment, waiting… We need to set aside time to explore this. And in the body it feels like transparency. Instead of trying to create a good posture, it involves letting go of an idea of a good posture, and allowing the body to organically bloom into a good posture. Maybe it does not look like a good posture at first, and maybe there is some very old trauma in there which needs expressing. That is part of it. Being receptive involves suspension of disbelief. And it involves trust. And trust in what? Trust in the universe as harmony and truth. It is very scary at first, because we have been doing the opposite for our whole lives. Trying to stand up straight. Trying to look like everything is okay. It seems like turning our backs on everything we know, and being a real fool.

So, this process takes a great deal of courage. Courage because letting go of control brings a lot of fear. It also requires real curiosity to know what is trying to happen through the body, not just our idea. Curiosity because the way in which the universe will begin to flow through us will blow our normal way of thinking away. If we are not curious enough, then we will just stay in our heads for the rest of our lives. I can’t stress this curiosity enough. Often people who are able to give themselves to this do so because of some life changing event or experience, which has driven them to deeply question.

And the most important, is honesty. If we can be honest, our bodies as well as our whole way of being will shift very fast. And like a key, it unlocks all of the unconscious held stuff we hold in our bodies. Stuff we could never reach in the normal controlled, half conscious way of moving through the world. Hours and hours spent standing in the garden in Japan, just me and the bamboo and cherry blossoms and dirt landscape. Over and over, falling in love with this process. Putting everything on the line, in this cellular transformation, from grasping after happiness, to receiving a life and body filled up by the universe. Instead of feeling off in our bodies all the time and looking for a way to be on, or searching for a technique or a position to make us feel better, instead feeling real ease come into our bodies and life. Honesty, because what shows up will begin to change us if we listen to it. If we don’t listen, then we will never be vulnerable enough to allow this energy to flow through us, to be guided by the universe.

And in learning to receive through the body, we begin to be more harmonious with our life energy. As this happens, we start to shine more brightly. We are not as tired. As we harmonize with our bodies we begin to harmonize with our environment. We begin to find harmony with the energy of the room, the forest, the airport, the farmers’ market. If we are highly sensitive, we begin to find more ease in social situations. Instead of the environment being something to defend against or fear, we find ease on a cellular level. We know the terrain. We become more intuitive as our awareness of reality becomes more intimate. Things flow better for us. Everything comes to us. We become full and taut. We are no longer in conflict with the world. We are truly happy for no reason, fundamentally supported. This is so contrary to our normal way of being, defending, manipulating.

I remember a good friend talking about her dance training in Japan. She was walking and talking loudly with her girlfriend as she entered a room. The teacher was there and he yelled at them, “You are not dancers! A real dancer would never walk into a room like that!”. What he meant was, the dancer has to become the room they enter. They have to feel it and sense what the room is telling them. Not force their will presence onto it. The dancer has to receive the room.

It is this attitude of receptivity that has become (for the most part) my normal way of being in life. Receiving the room. Receiving the beach, receiving every situation. Walking in the woods, receiving the entirety of the forest, drinking it all down. Not reaching out to reality and trying to manipulate it. Not trying to control everything that comes my way, but allowing it to fill me up. Once we see that we don’t have to manipulate everything, to create happiness, it is life changing. We don’t have to look out there for happiness.

In Japan, when I would have tea with the Roshi, there was a certain flow to it which was a great teaching to me. My first year in the monastery, I would go in to tea and try to make jokes or to share myself with him, trying to make an impression. When I did this, he would ignore me. After a while, I saw that I was approaching the tea completely wrong. I couldn’t go in with my agenda, hoping to make him think I was so great! And this is what we basically do all the time with everyone in our everyday life. This causes a lot of pain, both physical and internal. In the tea, the Roshi would never allow this. Instead, I had to receive him in tea. I had to be in a position of receiving what he had to offer in the tea. When in this state of mind, then the Roshi would talk to me or acknowledge me. The room would change, my body would change. I felt him meet me energetically by my being open to receiving him. This is his primary way of teaching. Nonverbal energetic giving and receiving. And the whole life there was like that. It was like being forged into a receptive machine. A receiver of sublime truth.

Over time, with the Roshi, this receiving deepened our samadhi, gave us a way of being which would not deplete.

Standing or sitting in zazen in my home, when everyone in my family has gone to sleep, or before anyone is awake. All that I believe to be true vanishes. All that I understand about my body disappears. All that I am convinced must be true falls away. Although I feel that I understand how to stand here, when I actually do, I feel a flower blooming in me which I never could have predicted. And the more I listen to this flower blooming, I want to give myself to it more and more, even if it takes me down dangerous paths of pain and struggle. For I’ve have been caressed by a greater power, a grace beyond my small self. I feel filled up with the love of the universe. And this light I give my whole life to, without understanding it one bit. It’s the opposite of everything I ever thought. It is like I disappear and all that is left is God.

Thanks for reading! Good luck! You can do it!

** This post is an updated draft of a former post.

“It is a certain and necessary truth that one who resigns their will wholly to God will

catch God and bind God, so that God can do nothing but what that person wills.”

- Meister Eckhart

It’s not easy to write about experience and moving through space. It’s very strange, in fact. But a riff here in this post on walking, moving, and relating in space.

I hug my wife and ten year old daughter goodbye, and walk through the yard and then the sidewalk to the parking lot. I’ll walk today to my office. It’s only about fifteen minutes.

Advancing in space, moving forward through the garden, I am standing over the ground. But it’s more like I am wading through a luminous field, a sea of Qi. My lower body is subtly pulled into the center of the earth, my upper body pulled to the heavens. And within that is the central channel, in which I am surrendered. I am not creating it. It is more like I disappear and it shines. I relent, and am formed.

The central channel has its own velocity, its own vector of expansiveness. I am absorbed, functioning, and yet I am not concentrating on anything particular. I am not reducing things down or seeking the truth of things. I am not sending out the scouts to the environment looking for meaning

My awareness is wide open, transparent, and at the same time one-pointed. Each step is complete. Each footstep is a relationship with everything in the environment, a melding of all things. And yet, I am simply walking

At times in my absorption, in walking, absorbing into what is happening, the energy, I lose touch with up and down. My sense of inside and outside has no meaning. Everything is translucent, melodious. Framing me in space, matter of fact. Feeling everything is also a light shining through my own heart

The absorption into the process naturally creates samadhi. There is no need to create samadhi from a technique

The birds sing, the trucks go by, and they are inside of my body. I am the light dipping through the trees, the crows overhead are inside of me

I advance through space, but I don’t move. I am moving and at the same time there is no possibility of movement. All things happen, and nothing happens.

Naturally I move from my belly. What comes into my awareness in the environment, I am not reaching out to, but I am right on top of it. By not leaping out, I expand. I am in the belly but also expanded, inside out

My Lower back is full (koshi) and I am allowing the central channel to shine through the top of the head (baihui). This is an incredibly creative process. There is no direct route for this. It must be discovered and digested. I’m not talking about an idea but a cellular process.

My body at times becomes confused as I move, the joints are apparent, conflict and dialogue, the base of the skull, and then I feel into what is happening, I’ve married the experience again. We all must learn to titrate our interacting with what is happening continually, meeting each moment as it manifests. This sounds exhausting, but with time is much the opposite

The flower pierces me, the moon stamps me in emptiness. I can’t tell where I begin and the moon ends

People walking by come into the field, and I become them, am absorbed into them, am drunk down by them. Removing the barrier between self and other naturally is continually emerging. I am entwined in truth and being with others is an expression of that unfolding of truth. There is information in the field of relating which can be perceived and felt into. As someone mentioned recently in a call, it is all karma working itself out

Walking up the hill, my muscles are working, but in fact, the tanden is carrying me up the hill. My efforts cease, I surrender.

At first moving like this might feel like we’re moving forward but going backwards as we are so used to diving out with our attention. People might be very disoriented at first. It is wildly radical to be neutral in space and not reaching out for reassurance. There is a wildness in neutral which cannot be created.

When we are transparent, all things are fascinating. Light shines out of emptiness

That which does not grasp out miraculously expands

The center of the universe never moves. All things come to it

This continual rebirth in space, this fresh mind moment, cannot be held, is complete and continually reborn

The present moment is a lightning bolt, shining ten thousand miles high. Never-ending, the center of all things, could never be lost

All movement is imploded in it, and yet we move and act

Meister Eckhart taught that whoever aligns their will completely with God binds Him, because God can do nothing but what that human desires.

The environment has a texture to it, a palpable texture, and I become that texture continually. The becoming that texture is like a natural weather pattern forming. In this texture is wisdom naturally blossoming. It is not my wisdom. It is just there naturally showing up. Each moment is a revelation. There is no need for anything but what is essential. Each mind moment exploding

When we surrender, our actions contain multitudes. Act, and the entire world moves with us

I have no idea what will happen in the next moment, and yet am connected and grounded

Grasping onto an idea, I become solid and more narrow. Getting small about something, the light dims. This is clear cellular feedback. A compass to act from.

I can think, but that is honestly less interesting than what is happening already

Surrendering into this unknown is a huge process, because our tricks and manipulations give us some positive feedback. We’ve gotten far with our strategies… But we’ve got to be ruthless for the truth

Although it is an incredibly wild time of letting go and facing ourselves, we slowly trust being driven into exactly what happens, and that process brings clarity which needs no outside affirmation

For those that have deeply touched it, they’ll probably feel quite alone for a while. Like we’re off on our own, discovering something no one understands. We must have the courage to allow this to happen, instead of grasping on to something for recognition or stability. We will probably have to abandon all form and technique to discover what is essential.

It may feel as we surrender that the wind comes out of the sail of our progress. That which we perceived to give us energy, to bring us into a focused state of mind, is lost. This is normal, as our strategies have been compressing our experience, which felt like energy. Our good intentions created a pressure. But at a certain point, we’ve got to honestly face what is happening and be ready for what emerges without our expectations. Without willing something to happen. Without leaning or pushing on reality all of the time. This is a big transition. Seeing the big energy comes from letting go.

All of our bullshit makes us feel closed off from the truth, we’ll feel the brutal truth of that, and so we’ll be driven toward the way

We are given into the essential God, or what zen calls the Thing Itself

Sealing in the energy is a bit like a vacuum in space. Like you are an empty vessel which everything is pulled into through the central channel. Think about this and it’s obstructive. Look away and you’re clogged up. So you’re in this essential experience. And from that essential experience comes a different type of relating with space with people, etc. A different kind of connected unity.

So, whatever you think is happening, whatever you are trying to make happen, this is just engulfed in this vacuum. The struggle between these two forces is a natural transitional phase essential to integrating the process.

So whatever romantic imagination we have about ourselves is just obliterated in this process of disappearing into what’s happening. Acting out of that has a freedom, which is so radically different than anything we imagine.

For many people this process spontaneously begins to emerge one day and many of us are kind of like, gosh, I wish I could just go back to being sort of happy. But there’s no going back once this process begins to come through.

For the people who wonder why I’m always talking about the energy and how it relates to practice, well, unless one finds a way to mobilize this internal process and connect with everything through that, it’s just all mental and embarrassing, and those who’ve done the real internal work will sense that surface level understanding from far away. You can’t think or fake your way into piercing the heavens

Yet we’re just people walking, breathing, with our imperfections, with our biological processes, with our DNA, with some of the long-held emotional stickiness. All of that’s included. That’s not separate. We have likes and dislikes. I am slowly learning to be patient. But that isn’t the whole story. Just the opposite. It’s not that we see it and all of our issues totally disappear. We’ll still be working on our stuff for a long time. We’ll still have to get the kids fed and pay the Wi-Fi Bill. Gotta get enough kimchi into our diets, lol. We just won’t look to this type of thing for answers.

I have no interest in people talking about spiritual concepts. And Don’t tell me what someone else said. When it’s real we’ll feel it from you. I don’t want your performative spirituality. The concept you have of yourself shields us from feeling it.

It is hot today, I’d like to get to work a bit quicker. The shirt is clinging to my skin. I’m like a clown putting on a costume. A goofy fool walking to work, A ghost waving at cars as they pass, like an arrow flying through space, penetrated by all things, floating, melting, obliterated, separating heaven and earth. Walking along, living, smelling, feeling, and gone

A couple of people in my classes have asked what to do when, while doing the Qigong or Zhan Zhuang, the energetic internal process is too much?

This is a really good question, and for some people it will make complete sense, while others will have no clue what we are talking about, as we all have different Internal Processes we are working with.*

When it is all too much, it feels like the energy we are working with in our system, around us, our bodies, our essence, our feeling in space, feels overwhelmed. Our system feels over stimulated. Feels like there is too much going on, or out of control, disturbed, like a rock concert or roller coaster is happening in our system without us being able to turn it down or shut it off. We’re out to sea. We’re spacey. We’re inside out.

This is all pretty normal and actually a good thing if used and directed and relaxed into. But it can feel like we have imploded, especially in the beginning. After about a year and a half in the monastery in my twenties, I got really sick, and almost lost my eyesight. In retrospect, this was because I was not meeting my internal process, my internal momentum of energy. It was like I was grinding my internal gears all of the time, like the energy was doing something and I couldn’t match it.

Laying in the dark on the tatami, I saw that I had to sync up with this internal momentum, I had to learn to interact with it. It was like my energy and my breath had to meet, and my body had to manifest out of that. It had a speed, a power, and I had to harmonize with that. I had to meld with that, or I knew I’d be sick again and live in chaos as before. Discovering this and working with it changed everything for me. I am still guided by it at all times.

I am so grateful I had this opportunity at that point in my life to look at all this and interact with this, as so many people are dealing with similar issues but unconsciously.

Here are a few tips for exploring how to work with harmonizing this internal process.

One simple thing I often do, is to completely stop any input we are putting into the situation. Chances are we are missing what is trying to happen in our system, with our energy. We are disrupting it, going against the internal process and momentum which is moving through my system.

-So, stop what you are doing and see if you can feel movement in the system which is happening, and get out of the way. This sounds simple. But it is hidden and often moving at a pace which we cannot immediately fathom. Often extremely slow, like a car driving at us from way out in the desert.

-Does it Have a Direction?

Often there is a direction this energy is trying to move through us, and we are not paying attention to it. We are missing it. We can’t feel it yet. And we’re either hoping for a direction that the energy in our system will take, and trying to make that happen, or we unconsciously become rigid, invested in a plan of how it should go, instead of remaining open. At various times we will get a sense of how to follow this process, only to have it shift. We must adapt at that time, and with fresh awareness, allow it to continue to reveal how to open up to us.

-Let Go Into the Momentum

There might be a momentum to it, a wave moving through us. Chances are, we don’t understand that wave vector. If we did, then we would naturally allow it to open us up. This wave might feel something like a second breath. We have our normal breath, in, out, huffing and puffing. But this second breath is something very different, and we begin to understand that our breath and energy are the same thing. In time, we may discover it is there all of the time, waiting for us to listen, organizing us, healing us, opening us up if we can get out of the way.

-Feel the Tanden

When the energy feels too big, feels too raw, check back in with the Tanden. You might be surprised to discover that the base of that expansive energy is the Tanden. Like butterfly wings that extend out into space, moving and expressing, but still the root of them is in the base. It can often feel like the expansive movement of this energy is standing on top of the tanden. But we are not aware of the root. To sink into the tanden, rooted while the wild energy expresses around it. Discovering this, we are not so blown away by this seemingly out of control feeling, feeling in our system that it is all springing from the Tanden.

-Remove the Barrier

Is our system interacting with the room, and how can I harmonize with the room or the forest or the mall or wherever I am? Often if we feel too stuck, are overwhelmed in our bodies, it is good to take our awareness to the environment around us. To find a way to become one with the trees, or the room, or even the shopping mall. To remove the barrier between us and everything around us. If we harmonize with the room, then our bodies will align, will sort themselves out. We see that our bodies are just another part of the harmony of the present energetic environment.

-Faith That it is all Trying to Happen

Faith that the universe is on our side, is directing us to open up, align, deepen our state of mind, align with this great life energy. As we do these practices more, we gain faith that even if things open up, that the process will smooth out, the universe is not against us, the energy does not have to be scary. Someone told me once, “Before kensho, energy is very exciting and people have energy problems. After kensho, energy is just energy.” There is some truth to this.

-Bring it Back to Wuji

If you are doing some Non-directed movement and the energy gets too far out there, it is good to do some simple Zhan Zhuang practices to root the energy, to align, to bring us back to the center. I find that the dialogue between structure and unstructured is a great lively conversation. If one dominates too long, then it gets lopsided.

-What is really Happening?

For some of us, there is an urgency to working with this internal process. It is not just something interesting, but something that must be done in this life.

What I am trying to do in my classes is to inspire people to catch that fever which drives us to discover what it actually is that is walking around, standing, sitting, laying down, etc.

If we can discover that great life energy shining through us, it might shock us, penetrate us deeply, and then our lives will be about interacting with that, sharpening it, cultivating it, sharing it with others.

Three things have guided my practice for many years.

-Curiosity

We have to be so curious about what is actually happening. Not our idea. Not our fantasy or even our wish. What is this moment revealing right now. The thing itself.

-Honesty

We have to be incredibly honest. To look at this stuff, to open up ourselves, is really difficult. It is very frightening. But we have to be honest. To face what is happening. Be able to adjust, to adapt, to be moved by this great life energy. We have to be honest with this moment. And continue that honesty all of the time. This becomes easier and easier, as we see the gifts this huge moment reveal. Or we’ll be stuck in our mozo (thought patterns) forever. We’ll stay in our holding patterns.

-Courage

When we have to face ourselves, we’ve got to have courage. Things do not just open up without us being brave enough to face them. Trauma, pain, epigenetic stuff, birth trauma, unresolved karma, physical injuries, etc, it will often only open up if we completely bare all our of ourselves to the moment. It is often like grabbing hold of this moment with the utmost sincerity and allowing it to pull you through to the other side. But I can say that it is worth it. And then of course, the moment will change.

It is often like being molded, like the universe is a blacksmith pummeling us. For years, my mantra was Dozo (Please go ahead), to the universe. Do with me what you will. Just trying to get out of the way. It may feel very strange at times. But what a chance! I must say that having energy be too wild is actually such a blessing if we can learn to lasso it, to ride the ox, to surf its grace. To open up all of our senses and allow the universe to flow through us! To let all of the horses run free! I am excited for you all! I’m excited to keep going myself forever. Please keep me posted. Questions welcome. Lots of love!

I am also open for private consultation in person or online.

*None of this is meant to be medical advice. If you are struggling mentally or physically, you should see a medical doctor.

I am writing to announce our next Quarterly Month Long Online Immersion, July 7th-August 4th.

Please RSVP if you’ll be attending

We’ve been doing these Monthling Intensives since October of 2020. It’s been a heck of a ride! Some of you have been with me from the very first online classes when covid hit. In that difficult time, we found a new type of sangha, a new way to relate across the world. We’ve been blessed to have found ways to practice daily together since.

I’ve seen profound changes in people who have sincerely given themselves to these practices. It’s amazing to see it unfold.

The Month Long Immersions are an incredibly potent container for digging into our practice with the support of a powerful sangha, while being able to go on with our daily lives. Everyone has to find their own way to engage, and participate as they are able. No one except me will make it to every class, Lol!

Practices will include Zhan Zhuang, Non-Directed Body Movement, Qigong, Seated Meditation, Noguchi Taiso, etc

We’ll have our five online classes a week, plus the discord group for discussion and Practice Rooms

The Practice Rooms are such an important part of the Immersion.

A member led class once a week as well as Special Topic Practice Rooms

A weekly theme to help motivate and deepen our process

A Mini Retreat

Buddy Groups for Support and Community

At least 4 Group Practice discussion calls via Zoom

https://coreyhessbodytherapy.com/purchase-packages/p/month-long-intensive

**** I will not turn anyone away if they cannot pay full price. And anyone who would like to help offer scholarship financial support, that is much appreciated.

I hope to see you!!

Testimonials:

“I had an immensely meaningful and productive experience in the month-long immersion with Corey. He presents a straightforward, approachable set of physical practices within which there is an endless potential for growth, exploration, and opening. Corey artfully weaves structured practices and open-form movement in such a way that all bases are covered; stabilizing practices fortify the container in which the subtleties of the inner dance can flourish, and the full permission to explore (in Non-Directed Body Movement) permits novel realizations and latent patterns to emerge, articulate, and resolve. I have been engaged in various somatic/movement-based practices for almost two decades, but in the last few years my embodiment practice has lost momentum as I have been roaming the abstract realms of academia. Thankfully, the immersion with Corey has reignited my practice, and I feel reoriented toward a vitality and fullness that I recall from some of my earliest intimations of the mysteries of embodied experience. The fountain is flowing again, and I am eager to continue exploring the grounded, elegant set of tools I have gained.”

--Carter

I love the classes because they are an invitation for me to go deeper into what is really real, and to inquire into my experience, “what wants to come through”. It helps me cut through all the little dramas of my life that seem so big and insurmountable when they occur in my day to day. The structure and guidance of the class help me drop into the reality of my experience, where these dramas disappear, and I’m exposed to a truth and a way of being that is bigger than my self. From there, the inquiry “what does life want from me? what is trying to come through in my life” leads to such a saner and more practical approach to life than my normal way of handling these little dramas.

--Chris

Here are two photos from our recent retreat North of Montreal:

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There are a couple of different backgrounds people have who come to work with me. Generally, it is the Zen practitioners and the Non Zen Practitioners, with some wild cards thrown in! This post is about how we explore working with these different flavors.

Zen Folks Group

I see a lot of Zen practitioners and teachers. In some ways, these retreats, for those people, are an opportunity to begin to touch this true transformation process beyond the form, as it is common for people to think the form and the essence are entwined and the same.

Also, so many of the lineages of Zen have not brought this energetic essence aspect of true realization as they have spread from the East. Many of the people I work with are even teachers in their own lineages, but lack the essence, have found something lacking in their process, and so they come to do that type of deep homework. To feast further into the mystery, do the internal cooking, touch this source of what they are, knowing that is what will truly help others.

So, many of the people who work with me have come from a Zen background. I am teasing them out of their assumptions, attempting to free them from the constraints, the baggage they have taken on about how practice must be done. I get that primordial huge energy to open up in them, get them cooking, and they begin to realize something beyond Zen, which of course is what Zen is truly about.

Often with these people, I am drawing out the wild wholesale aspect they have locked down in their process. I am getting them to wake the dragon in their experience which they’ve often used the structure and form to control. I am getting the horses all running free. This is an amazing rebirth to witness. These people often know how to profoundly focus. They know how to be still. They know how to do the Zen grind. They have often done deep meditation. But they sense something lacking, something essential and primal missing in the manifesting of their process. I give them the opportunity to find something there when the form has been dropped. When we are interacting with our experience without controlling it. To find something there no matter if the form is supporting them.

Often with Zen practitioners, they have used the form to help them to dissociate or to help them to demand reality be a certain way. Or as a perfect formula to abide by that they think if they do it perfectly and by the book it will allow them to get from point A to point B. In these retreats, I am pushing them to honestly look at this. Teasing people away from the love affair with the form, the aesthetic bias, the culture, the heroic stories, the permission for obsession and power games, etc, is no small task.

Often in the form, Zen practitioners find a medium to finally channel their intensity into. But instead of becoming free in their actions (as is the point), the form can become a medium to bind and control their intensity, reinforcing it in a kind of self affirming container they can’t see out of.

People take on all kinds of baggage in training, along with the wonderful aspects they drop.

The Other Side

The other side of who I work with, and I am so happy to do this, is to work with people who are not Zen practitioners. Some have real meditation backgrounds. But many have not. They may be dancers, Sufi practitioners, Yogis, martial artists, embodiment teachers, various Buddhist practitioners like Vajrayana or Vipassana, eclectic spiritual interests, Twitter Posters, plant medicine explorers, artists, emotional and trauma release therapists, Jhana enthusiasts, etc.

These folks often are coming in from a different mindset. Some have real practice under their belt, and they can plug in very well. But others have dabbled here and there, but have mostly just read a lot and window shopped around, curating their own ideas of awakening from various puzzle pieces. Many come in with their own assumptions about practice, retreats, healing, awakening, etc. So that’s quite a mix of people at these retreats!

Many times with the people in the second group, the structure of the retreat, the quiet, the stillness, the demanded honesty, the spartan aspect, the disinterest in their story, their compensations, the disinterest in their identity masks or resume of practices they have done, is a bit bewildering. No one is there affirming the spiritual avatar they have created about themselves or their awakening story. We just tell them to stand there, sit, and see what is truly happening. Don’t talk. I don’t care about all that you are demanding I acknowledge. I don’t care about the contract about yourself you are demanding I sign… This is quite shocking.

I am giving them a chance to zero in more deeply into their experience, prior to the noise they live in, to find something burning below their radar, which will transform them. This is so incredibly radical. There is usually some protest, some mutiny. Some inability to be quiet or some performative rehearsed speeches, some posturing, some tantrums, attempted alpha practitioner coup d’état, painted into a corner, at wits end.

But something begins to move through them. Something which cannot be explained or rationalized, something beyond explanation. They begin to feel they are animated by something beyond their understanding, their entire being is being pulled into something beyond them, and this is revolutionary to them. They might not be conscious of it at first, but feel different. They begin to get quiet. They stop chasing me around asking me questions. They stop blaming everyone around them. It stops them in their tracks. They get more real. All of that noisiness, bouncing around, finally has some gravity to it which magnetizes them into their process. This cannot be figured out.

Everyone is a mix of both types above. We are all discovering this deep process beyond understanding. Something so beautiful.

I have had the huge learning curve of learning to slowly work with people in retreats from both polarities, with wildly different perspectives and needs. I am learning to manage it! LOL! Herding the cats is a wild process!

The work we are doing is important, I think. For people to discover the essence of what we truly are, in creative ways, breaking our assumptions, in this very body, in our normal clothes, beyond religion, touching this Great Life Energy and bringing that to the world in their own unique way.

For the Zen folks, maybe they choose to continue to deepen within the Zen form and become great teachers, giving lectures about koans or shikantaza, etc. The world definitely needs it, if they’ve done the real homework. That wasn’t my karma, but I respect it. Or they may end up working at Trader Joes or being stay at home moms, connecting with each person they meet from a profoundly interesting place, giving people hope about life, covertly cleaning the gunk from the world’s eyes.

And the folks who are not Zen practitioners, well, I hope we start a process within them that continues, matures, cooks down, and comes to a beautiful fruition. The world needs it so much, in all of its flavors.

My entire being responding to something like truth was a very important experience for me. I saw that my cells, when confronted with the energy of something coming from a place of true wisdom, would come alive in that truth. This, I would say, was the beginning of a process which became the path of my life.

These days, I’m very interested in what is happening. This thing right now which is manifesting. I am living here, in this ever evolving light forming.

At some point, my struggle and investigations led me to inevitably see that I could discover the truth in each moment with my entire being. I could feel this. At first I did not have the internal sensitivity to work with this. Luckily, I had a unique teacher, who could guide me in this process. Over time, I saw that each moment was full of wisdom. Each moment was whole. Each moment was complete and ever changing. Each moment was pulling me into it, and in that pulling in, was wisdom. So over time I learned to allow my body to respond to the light, this wisdom of each moment and harmonize with that.

At first this is foreign. Unknown. I touched it only sometimes. I could not track it. But over time, I began to be able to be ushered in by each moment physically, energetically, with all of my cells. This is a process which is like tearing down a whole city of assumptions. Suspension of disbelief, and being led into the unknown. It is not for the faint of heart, but in fact is happening right now to everyone. It is really just what we are. Each mind moment of truth arising.

In each moment, there is being with what is happening, or not. Light is being with what is happening. Darkness is not. In truth, we could never truly be in darkness, but we hold ourselves against what is happening.

I don’t leave what is happening. I am not with this, and then I take a break. I don’t practice and then not practice. My life is this yolking in this present moment, shining to the heavens. This is not an endurance contest I’ve somehow found a magical key to grasp onto. We think it is over there, so we tire trying to make it happen. In truth, being with what is happening is alchemy enough. We all have enough energy right now, in this bag of bones, to realize it. Once we see how huge the present moment is, our faith will never truly fade.

When we see that all things are naturally empty, we see the luminosity of all things. Life comes alive, we can navigate the spaces in between everything. We truly are living in this sea of Qi. Everything talks to us, lets us into its secret. We think it’s a concept, so we don’t feel it.

My experience of life is that of feeling the truth of each moment, and resonating with that. I am continually meeting that. I am continually morphing with what is happening. This is my compass. This is where Grace is bathed in. This is the world of light dancing, the world of Dharma, the life of essence. I have little interest in talking about Buddhist doctrine or, really, spiritual texts.

I am walking through this luminous world, meeting each thing as it arises, like a goofy child. I am not perfect. I don’t look spiritual all of the time. I’m just going about my day, being with each thing.

We think we need to be spiritual all of the time, and so are slaves to shifting moods. Happy one moment, sad the next. The narrative I was writing about myself got ruined when I spoke. We are slaves to good and bad, and so we close the door on reality when it changes.

But each moment arising is enough. Each thing, giving ourselves to it, nothing else. Like a luminous pearl, we can be in the middle of what is happening. The center of all things.

I hope this encourages some people out there to drop their theories, find the shining truth of what is happening, and begin to allow it to transform you. It will take time, maturing, honesty, immense creativity, and courage. But if you can do this, you’ll find your own path.

Lots of love! Hugs!

Core

We have to fall in love with our practice. We have to find a way that what we are doing when we practice is exactly what we want to be doing, and then practice will begin to be what we are doing all of the time, whether we are doing it formally or going through our daily lives.

If practice is a chore, or it is boring, or if you’d rather be doing something else, then I think maybe it is good to reassess what is going on in your process.

What do we really want? Truly want? And how can practice be a way to work on that? How can all of our lives be a part of that?

Maybe you are suffering. You have seen really impressive people who have been practicing a long time, or you’ve read some books about enlightenment, and so you agree to put in some time. But in truth, you’d rather just enjoy life or spend time in other ways, and so practice is something to get out of the way in order to live.

For me, I did not care about Buddhism really or care about the Japanese clothing, or the bells or the aesthetic of Zen. I did not like seated zazen at first. I did not like the unstable or manipulative people in the scene. But at some point, a sempai (more experienced practitioner in the Sangha) told me I had to love my training. I had to find a way to love it. And I really tried to digest that, as I respected this sempai friend.

I set off to change my way of being in practice. I tried to find a way to interact with my seated zazen in a way that I enjoyed it. To enjoy the meals and the chanting, to enjoy the work of the monastery. In fact, I began to change my way of being from someone who was against life, to someone using my life to deepen and explore the joys of training. So the idea of loving my training helped me to open my heart to it. Somehow I had the notion that I had to be suffering in some way in order to get enlightened. If I was enjoying it too much, then I’d be compromising it. I’d become soft in my training.

As I turned 180 degrees around in my training, I saw that everything began to give me energy. I loved working on the grounds. I loved the chanting and made it beautiful. And in making it beautiful, something else began to shine. I made it beautiful, and a joy began to shine. I began to be happy for no reason. I couldn’t figure out why I was happy. It was as if I had taken the present moment, and learned how to meet it fresh. I’d fallen in love with it.

And the more I did this, the more my tanden opened up, the more my body opened up. I began to meet the environment in a harmonious way. I began to move differently. My Qigong became much deeper. Whisking a bowl of tea became big, a way to feel into how to connect with this great life energy and joy. My practice became so exciting! Such an adventure! I began to see that I could feel the immense present moment, I could become intimate with it, allow it to guide me, feel it like texture, melt into it. I felt as if I were now living in a sea of Qi around me, supporting me, filling me up.

The present moment was ripe with alchemy. And gifts began to emerge out of this meeting, this alchemy. The world became alive. I saw that things I felt were solid were not solid. I saw that reality was much more precious, much more rich and magical. I also saw that any hard beliefs I had were dissolved in this field of light. And I found the love I had so longed for my whole life. A sense of connection to life. I found the universe guiding me in every cell, and it felt like my life became Grace.

Truly meeting life and feeling it, loving it, began to help others, as I began to shine in mysterious ways which surprised people. So by me falling in love with the training, that began to help others to see that they could fall in love with the training, and with life. Practice was no longer something to dip into and then leave when I got the chance. Practice became a seamless shining of joy. A joy not dependent on circumstances or bound to a specific time or place.

“Your true nature is bright”, the Roshi would tell me, and I found it myself (and we all have to find it ourselves). And that same brightness became a light, a guide to go deeper into the practice, until it led me like a divining rod to some big permanent changes. So anyway, if you don’t like practice, maybe you need to find a way to love your practice. That is a personal exploration, and requires a lot of creativity (Kufu). It can’t be someone else’s practice. Or something you read about and are imitating. It’s got to be something you want to be doing. We’ll be fools together, laughing and goofing off in this beautiful soup of reality. Thanks and good luck!