I'm really tired and not in the mood to fight with this laptop, but I wanted to write some quick thoughts before I hit the showers, do some reading, and fall asleep. I'm going to say this, though...ILC has everything that I've been looking for in it. I have dabbled in a lot of martial arts, but if I could live in a community with ILC people, I would gladly drop everything.
What makes me say this? Well, I have spent the day with Sigung. He's talked with me and everyone else openly about everything within the system. I was allowed to watch people test for student levels 1 and 4 today. One thing that sticks out in my head (and Sifu said something along the same lines) "It doesn't matter if you believe in Macrocosmic Orbit or not, the channels are there, if you do the practice, you will feel the energy for yourself."
I remember attending a Taiji seminar once where the facilitator said,"You won't be able to manifest any real power from this posture until you've opened up your Macrocosmic orbit." After that statement, there was a look like "oops, I didn't mean to say that" and nothing else was mentioned for the remainder of the seminar.
I'm really tired of "the secrets" when it comes to Taiji. I've heard that there are no secrets, only hard work-- but does it really matter when someone is working hard at all the wrong stuff?
Anyway, I have no idea what the future holds. When I get home, I feel like just focusing on studying hard for my classes, training the few clients I have, and spending the rest of my time on kungfu...and by kungfu I mean, ILC. I don't know what to do regarding my folks, but my family in AZ has been asking me to consider moving back out there. To be honest, I would rather be out that way with lots of people to spin with rather than trying to start my own group.
It was really cool today to have so many different people to spin with-- everyone was helpful, and everyone was just a little bit different...one person would spin hard and heavy, someone else would spin soft, someone was my same height, someone else was very very tall and very very soft, someone else was just solid and could have easily overpowered me but didn't...
Well, I'm typing in runon sentences now. All I can say is that I hope to reach a point where I can spend some serious time training with lots of good (and not so good) people. I'm looking forward to seeing what we will learn tomorrow!
Also, I was really surprised how small Sigung really is. I mean he still looks powerful in person, but he was much smaller than I expected...of course when he really moves...well..yeah...he can mooove!
