Bruce Frantzis - 'Journey into Taoism' - Interview by Iain McNay

hello and welcome once imean McNay and my guest today is Bruce Francis hi Bruce how you doing and Bruce is a remarkable character full of energy and you'll realize why I'm saying that during the interview he's written about a dozen books I've got three here which I researched opening the energy gates of your body she come for lifelong health so I think he wrote about 20 years ago tower of the Dow of letting go meditation for modern living and relaxing into your being down meditation vol 1 this is only a snapshot of what he does and his story if you like so we usually start at conscious TV talking about the person's life and how they've got to be where they are and one of the fascinating things I found with you when I was researching your past was you actually when you were six seven years old you started to do a self inquiry technique how did that start well I can tell you I would start but the idea just kind of popped in my head okay Who am I and so what I did is what I thought up on myself which I hate to say it wasn't terribly original it was ramana maharshi's basic method it's just okay who are you and come up I'm something okay I'm the kid who rode a bike I'm you know I had an ice cream cone you know I don't know I take that got the bathroom in the morning whatever it is and just the second part is very simple you just ask yourself if that wasn't so would you still be here yep you still here and so anyway I got into doing this you know three four or five hours a day it was summer because I was in I was you were doing it three four five hours a day in six seven years old yeah that's extraordinary I don't know if it's extraordinary or not but anyway as a kid I used to read and I went to one of these boarding schools where they had like with super great woods and so any I couldn't do sports I mean I was I was in the lowest level of physical coordination a person a human being could have so my fact we even had based a measure is twice a year for physical intelligence and mental until I defined the mental part the phys apart sometimes I say you're in the bottom 5% I almost start the wine which the guy would just say be glad we don't have a lower rating and I had no physical coordinates I just walked through the woods and you know I do whatever I did and I would do this while I would walk through the woods and I'd wake up in the morning before I did whatever jazz and go yeah just keep on doing this but the other kids weren't doing this were they no but I didn't tell anybody I was doing it yeah it sounds remarkably self-assured for a kid of that age that I couldn't tell you that would be someone else's coming just seemed kind of natural for me to do okay and then I gather around twelve years old a friend of yours got caught got quite badly beaten up no was anybody I knew I to collect comic books like and there was this place uptown up in what I'm from Manhattan up in Washington heist it was good place to buy comic books you know yeah buy low sell high all that kind of stuff I collect them buy and sell them and trade them anyway I'm walking back on time back to the subway and it's like across the street some guy is you know screaming gimme my 20 bucks you unless you say to a lot of expletives at the end of that I was watching I watched him with a guy today you know in New York they call it they call car real whippin you tear an aerial off a car and then you whip the person with it so they're quite dead anyway I'm seeing this and I'm going ah you know and I'm standing there like frozen and then finally you know whenever it was done in at least everybody around was screaming he's dead I mean I just got out of there because the one thing in New York City is like you don't want to be around when the cops come doesn't matter if you're innocent or guilty that was just the basic principle to get out of there you know who knows what they're gonna have on your mind so this goes on and not very long later maybe two weeks later three weeks later who remembers I mean 12 years olds not exactly you know bright memory spot for time but in the school yard and I grew up on the Upper East Side of Manhattan which is like in London Mayfair it was at that time the wealthiest place on the planet period and the state school the junior high school a middle school that's fickle najin middle school I went to is like in a pretty high-class place but not this thing in New York where you could bust people in from different places to make it accessible to quote unquote the Democratic thing right well there's this one kid and he had a wise mouth and there's a Puerto Rican kid Hispanic kid and he's really like you know like like how much can i verbally cut this guy to rhythms right and the guys going you don't wanna do that you're making me upset you making me feel bad you don't want to do that well okay after this goes on three or four times and each time the kid is getting more and more of a wise whatever the guy just takes out a night slits his guts and they're basically falling out of his shirt okay good at that moment having been in a boarding school I got hmm hmm I've heard New York can be rough mm yeah it can be very rough so then some days later on the subway he's take subways New York Lima kids and big sign judo fear no man I said yep that's me so anyway my grandfather had been a wrestling champion before in Greece before he came to America and don't ask me how I talked him into it but I did and then you know I spent a couple of hours with a guy he throws you in oh okay okay good done you know they want you'd like to know I wouldn't give the guy to satisfy the living crap out of me for hours I mean I've literally had trouble walking up the stairs afterwards but it like just ignited something and then a little while later I saw in us in a kind of a storefront and opened I saw people doing karate didn't know what it was that was it so next thing I know I'm going into that and at that stage in a game basically I'm doing martial arts 3 6 8 hours a day every day seven days a week but why did you did you do it for so long because I understand you wanted to bet a situation where you look this is the common misconception people have yeah okay first you're doing it cuz you're scared right this is different and now it's part of my spiritual my quick nunim after a couple of years I wasn't worried about any criminal coming at me because I could take someone out with one shot with no problem you know seriously I mean I as the phrase goes they had the problem at me no but there's an art to fighting now nowadays we live in such a safe whatever period but I'm only like you know 20 years from World War two and like 50 from the Korean War that was a time when people went into bars men got upset with each other they beat the crap out of each other it was a time when people going at it was not weird it was the manly thing to do anyway and that's not that way now it's really not that way now now you're an axe murderer if you do that you know I mean whatever but back in that era it was but also at that time New York City had 3,000 murders a year so let's just put it this way and a lot of it was random so but that's a different thing than fighting or martial arts is if you get past the initial thing of defending yourself it's not about defending yourself it's about winning it's about it's an art there is an art to fighting you wanted to go into as totally as you could I went into it as totally as I go figured I wanted to wade in okay and it's an art I mean it's the same drive that make a person be a painter or musician yeah I mean pick your art you know so you saw that as your expression as your art at that time I never thought of it is my expression it's just that the more I did the more I wanted to do I had passion for it that was it I had a passion it was like a well and once it was hit it never stopped I also around the same time he started Zen so yeah as part of this there was I didn't do Zen Buddhism for spirituality I mean I heard it was spirituality but I didn't even think what I did as a kid was spirituality I just thought it was good common sense to find out who you were okay that's it that's that's really all I thought about but they have said something very deep good common sense you find out who you were laughter ah yeah sure and that to me is common sense into you but to most people it doesn't enter their thought system well you know we live in a society that's utterly numb and a lot of the spiritual dimension is just so much blah blah blah blah blah you're supposed to believe in us you're supposed to believe in it no there actually is a real drive toward spirituality this is live and living and vibrant as anything is and I have to say something like there's a phrase for examples you want a book there but it's a big phrase in Taoism it's called being fully alive or being fully conscious and they take that that reverse it oh you think it's cool to be dead you want to be half that you want to be numb okay if I can if I can sell you a weakness pill so you can be weak in infection it feel like you're dying at every moment everything is a massive gray depressive zone would you buy I don't think anybody would well it's for this well me anybody was even marginally healthy would okay they wouldn't do it so this idea and I always found that the things I did they main or alive not this went I was going back because I left the Zen thing okay so in martial arts there's a big thing it's called without hesitation you want to go you go you want to cut you cut you don't go should I go good no food go cuz in martial arts you don't do that basically you got your clock cleaned I mean you got troubles like you're hit you're hurt your front it's okay so this was the whole thing Japanese samurai they did sentence so they could pull their sword and slice somebody without hesitating okay cool I went to that you know I wanted a better punch I wanted a better throw okay seemed like a good strategy for getting so what you do in a say Shing machine in Zen is you sit for two weeks you don't talk eat you don't talk you look at the wool when you sit with your eyes ability well I mean sometimes they'll have you look at a wall you'll just look in the air I mean really or you'll close your eyes I mean it depends Bodhidharma the original person he looked at a wall for nine years until he could hear the and scream but that's he was shall we say slightly more intense and definitely definitely into it about as far as you could go but most of us don't you know in the beginning you don't go that far but at some point you know I don't know someplace past the middle I never visualized I didn't I don't you know I didn't I don't particularly dream I'm I don't remember dreams you know some of this this is about 5% of population it don't and I'm one of them and but in the middle of this thing I'm sitting in my eyes are closed and it is vibrant as if I'm in the studio and all of a sudden I'm an old Japan and all of a sudden some guy is like I'm in a sword fight and then I get like split right down the middle and I go through the death process and I go through the whole thing and it was incredibly vivid you're dying you're conscious leaving your body it's over it goes now I came at the end of that different most people go like reminded maja she did that but then he realized oh when I have to go in a spiritual and he goes into a cave for 13 years in BO blah blah blah which I thought was a really great thing to do personally but it wasn't my scene I can remember I was only there to like you know learn how to punch without hesitation I wasn't looking for some grand spiritual whatever I mean for Tina's kind of it wasn't really in my mind but what I got from that is that wait a second this death thing that's the worst that can happen to you so okay what the hell anything else is fine me I mean don't do something stupid like getting yourself man because you got to live with it but and basically I kind of lost primarily the fear that drives most people's lives yes I've lost it I mean it listed at fifteen 6814 I mean it was just kind of like it wasn't that I was courageous it became irrelevant hmm because then you know because the bigger problem about death is not what you died and I've actually crossed hundreds of people over like they dying again and what I got to go next but the biggest thing about is that when anybody's afraid of death to things they're afraid then they were afraid of the unknown and you don't let go and just say okay here's life let's go for it whatever it is it is whatever it's not it's not we're gonna find out afterwards because you sure don't know when you start and I got over that so I had hundreds of points in my life where mess up so many things I could have got over frayed I'm not gonna do it I'll close down I won't do it Austin idea whatever go anyway we have to move on a bit fast it won't be okay so that was again true but that wasn't yeah and then at 18 he went to Japan yeah after I had a black belt and I had one I had eight bad time year 18 when I was 18 okay and I'd already taught a couple of thousand it by the time I was 18 or 40 people who got karate black belts my name was on a signature I was I was in that field somewhat the term prodigy could be used I just would say I was a bit more talented in some but at 18 I said okay look look you wanna stinks Japanese martial arts it's a Zen it's shiatsu when you develop okay wait where's your stuff come from hmm let's go to the source so I went to Japan and then you know did the whole thing team won the old Japan cross yeah I was on this thing I'm I did all that kind of stuff and so that was that so I turned down some scholarships to like you know the best universities in the United States I actually had to go and make the money to go to Japan on my own but that was okay I mean you know like my grandfather really flipped out you're not gonna go there oh brother I'm telling he was not happy but and he just said I'm not gonna help know my family's I just want made the money by myself he got to Japan and one of the first things that you learnt I think was the difference between the internal and the external well that's a little wide you I had done Aikido very focus on the outside what karate judo Jiu Jitsu that was swords sticks but then beside the fact I did Aikido in America I then studied with the founder of aikido man called away Shubin and you started getting there really was an insight and then i went to taiwan and i learned with the person explain the difference between the inside and the outside we can see obviously in terms of yes you're fighting with martial arts on the outside but it goes deeper than that doesn't it several things you can fight based on a strong line based on developing your muscles and reflexes training your motor functions and going back again having a strong enough mind to actually put them in action this is not actually terribly difficult from when an Olympic athlete does that essentially describes the process of becoming an Olympic athlete yes sure you have to have a tough mind but bla bla but still your body is something outside you there and there outside you when you start moving into the internal stuff you start learning how you don't get your power from your muscles you open up the energy channels inside your body you shoot something through them and all of a sudden you've got many times the power you could get physically Orion if you don't you have some other things to get this power to come from inside you to achieve this energy from inside you you have to learn how to completely relax Sochi which we hear a lot in modern society that basically means internal energies that's interested yes that that that is one of the translations of the word but that's what is internal energy but to get there to really mobilize Chi at its highest level what I did because there are there are middle and lower gradations of it you have to learn how to really relax now to really relax your muscles is hard enough then to really relax your energy that's really harder and then to really relax the mind that's behind it that's really harder so I ended up switching into what they call the internal martial arts that are based on that and then that was the beginning of when I got far enough down that road that was then a long period of real full-contact competitions without much rules where people just got seriously rough you know it wasn't you can't do this you can do what about do anything you want you know but that I did it through internal energy because even when I was weighing in those days 150 pounds I was taking 300 people I would one-shot but you had to learn your lessons didn't you because there was people that were also seem to be weaker than you that were taking you out too well yeah I mean I got my first into that in Japan with this little judo guy it was like 4 foot 11 who was like tossing me around like a rag doll Oh a Shiba was maybe 5 feet tall and he's tossing me around no way but loose and size you could even do it like like literally someone fingering and they were doing it with internal energy pride judo guy wasn't he he taught me how to use your hips boy could he use his hips but who is she but it was with energy Wang Shu Jing later on the people I did in China they were doing with their energy I mean I can remember one of the first times I was fighting with Wang he just did this light top in the top man I feel like an electrical lightning bolt went through me and all of a sudden I was in a full squat on the floor and I didn't I did not even see how I got from the top to the bottom but you learn these things this is not any different than in yoga real yoga I mean I know there's all this malt yoga which is like gymnastics any other name because I actually did really open ended up in a high Himalayas I did it with the people that did it from the whole spiritual point of view but when they start talking about prana and he talked about opening up a channel these little funny pictures you know channels and chakras well you know something it's for real but it's not for real if you can't manifest it inside you then it's a pretty picture book so we all have it inside us yes it's just that most of us I've either lost touch will never been in touch with it in the first place yeah yeah yeah I mean I would say a lot of babies are in touch with it but it doesn't take very long they hear enough nose or whatever and they start mimicking the Giants and Cosway so unless their parents are very aware of Chi they're not going to have any schooling if you like no that's right that's right but it's the question you're asking it is innate human beings yes and does a person's Chi vary are some people born with a stronger Chi than the other page yes some people are born with dramatically stronger chinos but if you let's say take martial arts are you people who do Qigong or you take people who do Taoist yoga which is not hatha yoga it's not the Indian trip it's Chinese trip that this the whole thing is famous for people who incredibly sickly and weak and terribly constitutions did something and then they became like virtual Superman or super women so yes it can be developed like anything you know you can develop less you say intelligence to a certain degree but or you can develop muscles but you really have to use them to develop it it's not going to happen because oh wow that's a wonderful idea how many people are running around Wow Warren Buffett's got forty billion dollars Wow hey I just got to buy something and sell it for a higher price well you know but not that many people actually pull it off so to pull it off as the phrase goes it's the joke there is it's like the ham it's like the ham sandwich in the pig you find the ham Sestak you find the ham sandwich interesting the pig is committed I mean yeah you do it and you do it all and so you have to submit you have to base inert to your Chi absolutely strengthen your cheer yeah yes I think we have to skip through your story because it's so but what I'm just going to highlight certain things a few years later you and in here and you got hepatitis right I almost died and there's a wonderful example in one of your books where you talk about how you realize if you just lay in this the bed you'd end up dying so you forced yourself to get up sit up I think and do some Chi Kong and that got something started going again well to be precise what happened is that I was in this room and three of us had it and I washed it two people died that's a pretty pretty good indication of what might happen yeah yeah and the doctor comes in basically in the same if there is anybody you want to write some litter or something I would do it now because it is not looking like you are going to be here very long okay in other words getting a death sentence okay so I'm lying on the bed and I've also worked as a doctrine of work with terminal cancer PII I know let's just say I'm more than vaguely familiar with death and leave it at that and I knew one thing I say you stay on this bed you're dead there's a feeling that comes over you there's a whole consciousness that do something or leave your body and that's it so I got up and don't ask me how I got up and I started doing Tai Chi and I started just running energy through my channels and I have to say up to that point in my life that is the single most painful period of time I ever had because when you have a channel in your body that's closed and you're sick it's the closing of the channel that makes you sick but when you try and open it up that does not mean that you're trying to open up something it doesn't want to it's going to be fun may be fun may not be fun hard to say in this case I'm telling you it was like serious ouch serious out just the only thing I can say I mean really half the time I was doing a tears are just streaming down my face and I was shaking like you know but I kept doing this in Dewey's and I like fell asleep I collapsed and three days later I woke up and then you know kind of slowly wake up so by doing that you got your Chi moving again and your Chi could help with the healing process I opened up the channels open the channels up channels of body open healthy strong happy channels of body closed down miserable sick we guess and there was another quite traumatic example many years later again you're in Denver and you've had a bad car accident and Mexico actually but you sorry New Mexico yeah I went ok feet up in the air and King yeah and the hard way and two of your vertebra quite seriously damn basically I was diagnosed with a broken back they want a few yes the whole thing but yeah Teddy and the turn broken back is always a bit tricky because most people think it's a severed spinal cord of which there is no way back no I just had all the vertebrae crack wide open which is usually what is technical which is commonly called a broken back yes which not only is very is very painful it's very restricting as well you could say that yes so how did you approach that because I know that took you on quite a emotional journey as well in terms now I'll take this from the spiritual perspective because I I wear many hats I am a martial art master and in China pretty much recognize as that and when I was a healer eight to ten thousand patients I did like you know interns with energy medicine I did like the more far-out miracle stuff but then also meditation as you said I started when I was a kid but I became I became a lineage holder in Dallas meditation which means you know you know it you know whatever it is let's not go into what it is but whatever it is you know it when that happened in with two stages to it before that time I had a specialty for at least five years I was a real whiz with working with nerves for example one of the things that you know like the you're really good me and a few other people did it someone have been in a wheelchair for ten years and never gotten up we got him walking which is skill that's serious skill because you got it going every little channel in the way it connects with it's complicated let's just leave it at that so anyway the least is that and all sorts of people at all kinds of axes and so I mean I knew what the reality was so you know it wasn't actually right after I tied to that for the book but it was like two three times out a couple of these stabilizations and then finally when my back just finally totally gave out I'm lying there and I'm bang and I can't feel anything from the waist down which I have to tell you does not make you happy but at that moment I said one thing dude she go and open up these channels otherwise you are in serious trouble because I did not want to be one of those people in the wheelchair right doctors wanted to fuse my back the whole thing and I said no because I also know that if they fuse my back I would be diminish for life and it would be no way back from there's no return so I'm now spending a couple of weeks until finally I can just get some I'm moving into the up of my body ons up front so funny I got something to go down there and then it took another you know a couple of weeks before kind of things would start returning okay so that's from the physical point then I got up and let's you say it was a couple of rough years I mean you'd be surprised how much but not back again let's go into this more because it wasn't just the physical pain but it was also I'm going next for that it's where I'm going now that's not the spiritual part that is just called the deal with you deal with your body or your body will show you just how much suffering you can go through okay but something else happened at the time that occurred uh I had done all these trainings to be able to control my energy to such a finite degree well in my family I have up let's just say one of the people who raised me and let's let's keep this non personal was mad as a hatter okay I mean that as in mental institutions where they are friends and some of the lot of stuff they did to me as a youth was rather rough nothing dude me getting into martial arts I was just pissed off in general maybe but I didn't get into it for that was into the art of it but I had all this stuff think about every control mechanism you have for the demons in your unconscious all of them and all of a sudden look we open it up Pandora come out come out wherever you are now to say that I went through a couple of years of not just emotional not just mental but psychic turmoil and I opened up the doors of karma full flush no no Phil there's took a full bore on fighting a human being is one thing fighting that oh boy that's all I have to say that was really trippy but not to say that it wasn't rather miserable because it was but it forced me and I also was up for it because I had done like years of meditation I spent cave time did all this kind of weird stuff I was interested in waking up that was the most important thing in my life period and I did a lot of other kind of fun stuff too but and I took it on and I really took it on and then I go to Beijing and my teacher who was like what in the West you'd quote living Buddha and Dowell's Nicola spiritual immortal he just said oh you wanna know who you are mm-hmm are you sure this is think carefully make sure you're sure you may find it more difficult so in other words so this is what happens right as an example one time you know things were going on and he gave the bit about you know the Buddhist bit cuz any Taoist Buddhist I mean there's certain things that are in common in Chinese culture he's going all about you know your mother in it and you know what you know about how you should love your parents what I mean you know seriously because I hate him it was a love-hate relationship I make the joke but it's not that's how strong it was it's a good thing it was illegal to kill your parents when I was a kid I might have done it I mean the things that happened were like let's not discuss grim I mean really that's we're still on the light end of the thing really crazy stuff so anyway so you find said oh okay okay oh and you know and nine months after nine months of things were so many things happen that were like too much and I met people who had been through stuff that like you know there's no way I could take what happened to me that seriously you know I had one unit of grief they had a thousand as a cultural revolution in China was made Nazi Germany and Stalin's Russia seemed like a party it's a we know West don't know about it that is probably the darkest agree just nastiness humans can do to humans that's existed in the history of the earth and the West knows nothing about it nothing because they didn't either dirty lunch you know what it lose anybody they weren't the enemy nobody even knew what they were doing over there they kept the doors closed anyway nine months I'm done with my mother done like nothing like nothing like like I could remember it happened so I swear to got it a little bit more let me detail John let me just any will any will and I'm not trying to it then sometime in the next year because who in God's name crew member time I'm sitting in can time and I found out who I was from the classic thing of Ramana Maharshi saying who are you and in my teacher just said ah you've made some small progress that's good at least that particular question that was bothering you is over now this stuff that's even more important and that's when we begin the process of internal alchemy hmm and that's about the universe that's not about me and this thing we will run through please sir well when you say you found out who you were that's a far more intriguing thing how was that to find out who you are well the way happened I wrote about in a book and I mean I just did it because we're now I just was I was in Canton coming from Hong Kong and back in those days there were no like radar so we were grounded there was water you couldn't fly because they didn't have the technology enable you to like take off and land and that kind of rain so I'm in like this Chinese dormitory exam you know I was looking pretty close to the bone and you know it's like eight beds in the room or something and I just had nothing to do and so I just started meditating well make it close for about three days all I did was meditate I didn't do anything I just and at one point it just happened that it's funny everybody thinks they are their personal history this happened that happened some people like to get egregiously go in his life I was this in a PEZ but yeah regardless of what this life that life this time that time you think all the stuff that happened to you everything you think everything you've seen whether it's a television program or it's you're deeply rooted philosophical beliefs and you think that's who I am a couple and I just kind of really got it was like in one sense that there was always an image that after this was over I thought it actually wasn't like that at the time a bit like everything like you know just floating in this giant suspension thing and then all of a sudden you saw what it was suspended and not all the jazz that was in it and it was like all of a sudden boom I just you really aren't anything no and there's this thing that's there but isn't anything in particular it isn't it isn't a big deal it's no big well you know the great event you know no fireworks you know no LSD colors you know just that's what it is and that's what's at the bottom of all of it and everything is actually just attaching to that and it never changed it wasn't like it happened and then next week something else happened it was that way it's always been that way and I mean I write about what in my books I write about what that technically is in terms of Taoism because they've been doing this for thousands of years and this happened a lot of people so it's not like it's a you know a unique event of course what happens to you it's a unique event to you because there's you know it's unique because like you're you and there's nobody else's you but the fact that it matters that to get that it's just call it it's not even the word space doesn't encompass it its space and that's the kind of space you operate in that's your as they would have said that's your vibe I mean you know like like like the analogy I use for it which i think is a good one in the sense that it's actually what they're dealing with in Tibetan Buddhism they have all these deities right you know like in a picture of ivy look tissue are you know always Tonka is all these pictures and you know the deities this entity these that madidi having sex with someone indeed sitting by itself gd's got a nasty face is standing on somebody's head these are just different ways a person's energy could manifest in the entire universe and okay you got whatever yours is or call it a cell in your body okay a liver cells not the same thing as a brain cell as a stem as a foot cell excuse me they're all stem cells at the end of the day well you find out what your sim still is and that still isn't you could say that is not your potential that is just the basic carrier wave you ride and then the whole process of alchemy is learning how to change each of those into another kind of cell another kind of cell until what did I was saying this I only can take on hearsay because I sure can't do it that it's then when you go through enough room in the universe all of a sudden you get with the universes but you sure got to have some idea of what your own particular thing is so in a sense of you're not separate you're separate and you're not separate everybody is a stem cell but that's a different matter than you actually get what the universe is as a whole in all places times dimensions that's kind of a bit of a jump beyond who are you okay thank you so I was I was also very intrigued by the relationship between the nervous system and Chi because as I understand it from from from reading your books basically when the nervous system gets jammed that gets constricted that is constricting the Chi and the Chi basically needs a nervous system to be open to flow well am i simplifying there or is that the base part my partial hey okay let's put it this way Chi everything electricity's got to travel through something is if fiber optics is a you know radio waves it's got to travel through something right yeah so let's just call Chi is electricity and then it has to travel through different things in order to express itself and receive and give okay in a human being in terms of a practice that you can do in terms of gaining access to it rather than it's just there you have four you have several levels of Chi the primary one in the biggest way it travels through your body let's leave your mind out of it for a bit because some of that is even physical it's non-local so it doesn't really much matter your brain only interprets it isn't actually where it's coming from but if you look at this it's your fluids of your body and your nerve okay okay now uh you know your blood your lymph your cerebral spinal fluid the stool that flows between your cells in this dish your fluid and then it's your nervous system now in our modern times in this period of time the chief system that is under massive attack and the one that is the easiest one to get into so you can recognize what's traveling through it so you can recognize it use your nervous system okay so that's the one where it's the most obvious and given that stress is the whole thing that the modern life is about stress is first hitting your nerves and then it hits your fluids yes so then the lymphatic system all gets jammed up so things stop beginners very ways clearing and the blood doesn't circulate so freely around the body sure yeah you can't actually yes either the fluids can affect your nervous system but today given just the nature of how society is it's much more that the nervous system is affecting the fluids yeah you know given all the anxiety given all the shall we say hyper adrenaline that's all flowing through the nerves okay so the bit I'm trying to understand the pieces I'm going to put together when you when you had this read difficult time after the car accident and you were in all this pain and then you were talking about all these memories came up in your body other programs came up that's stored in the cells of your body is that you know let me put you this way the experience you had is it's in yourselves it's in your nervous system it's in your fluid it's in your ligaments it's every washa oh you couldn't tell where it was going to come from because people think will bad memories are in my head but that's not that no simple as that is it what's in your head if it doesn't translate through your body you'll never notice it I mean when you're noticing something going on your head you're not noticing your brain you're noticing your nervous system your nervous ngey in different ways it's just that it's attached to thoughts because people then start thinking weird stuff and they start thinking well okay if do a thought that means it's coming from my brain no it just could be that your brain is being catalyzed by it or it goes both ways I mean if you could not feel pain why would you care if there's pain why would you care if it's only thought I mean I had to go through opening up those channels where and it was really obvious open up the channel have less pain don't open up the channels get more pain but we have something where my family is Greek okay long long time ago Byzantine Empire all that kind of stuff we were kind of big shots in it which doesn't mean much today I mean that running a restaurants really not much different if you come right down to it but if you look at that there was the idea back to the old days in Athens and all that of a sound mind and a sound body the only trouble is that the sound line became the fact that you were thinking you have thoughts that were reasonably ordered and then you had like you know pulling your good muscles the Dallas Dallas thought goes takes what the body and the mind are way further they start actually getting okay wait a second what is actually going on here what are the layers so they in one sense a bit like an engineer or scientist it's not enough that something is poetically happening which is also true metaphorically happening but then how is it actually happening because you talk about different I'm just going to quote from your book here where you talk about it was amazing how many layers of define nerve pain I've found in my body for example feelings of failure came up previously emotional trauma many from early childhood had to be released so when you say there's layers of defining lao's then thousands of layers of so this is where we've got memories we've got trauma that's stored and it's still one on top of the other is that how it works let's put it this way yeah metaphorically there one on top of the other they're all there at the same time but they surface as though they were stacked right so to be clear on the emotional level it's very much energetic level as well as a psychological level or maybe not as well as but anyway energetic level it's necessary to get in touch with that trauma or that memory you don't have to process the whole thing as such do you in terms of lodges and they have to release it you have to release it the classic phrase in Taoism right we live in a psychological society we live in an educated society know the cause you know the reasons and therefore you should be able to do something with it well knowing why something is going on does not say you can implement any change about only says you recognize it's there okay I recognize Warren Buffett's a billionaire doesn't bulimic good about becoming a billionaire okay what you have is that the phrase Dave use in Taoism for thousands of years about human suffering in the millions of ways you can have it is very simple if you're on the torture table Chinese tortures like always been perfectly cool with Chinese government's throughout history okay just like it was in the Middle Ages in England things without torture chamber they were out of business that's all there is to it so anyway if you're in a torture table and they're really torturing you would you rather know why you're in a torture table would you rather like to know why that what to torture had for breakfast would you like to know how the instruments that are torching were made would you like to know exactly how they produce pain or would you rather get off the table we all know the answer yeah yeah but what I'm saying is the Daoists always go right for the chase of how do you resolve it not recognizing is a first step to resolving otherwise you have no idea what you're trying to resolve but yes you need to have an implementation process to resolve it that method through which got me pissed my parents which got me from what things in my life that I can count about things that shatter most people so can you just energy call it just this okay can you just very briefly explain in the dissolving I will I just gotta be the only good overview of it very simply if you can recognize what's going on inside you if you're not totally numb and in which case it doesn't much matter you can't do it anyway there are four conditions which will represent which will give you an idea that your Chi is blocked you don't have to understand any of it there only until you can recognize what block she is for itself then it's like that it would be like if you had a child who's a virgin they can see books they can see the internet they can see this they go and sex this this and that happened but you don't really quite get what isn't so you you have sex because it's not exactly the same as the pictures okay but okay the four conditions strength which ultimately can become stubbornness or put it this way that's the ego got what we call in the West ego is just you feel strong in a position and so quote-unquote we say some of those has an ego tension to things fighting inside yourself that could be any one of a billion things inside you this is this one is the hardest one in many ways something that doesn't feel quite right but you don't know what it is a simple example take what happened to you and your mommy's tummy take what happen to you everything you took in while your mother was pregnant all the things you have taken in without even recognizing they were happening is ever happening inside you okay so you don't know what it is but it's really bothering you okay it's really bothering you you know Ted nowadays okay we'll open you up we'll put a little chip inside you and you will be tortured all day long but if you weren't awake when the chip was put in you know you won't know where it's coming from but believe me you know that you're hurting and the last one is contraction in many spiritual condition traditions especially Indian ones the nature between enlightenment and unenlightened is often described as your mind or your soul or your being is contracted or it opens up to all and everything quote-unquote non-separation contraction means there is separation there's no two ways about that so it different metaphors are used these four things give you an idea blotchy okay so now we got blotchy right so we start with that so you recognize it now your mind the totality of your being and I will say that it really helps if you can go into fourth time which is beyond past present and future it's not the eternal now it's just something that ain't those things and there is another thing that's there and it's not the now but it is beyond past present and future and Sanskrit for example I collect areia means the fourth state but you can stay in that kind of time because that's the only time that you really can resolve things in because the idea that things are sequential is just actually nonsense it's only their appearance it's not actually how they work the stuff is all going on at once then your mind goes into that blockage it stays on and then you start trying to release it those four conditions you want to relax you're completely willing for it to give over and let go but no demands you're a bit like you're a bit like a hawk or a cat that's like just waiting for that mouse to come on and when it releases he's on it but until then he just waits it's active waiting it's not passively no I mean you're like you know you're waiting for it because when it comes it's only going to exist for a few microseconds that's the only access point and you got to be ready for it so you go into that and you keep on releasing as you start doing it you start going at a certain point your motion starts becoming inward and it's as though when you start moving inside yourself you just move into a bigger and bigger place so this is where you are going inside forget about what's out here that's outer dissolving that's another method but this is the actual meditation and this going in can take you into the deepest recesses of your karma your psychic body or enter you know your your emotional your mental body the physical one you don't need that stuff for that outer dissolving will take care of that but when we start talking about the real stuff that bothers people the stuff that spirituality is about the stuff that goes on even after you die and you get it again this you have to go in and you release it and the point is that you release it this is the taoist method and they had this thousands of years before the buddha ever showed up you resolve it to emptiness and i'm not going to go into what emptiness is because there's a whole lot of ways you can look at that and it kind of has stages until you finally actually really get it and when something goes to emptiness it releases it resolves the basis upon it existing is gone that's what emptiness does you think you exist you really find emptiness you're going to get you don't you think anything exists but let me not take this too far because that can sound like you know too intellectual but you have two gates where you feel release and then inside of you open up into a dramatically bigger space but can you find out who you really are with that going through this process I don't but let's put it this way maybe someone else knows I don't that's how I did it so this is how it should that's the only thing try understand from the age of six until I was somewhere in my mid-30s I also at one time for example spent ten and a half months in a cave where I was doing you know Tantra Cancun Leaney praxis oh they long every waking second not indented this is the only way I know how to get there although I must say that if we look at you know especially in Tibetan Buddhism which has incredible parallels to Taoism specifically the zouk Shen and Maha mudra tradition as opposed to the Tantra tradition okay teri I think they probably came from the same place because their methodologies are just they're too tight this too did there's too many points of confluence probably okay even they both say they kind of came from that direction the Cumberlands and all that in China but I know one way it can be done I know the Taoist way that's why my doubt was lineage holder and in all the things I tried previous to that I didn't find anything that can do it now which is not to say other things couldn't do it I just can only talk personally okay I'm looking at the clock we've got about eight minutes left okay and I want you to really use the last eight minutes for people just explain for people that maybe I think most people that watch conscious TV have done some meditation they may be done some Tai Chi they certainly read stuff they watch stuff they have they have a few basic elements there if they want to take their search deeper what would be your suggestions for them what first of all this is a classic question it's been asked for thousands of years because there's always been in cultures of an interesting meditation multiple methods of doing I'd say a couple of things if you're slick enough to do it on your own then you know you're stealing but now since generally it's pretty much agreed by virtually everybody lot's of luck that ain't gonna happen yeah the next thing is that you need to find someone who's actually been there and done it because they then at least have some idea okay so now that goes further if your interest is of let's say a lower or a middle depth okay I mean we're talking about drive now we're talking about you know commitment we're talking about ambition I mean it's no different doing it with spirituality it is for doing with anything else if your interest is not that great I say don't beat yourself up about learning with someone who's really just kind of not doing stuff that's very deep because that's really all you want if that's really all you want why in god's name you get in front of someone is really really good unless you want to open yourself up to the possibility if you have a middle level I would say in the West this is a fact that most people there are the believers right they just want to believe in somebody another word I would I would put this feud now would be sarcastic mommy mommy mommy I want to feel but well if that's what you want there's plenty of people who will satisfy that desire they will be big mommy they will be big daddy they will try and make you secure if you actually have a very deep interests in meditation the last person you want to find is someone who makes you secure because what's going to happen if something makes you really really secure that is going to give you every opportunity you ever need to skive you're just going to figure out a way to like really not do too much so now let's just say I really only speak from a high people of a higher level of interest cuz that's what I do I mean I don't you know I just don't do that of the stuff and not my thing you know I'm really I don't mind whether people do it but I'm not I don't want to do it okay the first thing is that there are people who have the basic mentality they need to kind of understand what's going on and I and I teach I'm always showing how something works because there's a chunk of people like that and I also do it because the real nature of spiritual teaching really happens to mind the mind transmission it doesn't happen through knowledge knowledge is of the mind that's intellectual that's of the mind and you're trying to get beyond the mind and it's not going to work so it's really done through transmission my teacher for example in Beijing trained me to do that I was trained and taught how to do it just the same way it's kind of at the deeper levels of Tibetan Buddhism they teach people and some people find it naturally when they do this satsang and they have it they just kind of get it but we were trained how to do it to an incredible level of precision because the Taoist who have been described meaning for example described as a scientist of ancient China that's how they look at everything that they've really up their precision freaks they want to get how it can replicate with the greatest consistency did that you can understand what the hell it is because if you understand what it is you're just I mean you're dancing around some people get it some people don't that's it but you've got a low-yield it's like it's like I like I like it's like an investment it gives you one percent a year it doesn't make you happy okay they like to go at least ten so if you look at this now now okay so you find someone now when you find someone there's several issues that come up and you have to look at what they do carefully don't just do it because somebody has some piece of PR I mean look I mean do they actually get what's going on next look at the people around them are they actually shifting if they're not shifting then all you can really say is I don't know how much is going on here but if they're actually shifting then if you think you can trust them and you don't have to trust them like you know I have to love you like my mother although some people like to do that I love you like my father can you do you think they actually know what they're doing and this person does and then like anything else if you got a good mentor well plenty listen to the person then here's the even more important part practice what you hear do it don't think about it do it's the commitment isn't it that's a great start but if you really commit if if you call doing it commitment yeah yeah I'm sorry if you want any food you look at the food oh wow it's mad you like talk about will tell you how is the grace we if you don't eat the thing what good is it do you you know certainly she's like looking at pictures of food there are people like to read gourmet magazines but if you want to do it you've got to taste it you've got to taste it for it and to do that you have to practice mmm the classic phrase I'll take it in Chinese the Taoist phase sure Foggia and ziege sheen which means a teacher takes you into the gate that means like the gate of knowledge because everything in Chinese a gate you go on the other side is whatever there is you know but the success comes from your own practice Lien's I clashing good gun in Jews and the machine means your heart your efforts all of it the Buddha same thing says I show you the path you have to walk it nobody can give it to you what they can do is they can take you and show you what if you do it that's how everybody in history's been able do it so that's what I would recommend and I don't you know i'm not saying come to me come to him come to this one come to that one that's the burden of being an adult and how should you practice now practice what how fun do you practice what you are we don't practice what you are you are which you are you're not a very good Christ John via let's put it this way I'm always practicing meditation yeah there is no time I'm not yes you know if you talk about how much do I practice martial arts at she go I don't know I mean I've been ready chief for my body the whole time but having a conversation I'm kind of at the the phrase they have in China is Xin whooshing form no form I kind of did so many forms for so I kind of past the point where it's very spontaneous and you because whereas it took me years of practice to get this to get online now I can have anything go online instantly so there is now now it's about the flow of life okay it's a great place to finish now it is about the flow of life Bruce it's been fascinating the times been far too short but we were always faced with the challenge of having a finite period to do the program I'm going to show again three of Bruce's books those he's written about twelve in total there's relaxing into your being the Tao the Dao letting go hoping the opening the energy gates of your body and the next one that's coming out in November is Taoist sexual meditation which is effectively the fourth volume and best of my knowledge as the first time loud this tradition of sexual meditation has ever appeared in print in the West great ok thanks again Bruce and thank you everyone for watching country's TV and I think you'll agree it is a fascinating program thank you goodbye you my name is Bruce Francis and would I'll be showing you is the method of meditation that is central and somewhat unique to louses method of meditation Taoism Louds er was 2500 years ago and what he is most known for in the West is a book he wrote that's called a Dao de Jing the way in its power I am told it is the second most translated book in the world many people read it and many people find it fascinating but this is the actual basic meditation method that Lau's it did which does not appear in any of his books and which is not very well known I learned this studying in China for many many many years first sit up do your best to sit in a way that's comfortable do the best that your back is straight rather than leaning or clumping in some fashion and just sit either on the floor or with your feet flat on the floor just your breathing until it's smooth and regular so it's not being spaz Matic so it's not you're not holding it so you just relax your breath but take three deep breaths and the first time just inhale and then exhale and relax your breath now relax your breath on the inhale and relax it more on the exhale and then relax it as much as you can with both your inhale and your exhale let your mind simply settle down let your eyes close if you like or keep them open and just let yourself think into and become present to your body as you exhale let your mind drop down towards your belly and feel your body feel your body let go of all the events of the day and if thoughts come into your head just feel your mind regardless of what the thoughts are just feel your mind feel your nerves keeping your feet flat on the floor become aware of four conditions strength you feel strong people feel strong when they're angry there's a certain kind of strength you feel when you're right there's even a certain kind of strength when your depression when you're depressed if you feel somehow at least secure when people feel strong they feel secure I just recognize what that feels like don't do anything with it you know change you just recognize it for what it is and now tension two things fighting with each other but feel for this don't think about it don't make a picture of it feel it tension or two things fighting against each other maybe it's just a blood vessel that's in spasm maybe it's thoughts in your mind maybe it's one emotion maybe it's another emotion but the sense of the tension will be the same regardless of the millions of causes that could be causing it so don't worry about the cause worry about the effect now feel for something where something doesn't feel quite right but you don't know what it is and especially you don't know what it is don't feel you're supposed to understand it just recognize that something that's not right is happening inside you and now simply focus on contraction the mind closing in on itself the sense of the body closing in on itself you're now recognizing these each you will have a feeling or an energy go from the top of your head and just move down your body and wherever you feel one of these strength tension something that doesn't feel quite right especially if you don't know what it is let your mind simply stop and rest on that place feel it experience it don't try and figure it out anything you think it might be anything you judge it's good or bad anything you say oh I understand why forget it you may or may not understand it and it's not important to understand it to recognize it and the same with contractions and tone doesn't feel right and tension and strength if any of those things shows up in any way you could remotely imagine then just let your mind settle in that spot now let as much of your awareness as you can start moving into that place and be willing without a demand I would like it to release it should release Daten be gone go away let it just soften earth just soften because it always will be hard let it soften we begin to start moving inside it and if then you find something else replaces it but still it has the feeling of one of those four conditions keep softening it continue to do so soften and relax like ice turning to water hard to salt now this is usually as far as most people get in the beginning but who knows fortunately shine and keep on going into that again and again and again until it may be that at some point some undefined time it will suddenly release but when it release it will be as though all the energy in it has released and this is what in Taoism they call going into emptiness and you'll know if you reach that emptiness because it will be as though that space inside you just gets bigger and bigger but that space inside you felt like a dot it'll open up into a room if it felt bigger you'll feel like you opened up to an internal space as big as a cavern and just stay there until at some point on its own without you making it happen or stopping it from happening that space will return to the normal space it was before you went inside it at that point just go down to the next place that's blocked now this is the best case scenario if it happens but there is a second case an area that happens quite commonly people can't release in the emptiness in the beginning it takes some but if you find yourself in a place where you feel the energy blocked but it won't release there will come a point there will come a time there will come an awareness a recognition you're going to get that it happens you're going to feel as though if I do this for the next five minutes or five thousand years it's not going to shift not going to shift its hid as far as it's going to go with your mind move the Chi that's in that blockage to the next place moving down your body that feels as though you have tension or strength something that doesn't feel quite right or some type of contraction and do it again only when you go from the one to the next one and dropping down your body take all the energy that you could feel and the point that could not resolve and just take it to the next lower point in your body there are more ways this is done that get a little bit more precise but this is a big overview and then again those two energies combined and again you do your best ice water water space when you finish doing this whether you do it for five minutes or you do for hours on end sometimes energy can get stuck in your head and this is something that's useful whenever energy gets stuck in your head whether it's working for a computer or it's doing some sort of meditation rub your palms your hands get warm take your hands and just bring it down your face and you take the energy out of your head and bring it back into your body which is always a problem in the modern time because people get too much energy stuck in their heads and then whenever you feel you done open your eyes and wait to the inside of your body if your eyes were closed regularizes with your outside environment till they're smooth before you get up and do something different well thank you very much I was taught this method by a direct lineage holder who traces his lineage back to Lao Tzu and I know that because once upon a there were a few times when literally for a month he said and from him it went to him to him and this guy did this makes you people didn't do too much within this person did this and he literally going back not through generations going back through hundreds of generations so anyway as much as I understand this is the original tradition of Lhasa it's the only meditation I teach and I consider myself very fortunate to have ever learned it and I hope it helps you thank you very much until we meet again you

Channel: conscioustv

Views: 110,354

Rating: 4.5541263 out of 5

Keywords: Bruce, Frantzis, Taoism, Journey into, Shiatsu and Zen, Morihei Ueshiba

Id: GQfEkCs4AwQ

Length: 69min 22sec (4162 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 19 2012