ShinNa: Spiritual Blog

Have you ever felt that a good part of your spiritual life doesn't make it into your real life? Have you ever felt a frustration within yourself because your life experience doesn't reflect your spiritual desires. Perhaps, there is no separation of the two and it is only in your perception. We often keep our spirituality in a “higher plane” than our earth realm. We can fall into the trap of expecting our spiritual desires to be created in the moment, without necessarily any preparation on our part. Just connect and it's there for us. It is certainly true that everything is there for us, but something more needs to be added for us to have access to it. I have seen many spiritual seekers forgo the practical tasks of everyday life. But if you think about it, how can we bring our spirituality into the world and connect with others consistently if we don't do what is needed in the earth realm. I am talking about things like, money management, organization, planning, learni...

Faith or Hope There is an old story about a boy who lived in a small village.  Since the village was centrally located, the circus would come to town every year for a month and perform each day.  This boy was captivated by the circus.  He loved the elephants and the tigers. He loved the clowns and the acrobats.  And he especially loved the tightrope walker.  The tightrope walker had a “trick”.  He would push a wheelbarrow in front of him as he walked the rope.  This man really impressed the boy and finally at the end of the month he got up the nerve to talk to him.  He told the tightrope walker how great and fantastic he was. He smothered him with accolades. The tightrope walker smiled , said thank you, and added, “if you think I am so great, would you like to sit in the wheelbarrow for my next performance?”   No matter what the boy said, his answer to the question showed his true faith. We can say we have faith in something, but d...

Let's Be in the Moment One common spiritual desire I often hear is to be in the moment. I believe this to be true, but I think that we often want to short cut the disciplined effort that is required to be able to get there. We often mistake being in the moment as just doing what we feel like doing at any moment. I have participated in many “spiritual” drum circles where people get in a circle and drum “together”. However there often seems to be a problem. Instead of drumming together, people are drumming out their own rhythms and the sound, if you took the time to listen, would definitely take you right out of the moment. You will want to be somewhere else. From a spiritual perspective, I believe that the desire to be in the moment really means that we want to be able to connect to and align with a higher power at any time. We really want to be and do in the moment what our purpose calls us forth to be and do. Did you ever notice that some people in your life just seem to rai...

Spiritual Freedom is Discipline – part 1 In many spiritual circles there seems to be a special admiration for the free spirit.  The people who can just go with the flow and wing it.  The spontaneous ones. They are the people who are supposedly most plugged in to life.  But the question is, do those people truly experience freedom? I have lived a lot of my life trying to be that free spirit, and from my experience, it does not really give you true freedom.   In fact, I was experiencing a lot of stress below the surface because there was nothing I could count on and I was often less prepared to get the most out of myself.  If you think about it, true freedom or aliveness comes from the interplay of flow and structure. Water flows powerfully in pipes and music has both notes and space.   We often mistake structure as something that will keep us rigid, but if used properly, it gives us a powerful way to create. We are amazed by sports figures li...

Spirituality and the Ideal There is an old joke you may have heard about a man who lived in an area where there was a flood that rose to just below the roof of his house.  So he climbed on the roof and asked God to save him.  Soon after, the police came by in a row boat and told him to hop in.  He said “No, God will save me.”  Later, a helicopter hovered over him and he sent it away saying “God will save me.”  After he sent away a canoeist who came to help him, the flood got worse and he started to drown.  He cried out to God, “ Dear God, I have always believed in you, but when I asked you to save me, you never showed up, and now I am drowning.  Why did you ignore me?” And God said, “You idiot, I sent you a row boat, a helicopter, and a canoe.” One way we can trip ourselves up in our quest for enlightenment is that we can hold some ideal of what enlightenment should look like.  I always thought that I would really have arrived when in every se...

Looking back, I can laugh out loud at my spiritual journey because I believe I missed the obvious. The brother of my best friend in high school studied personally with the Dali Lama and he tells a story about the first time he saw the Dali Lama speak.  To the best of my memory, the story goes that after his talk , the audience was able to ask him questions.  A student asked the Dali Lama what the secret was to living a spiritual life.  Everybody took out their notebooks and with baited breath waited to write down the profound words of wisdom that they were about to hear.  The keys to the kingdom.  They were ready to write down many words and many sentences.  As the Dali Lama was about to speak, everyone focused in , not to miss the the pearls that would change their life forever.  And then came his answer.   “Be Happy”.  It seemed too simple.  Was that all there is? Now I can't say for sure this story is true because I wasn't th...

In spiritual quests, at least for me in the past, when something “goes wrong”, I would find myself doubting and even getting angry at God.  That has changed greatly since practicing Tai-Chi on a serious level. For the last few weeks, I have had a tender knee.  In the past , I would have been mad about that , thinking from a spiritual perspective that my body should  be without pain, or should heal extremely fast. It would be my measure of  how spiritual I had become. So in the past I would be feeling unhappy about my injuries, never noticing how miraculous my body is.  Think about it, broken bones heal, wounds stop bleeding, etc.  How wonderful our bodies are.  I never realized how full my life can be no matter what the state my body is in. From practicing Tai-Chi, I have developed a great respect and trust for my body that is undeniable and filled with joy.  I am using my tender knee to learn more about my body.  I have discovered that m...

We often think and speak about spirituality as a far away mystical place or as an abstract intellectual idea.  In both cases, it is easy to miss the beautiful spiritual world we live in right here on earth.  It is easy to disconnect our physical life from our spiritual life.  We have heard many times that the physical world and the spiritual world are interconnected, but we don't have many tools to teach us how that is true, so we often get stuck in our knowledge and lack understanding about our own connectedness and true nature. Tai-Chi, in my experience gives us an opportunity to intimately examine our true nature.   We get to experience our miraculous nature and our child like nature.  It allows us to practice spiritual principles with our own body where we can see those principles work in the physical world.  This practice allows us to develop deeper faith in our creator and allows us to learn more clearly what we are passionate about.  Whi...

It seems that spirituality becomes important to a human being at some point in their life.  Even if someone decides that there is no God, it seems they have to go through some deep thinking on the issues of life to come to that decision.  At least all the people that I have met so far seem to go through this.  Maybe it is just the crowd I hang out with. One thing that I often encounter is that most spiritual practice lacks a physical component, and I don’t mean rituals.  This beckons the question, can you have a spiritual experience without the body?  Even if you had an intellectual epiphany, don’t you still need the body to have the ‘Ah-Ha’ experience?  All that spine tingly sensation and the pleasurable joy you feel is a physical reality.  When we are seeking a spiritual experience, it’s not possible is it?    We’ve all had spiritual experiences by accident in some point in our lives.  We were either in nature and were captu...

Yesterday was the 5th Memorial of my teacher, Gabriel Chin.  We got together at The Cube at 4 o’clock to practice Tai-Chi and then we all went over to TK Wu for dinner (a Taiwanese Restaurant.  Gabriel was personal friend with the cook and owner of the restaurant.  He help the owner set up the restaurant.  They are family). It was great to see all the people.  Before we started the White Crane Chi-Gong and Tai-Chi, we were catching up with each other.  Before it was time to start, one of the original members came up to me and said “Isn’t it interesting that it been 5 years since Gabriel left us, and we are still getting together here to celebrate the legacy he left us.  Makes you think about what’s important in life.  I think you should mention that before we start.”  (This was Joseph Staron blaming the idea on Jeff Nofts.  Between the 2 of them, you can never know.).  It does make you think about life doesn’t it?  I was ch...

When you are in martial arts one thing becomes apparent to you very early on.  There are things that work and things that don’t work.  And there is a tremendous difference between doing it right and not right.  If you have the right leverage, and you have captured the opponents balance properly, it is effortless.  But even if you are off by a hair, if you don’t have it, you don’t have it.   I used to liken it to a house made out of a deck of cards.  It’s either standing or it’s not.  It’s all in the balance of things. This experience teaches us there is a proper way to do things and that if things are done in that manner things come to you in a rich and rewarding, but effortless way.  To me spirituality is recognizing and working on that effort to be in the flow with the guiding forces of life.  Often times, I think we make spirituality too difficult.  It becomes too abstract and too conceptual.  I think spiritual experienc...

3/24/10 Hello my fellow friends! For us, practicing Tai-Chi and using it to live out the Biblical principles as best as we can according to our understanding is a joy in our life.  For us Tai-Chi is our art of worship.  Some people use art, some people use music, we have learned Tai-Chi is a wonderful way to come closer to God.  This blog is intended to share our experiences with anybody who likes to see how we apply our understanding in our lives, and is in no way intended as a means to convince anyone.  Rather, we would like to spur ideas as to how you could utilize your understanding of your own spiritual journey of whatever your back ground you come from in tangible ways.      I have been having a real exciting spiritual journey recently.   I woke up this morning tired and groggy.  I could feel my whole body is off, and I could feel my meridians are not flowing and my energy was stuck.  Not getting enough sleep re...