To Whom It May Concern,
I woke up this morning inspired me to write about a Chinese term Gongjing. Cultivating this state to its fullest can be very rewarding. Gongjing incorporates calm, trusting, openness, love, gratitude, reverence, humility, and true respect for life. It replaces all the defensive patterns that mess with our relationships with others and ourselves. It replaces wanting and brings it back to our natural state of having, being and enjoyment of what is versus looking at what is wrong in life. We think that in order to create change that we have to rail and fight against what is, tightening and resisting, fixing, and complaining. Remember the little Chinese torture toy? If you pull your fingers apart in resistance you get stuck, but relax and bring your fingers together and the little paper toy releases your fingers and you are free.
I sometimes think it becomes a habit to feel our feelings to the point of indulgence? Or is the intent to express our feelings in order to get rid of them and give them to somebody else who doesn’t want them either. We struggle, never yielding our deeply held position, obdurate to the end. Starting with a state of Gongjing and resting as that natural state removes the need for agreement or seeking our worth in our deeply held beliefs, leaving us more able to catch the next trigger that is in need of clearing.
There are a few tricks to cultivating this state of Gongjing. Qigong is my favorite way, but we can also at the first sign of discomfort arises use these ways to bring a state of peace. First allowing instead of resisting what is happening. I like tapping the points of the forehead and temples and cheekbones and then the tapping moves to the chest, all across the chest until there is a release and a deep breath that dislodges the glue that attaches the feeling to the cause of that feeling which is thought gone rogue. You can also roll down first your head and then your neck and roll down the whole spine and then slowly roll-up. Ask me how to do Squats. For a moment relief is available. If you can get calm enough and release the feeling instead of going into it you can identify the thought and see it for what it is, a trigger of a long-held misguided pattern that has repeated over and over like a broken record. That thought has to be faced and replaced with Gongjing. Trust has deeper and deeper meanings as the word is explored and implemented. Try this way and see if actually facing instead of defending or explaining is a real way to actually change long-held patterns that have kept our lives less than joyful, a state we deserve, our natural state of comfort and fulfillment, the state of Gongjing.