Spiritual but not Religious

I have a friend who reads my blog and he asked me what I mean when I talk about the  full human potential. He also made a comment that when I talk about morality it sounds a little religious. As many of you know I was raised a Jehovahs Witness and it is very common for people raised in that cult or many others like it to shy away from anything spiritual or that carries anything that resonates religious. When I left society three years ago I was very disillusioned with religion. Once a cult dupes you into believing in their brand of religion, and supports it by asking you to have faith, you cannot believe in any other ideology, religious or otherwise, simply by having faith. You have to have some sort of evidence. Something to prove the validity of what someone is telling you. Otherwise we aint buying it.

In my journey to understand life’s deeper truths, my path led me to begin studying tai chi. I have since become a very spiritual and moral person. What do I mean by spiritual? I mean that I am spending more and more time developing my inner self, as opposed to a materialist that may spend more of their time developing things outside themselves. But what exactly does developing the inner self entail? Since I just got back from a week at the YMAA retreat center training tai chi, let me share what a day was like and perhaps you will understand what I mean by inner self.

Every morning we begin at 6 am with a 45 minute meditation. I have been meditating for three years now and the stages of meditation for me have been 1) regulate the body so that I can sit in comfort, 2) regulate the breathing so that it is smooth and fluid, 3) regulate the mind until there is no outside thoughts or distractions. These aspects of meditation are required to be able to look inside. Once you can calm your body, and quiet your mind from external things, you can begin to look inside yourself and begin to ask what am I? How do my joints feel, how does my liver and spleen feel. Am I tense anywhere, and if so why?

After the meditation we stretch from a sitting position. We extend our legs to let the blood circulate better and stretch our arms above our head kind of like a yawn. We bend to the right, arms above us and stretch the muscles around the liver, and we stretch to the left to stretch the muscles around the spleen. Then we lean to the right to compress the spleen and open the liver, then to the left to compress the liver and open the spleen. We then put our arms behind our back and compress our kidneys slightly and then tap on them to stimulate circulation. Afterwards we wave our spine, feeling each vertebrae move. Allowing the bodies natural fluids to lubricate each small bone in our spines. The entire sitting stretch takes us about 15 minutes and then we immediately go outside.

Outside I usually did speed training with the shaolin students, where we would spar for five minutes without blinking and constantly moving. Other tai chi students would do a series of  fast paced movements designed to get the blood flowing through the entire body. afterwards we would do a series of qigong exercises designed to create better circulation in all of our organs. Through a series of gentle movements we actually message the organs with the muscle and fascia around them. This takes us to breakfast where we eat fresh vegetables from our organic garden and eggs from the chickens that live with us. I usually take this opportunity to tell Dr. Yang a joke. One time he offered me ginger, and I told him I was afraid of catching ginger-vitas. Due to the language barrier this escalated quickly with him telling me the chinese had eaten ginger for 4000 thousand years and he had never heard of ginger-vitas, and didn’t believe it was a real disease… lol. How right you are master yang, but that was funny hahaha. I kill myself.

From 9-12 we did tai chi. We trained stances, push hands, tai chi ball, tai chi qigong, and the long form. In tai chi what really takes time is learning how to be completely relaxed. This is vital since tai chi is and internal martial art. When I train and employ the same strategy that we used in meditation. 1) regulate the body, 2) regulate the breathing, 3) regulate the mind. What occurs is a moving meditation. Slowly you begin to feel each tendon moving. Slowly the breathing no longer is perceivable and instead you begin to feel that your whole body is breathing. The less you are concerned with external things, the clearer you can see internal things. You begin to feel the interconnectedness of your whole body. You become aware of the blood rushing into certain areas. It did not take me long to question how I had lived so long never having been aware of what was going on inside myself. At certain points over the last two years of tai chi training I have had strange emotional break throughs, where as I attempt to let go of tension I begin to feel sad or angry. I am now realizing that our bodies and our emotions are more symbiotic then I had once thought.

At noon we eat a healthy lunch and take a nap. Our break is from 12-2. After break we do body conditioning. This can be hiking, stretching, doing weapons forms like the sword or spear. Also this includes massage, yoga, or even readying and studying on how to heal a certain injury. I have been dealing with an old back injury so spent allot of time working on that. I used a foam roller to loosen muscles that were causing tension in my t bands, hips, pelvis, and lumbar. I also got 2 massages which were awesome and thank you to my masseuses. At 7 we all sit down for a home cooked meal with quality food. I usually tell Dr. Yang a joke and he usually tells me I talk to much to be a tai chi master. Laughter however can manifest energy, so Ha!

I wanted to share with you a day up there so that you can understand what I mean by the true human potential. This is the high level of health and vitality you can achieve by paying attention to your self. To understanding what you are. By ridding yourself of stress and tension. By living in the moment and truly living, and not just existing. This is what I mean by being spiritual and hopefully now you can see the difference between that and religious. In my spiritual path I want to know what I am, and how I as an organic form of life on this planet can connect with other forms of live. How does bioelectricity create changes in my body when my mind is concentrated and focused. How does that sensation parallel to prayer and could it be the same thing? By having an intention your mind can move the bioelectricity in your body. This has been proven by taking cat scans showing the brain activity of people praying. What is really happening tho? That is what I am trying to find out. Without having to believe in religion. If the person inside of my body, the one that isn’t thinking of sex or cars or whiskey, the one who is always aware of this moment, that is present. If that person can be called my spirit. The one who determines the path of this avatar I live in. If that is my spirit then I would say I am spiritual because I want to know more about that person.

I see great value in religion. I think that getting a community together that is moral and spiritual is a very positive thing. If we all have energy, then coming together and singing and putting love into the world is a good thing. Most religious people I know are good people. Now that the world is getting so small it is easier to uncover the true history of a religion. Where it came from and even who started it. For me and my friends who were raised in a cult, religion took our families from us.; whose own mothers won’t talk to them because they don’t believe the same thing there parents believe. We just aren’t going to believe in anything simply by faith. That didn’t work very well for us. Some became atheist or agnostic, but for me, I don’t believe religion is the creative imagination of man. I think that religion is generally the ideas of a very introspective person (i.e. Jesus, Buddha, ect.) that have evolved into there current forms. 

I don’t think tai chi is the true religion, because it is not a religion. The reason I like tai chi is because it was developed by mountain men over a thousand years who were constantly asking the question, what am I? There is no fear in my life of asking questions. Dr. Yang tells all of his students to put a question mark after everything he says and everything we hear. Ask, is this true or not. Do not believe by faith, but by investigation and experimentation. So in my path, and in my blog I can say I tried this and this happened. I tried this mental exercise and this resulted. That is my path and it is a very beautiful one. There are other paths. Perhaps you are religious or you follow the path of some yogis from india who also spent generations asking who am I. Maybe you follow a very spiritual preacher who is righteous and has good advice. There is no wrong spiritual path as long as it leads you to self discovery. As long as it helps develop you into a more fulfilled person. For any person who follows my blog, maybe an outcast of a cult or just a person who wonders about the meaning of life, this is my path and I thank you for letting me share it with you.