Getting lost in infinity

Practicing martial arts forms on the deepest level manifests your cosmic kung fu training teachers. They train you. They are the cosmic ancient masters and their accumulated experiences are held in two different places, one in suspended animation in your DNA and second in the specific martial patterns. Once these are linked, the secrets can be unlocked through a deep visceral training of the ancient forms. 

After I was done with fighting highschool bullies, I realized fighting is not healthy. I ran to the Yin side to pursue the arts. I had grown up in an artistic household and thought this path would offer me the most out of life. It seemed an exciting choice and coincidentally not much different than martial arts with its physicality of moving the brush, charcoal, or chisel.

 Again, I heard those ancient voices but there were also voices of temptation like Lorelei whispering to travellers in the woods. I was soon coaxed into territories deeper than I could fathom, listening to the whisperings of lost souls whose threads were not connected to the ancient voices, my tether was cut and I was free floating in infinite space.

Floating in limitless space you brush up against those who are also untethered and there you can experience extreme connection but it is only temporary. Everything seems to fall apart and nothing lasts. Although this is true for much of the things found in life, there are however, some things that are rock solid and indestructible. Religions speak of such structures but, words can only be of little help. 

In martial forms, we walk with the ancient masters without form and our souls touch their footsteps. Those footsteps lead us to the energetic cathedral which forms the structure of the universe. This is indestructible and always changing.This is the place to reside. 

Chris Aloia, July 21, 2020

I Literally Walked into Sacred Geometry

In teaching Tai Chi to older adults it is best to combine teaching the internal principles along with the form, which means you are basically reteaching people how to walk and move. After warm-ups, I have everyone pick a linoleum tile and place the feet heel to heel in a right angle on a corner on a tile. We stand like that for a moment and I have them take a step forward with their right foot, and about 4" over with their left foot, leaving their right on the square but turned at a 45 degree angle. As you are reading this you might be trying to visualize a bunch of older adults assembled in rows standing on a grid-like pattern.

I have been teaching Tai Chi to older adults since 2001 and it took me awhile to catch on how to difficult it is for older adults to get into a bow stance and especially when turning 180 degrees with clear aligned movement. After so many students having difficulty I started using the tiles on the floor along with a cardinal directional sign on each of the four walls. As I started to create these methods of teaching people to do Tai Chi I realized that there was a geometric logic to how we align ourselves to the earth. When looking at the illustration (above) you can see one possible way sacred geometry developed. If you stay in one place facing north and turn around in a complete circle it will be 360 degrees. Then going back to basic geometry you can divide that up an infinite amount of ways but typically we divide it up first in quarters and then in eighths, hence the origin of the bagua (Pictured below).

That inspired me to seek out geometric relationships in Tai Chi, moreover, when I was exploring Tai Chi I became aware of Feng Shui and their usage of the bagua.  I also knew that the original 13 postures of Tai Chi are patterned off of the very same bagua symbol; eight main postures and five secondary ones (pictured below). These connections made me appreciate Tai Chi even more because the whole Taoist system worked in concordance with one another. There was not too many contradictions, although there are smaller discrepancies with certain assignments of what fits into which area, for instance, an animal and an emotion and actually everything in existence is prescribed to each cardinal direction.   

As the caption states in the 13 postures of Tai Chi, there are 8 energies and directions, which are also added to the elemental directions of the 5 elements, north, south, east, west, and center.

The early Chinese people created a compass (pictured below) that linked up the waxing and the waning of the moon with the 8 directions and this was used to predict floods and then more was added on to it. The I Ching or Book of Transformation was also created from there. The early Chinese people figured that significant events occur during the seasonal changes, i.e. floods, winter, harvest season etc. The idea is that by understanding the natural forces one could prepare ahead of time and avoid more acute emergencies.

Other cultures have discovered many of the same ideas; stonehenge follows the same circular formations as does the Kabbalah with its numerical structure. The phases of the moon are based in reality but the socially constructed aspect of attributing certain emotions, elements, animals to each phase is where there is not cross cultural corroboration. This doesn’t mean it is not worth studying. I view it more as an art form that deserves respect and consideration. An interesting fact is how deeply our psychology and physiology is tied to night and day. Circadian rhythms and seasonal patterns are strong determinants of hormonal secretions and

they play a major role in our psychological functioning as well of the well being of our vital organs.   

As you can see there are many connections with codified symbols found in Taoism that connect the heavens to man and to the earth. Another example of this intense connection is  the 64 hexagrams, 32 yin and 32 yang found in the I Ching, and their exact match with the 64 codons found in DNA.

Here is the conclusion of a paper on the connection between DNA and the I Ching:

“ —We defragged three I Ching representations of the genetic code while emphasizing Nirenberg's historical finding. The synthetic genetic code chromosomes obtained reflect the protective strategy of enzymes with a similar function, having both humans and mammals a biased G-C dominance of three H-bonds in the third nucleotide of their most used codons per amino acid, as seen in one chromosome of the i, M and M' genetic codes, while a two H-bond A-T dominance was found in their complementary chromosome, as seen in invertebrates and plants. The reverse engineering of chromosome I' into 2D rotating circles and squares was undertaken, yielding a 100% symmetrical 3D geometry which was coupled to a previously obtained genetic code tetrahedron in order to differentiate the start methionine from the methionine that is acting as a codifying non-start codon”

The depth of early Chinese people is astounding, even today this at least 4000 year old symbol still influences and explains phenomena in our lives. I think the reason why is that these early Taoist masters discovered a spiral network of energy vectors that determine all growth on this planet. They called these energy vectors “Chi” or “Qi.” Admittedly, the word Qi did not arrive until later years after the I Ching was created, nonetheless is it currently used in this manner to describe these energetic vectors and hence the 8 energies of the Tai Chi movement. So from a simple joint lock, to the structure of DNA to the Milky way solar system we are constrained by a spiral force that connects all life and all inanimate objects to the earth rotation and its evolution around the sun. Just to be clear, I am not a proponent of divination. I know this kind of thinking has led to over use to put it mildly. I am speaking from a physical science perspective. That said, this movement has an affect on us and it is hard to figure out just how much because there is no counterfactual ideal. We do not have another galaxy to measure its effect on the beings there. You may think I am starting to go off the deep end. There are people who I have run into who love sacred geometry but end up tying the origin of it to aliens. Believe me it gets even weirder with when the illuminati conspiracies start piling up.

As with many of the phenomena I write about, I am able to parse out the wheat from the chaff and where there is unknown I simply leave it at that. I don’t need to believe in aliens or a personal god either to substantiate the physical reality of certain things. I also don’t need to deny it all and be an atheist either.

Another thing that happened when I was teaching the 180 degree turns was I saw how the foot positions fit within a box grid and if you draw diagonal lines and add circles it can become a flower of life. The flower of life (pictured above)is something in many cultures together, even Leonardo Da Vinci drew this in his Codex. Of course explaining the relationship between Davinci, stonehenge, the Kabbalah, and the I Ching could be an endless exploration that is not suited to the purpose of this blog post. If you are interested there are hundreds of videos and books on this topic but be forewarned that you will be hearing some crazy theories.

Anyway back to Tai Chi

I have always wondered why all the Tai Chi forms don't sync up with the bagua (8 directions), wu xing (5 elements) (pictured below) and ultimately the I Ching. Fortunately, I found Tai Chi According to the I Ching by Stuart Alve Olson who brilliantly tackled my dilemma. Per usual for Olson, he breaks everything down and backs it up with the ancient texts to support his reasoning. I have been searching for a truly symmetrical form for years and thanks to Mr. Olson I finally have that..   

Conclusion

One of the reason why I love Tai Chi is because there is this internal logic that starts really small like with a step and then expands outwards to encompass the whole universe, the Chinese call it the microcosm and the macrocosm. Is it scientifically sound? I  am not sure but I think it is worth investigating. Moreover, humans love symmetry we seek it out whenever we can and I find discovering the underlying symmetry in Tai Chi increases my love of it and enhances my personal practice.

Some People I Admire

Morihei Ueshiba 1883 - 1969

“Those who are enlightened never stop forging themselves. The realizations of such masters cannot be expressed well in words or theories. The most perfect action echo the patterns found in  nature.” 

To me, O'Sensei is the person I admire most. He is the epitome of never giving up. He persisted and developed himself until the end. 

Wang Zhang Zhai 1885 - 1963

Wang Xiang Zhai, brought standing meditation into the modern age. He was once asked to demonstrate his martial art in public; he just stood there and said this it it. 

Tuvia Bielski 1906 - 1987 

“Our revenge is to live. We may be hunted like animals but we will not become animals. We have all chosen this - to live free, like human beings, for as long as we can. Each day of freedom is a victory. And if we die trying to live, at least we die like human beings.”

Tuvia might seem like a weird choice but I can't think of anyone who fought against the Nazis and saved many people. After the war he came to NY started a moving company and taxi service. To think thousands of people got a ride by him never knowing he waged a serious resistance against the Nazi forces. You can see Daniel Craig play him a dramatization of his life called, Defiance

John Snow 1813 - 1858

Through his own intellectual desire about the 1854 cholera outbreak, he created epidemiology, John Snow tracked down all the cases of cholera in his neighborhood on his own time, he was an anesthesiologist at the time. He also created a dosage scale for the use of choloform and ether as an anesthetic. Pure genius!  You can read about him in the book Ghost Map. 

Leonardo Davinci 1452 - 1519

“It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things.” My grandfather told me about Davinci when I was a child. We often revere names like Gandalf and Merlin but truly if there real wizards Davinci would be one. 

Barak Obama 1961 - 

During the 2012 debate with Romney, Barak encouraged Romney to attack a point of that he made. After patiently waiting he totally did an intellectual Aikido move and turned it around on Romney.  I knew at that moment he would win the election. Some of Obama's best lines can be seen here. Republicans tried to tear this guy down, and time and time again they failed. He outclassed them.

“I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas.... I am married to a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slave owners-- an inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters. I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins of every race and every hue scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible.”

Charles Darwin 1809 - 1882

“Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that  this or that problem will never be solved by science.” Darwin's persistence and drive to understand nature changed the world. 

Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simon 1475- 1564

"If people knew how hard I worked to get my mastery, it wouldn't seem so wonderful at all." He is here because of his love of the human body. Looking at his work you can see he had an amazing view of humanity. He also hauled his own stones, made his own tools and hid in the caves when political fanatics went against his patrons.  

Constantine Brancusi  1876 - 1957

“They are imbeciles who call my work abstract. That which they call abstract is the most realistic, because what is real is not the exterior but the idea, the essence of things.” He made absolutely beautiful sculptures and taught me about universal beauty and the importance of relativism.  

Paul Cézanne 1839 - 1906 

“One had to immerse oneself in one's surroundings and intensely study nature or one's subject to understand how to recreate it,” and “With an apple I will astonish Paris.” Cezanne didn't have a show until he was in his late 50s. I love his paintings but most of all I admire his commitment to understanding nature.