Shen-Consciousness
On this level the foot couple has made some surprising changes to my perceptions and understanding. The mere activity of seeking my feet with my mind and then proceeding to refine and solidify these sensations by engaging processes that extend throughout the body in an ascending fashion is something that has in and of itself refined my understanding of my own consciousnesses and its components.
Watching my awareness grow and clarify as a result of engaging my focus to concentrate on sensations in my feet while ignoring everything else is a cool experience. The mind becomes more apparent to itself by engaging with the body in these ways. It was around this time that sifu began to again point out the importance of beginner’s mind to me in terms of the danger that past perceptual models present by limiting the scope of the training by reducing to more of what is already known. And so I really have tried to incorporate the ignore factor in this endeavor to maintain a beginner’s mind.
Around this time the course also started to present the idea of ‘non-interference’ which made me think about whether a beginner’s mind is one that doesn’t interfere with the process of learning by ignoring all irrelevant factors to the pursuit at hand, including what one might already know? This has made sifu’s emphasis on ‘light Yi’ make more sense. As I continue to engage with and observe this process I see how my ‘heavy’ intent to make something happen during training only slows the happening of anything down. As such my role as ‘non-interferer’ in this process begins to emerge.