Stop Pushing
A student came to his master with a problem. He was having a recurring dream that was frustrating him. In the dream he walks across a field to a wall, with a gate, between him and the next field. He knows that he needs to be in the next field but that he is not allowed to climb over the gate or the wall. But, no matter how hard he pushes, the gate refuses to open. Night after night, week after week and month after month he had walked to that gate only to find it barred. Oh, what a problem. What was he to do?
The master had a quiet laugh, remembering himself as a tiro, before he told the student that the gate opens inwardly, towards him, and that he must stop pushing and needs to step back in order to open the gate.
All too often, when things are not going the way that we want or need, we persist with the same habitual patterns in the vain hope that they will carry us forward. If we cannot stop, review and adapt we get stuck. We look to others for the answers that we already hold but access to those answers is blocked by rigidity.
Step Back
The next time you have a problem try stepping back from it and stop pushing at it. If you keep looking at the problem you are feeding it and weakening yourself. Step back, you know what it looks like, see the outcome that you wish in your mind’s eye. Focus on that positive outcome and feed it, gaining strength as you do. The route to that outcome is there but it never seems to be in a straight line………… Keep seeing the positive outcome and that meandering route, with its junctions, will be easier to follow.
We are all familiar with the term “sleep on it”. That saying was born from wisdom and variations of it can be found in the words of sages world-wide. Let your brain get out of the way and let your consciousness (Higher Self, Shen, etc. Whatever you wish to call it.) whisper the answer in your ear.
Like so many other snippets of wisdom there is more than one lesson to be found here. Taken in relation to Qigong, Shiatsu, etc. you should always be prepared to sit back and allow the space necessary to let the Qi flow, let the work that has already been done take effect.