I started Qi Gong training this week. It has opened me up to experiencing the energy just as I had hoped it would. I no longer fear this energy, I crave it. I have learned a lot and am bursting with insights and understandings. There is a part of me that is so grateful that I get to remember these things while I still have time in my life, yet there is another part of me that says, "oh, duh, that's what my Sensei was trying to get me to understand 20 years ago." However, I know that neither of these thoughts matter, that I am exactly right on time.
As I connect to the energy around me, the strongest realization I have is that energy is power. As a young martial artist in Danzan Ryu, I was able to tap into this power. At times it terrified me and all I wanted to do was shut it off. I made it my life's mission to learn to work the switch so that I could control whether I wanted to turn it off or on. That lead to another beautiful revelation; it's all just energy and it's all right here. Am I connected to it? Am I using it well? It's not so much how do I turn it off or on, it's more about how do I tap into it.
So many discoveries. As a young martial artist in Danzan Ryu, I loved how it felt to have a really great connection on the mat. I could feel the power. Now I know you can only feel the power, you can't force it, it just is. But we must learn to use it well, to harness and manage it. I had a professor who talked about the consequences of not using it, how it leads us down a path of self destruction. I had to experience this for myself. Now I know.
My final realization is that I have spent the past ten years trying to get back to this place where I was a powerful woman. Now I understand that we can't go backwards, there is only forward. Just as it was perfectly designed. In going forwards, what will emerge from my path? Perhaps old connections and friends are divinely placed in my future, perhaps not. Either way, I have found that the way "back" is not back in time, not back to something we "had" and then "lost." The only way back is coming back to ourselves, where all the power is. Power is energy, the energy of life, this we call Ki Energy, "the substance which makes up life." This is the power of creation, use it well.
