Japan Acupuncture, Phoenix, AZ （日本鍼灸、アリゾナ

Kissed by the Light from the inside!

Ahh what Joy when it shows up on the outside ♥

                                                                                                Zeerak Khan

People misuse the phrase “Let’s make love.”  It is easy and loving thing to say but what we do by saying it is more like “having sex.”  If we are about just having sex then we are stuck with notion that we separate ourselves with loved ones especially after death.  The essence or the consciousness of a loved one is there, in our body and mind, even though death separates us.  The word separation is a misnomer, for there is no separation.  It is an illusionary thought that creates a separation; and we suffer from the notion.  “Making love” is about making love with Life.  Yes, experience all the emotions come into your life, but how we go through with emotions with Life is what we need to be aware.

Japan Acupuncture, Phoenix, AZ （日本鍼灸、アリゾナ

"Understand the subtle difference, what are you and what do you understand to be you?" Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
Definition of "truth" by Merriam Webster dictionary: constancy.
Our body decays and is not constant. So, what are we?
What is your true Self?

Japan Acupuncture, Phoenix, AZ （日本鍼灸、アリゾナ）

Japanese Acupuncture Newsletter, Phoenix, Arizona

Next time you see florescent light, I want you to take a moment.  Close your eyes for two minuets and open and look at the light.  It is light green, and you see, slowly, the green turns to white.  Our brain converts the green light wavelength to white.  What we see as white is actually “is not.”  Question is:  what is real and what is illusion?  Our suffering is based on not knowing exactly that.  Most of us are attached to emotions and past conditionings of what we think we are, but not knowing who we really are.

Using Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj’s metaphor, I would like to point out that an act of flickering of a lighter.  Fuel is the body or foods.  An act of flicking is a moment of experience:  either nonverbal or a profound wow moment.  It is an illumination.  Light produced is the consciousness awareness.  It shines as long as fuel is supplied.  When let go our finger from a trigger, light is gone……..or is it?  Light is there no matter what an action is.  Similarly, consciousness is there, before and after our so-called death.  Our true self, which is the consciousness, is unborn and undying. 

Let go yourself.  It does not exist, nor “I" exits.  Then, what are you?  Know what is truly real.

Last thing.  What if we are able to extinguish consciousness, then what are we?

Cut off your head and find out.

January 18, 2013

© 2013 Dr. Y. Frank Aoi (NM State)/Japanese Acupuncture, LLC

Japan Acupuncture, Phoenix, AZ （日本鍼灸、アリゾナ）

Basically, all sufferings come from three notions.

1: Belief that "I" exists

2: Belief that "You and I Are Different (dualism)."

3: Try to explain in words.

Greatest invention of the evolution is the separation of sexes that has brought on varieties of species, and it has insured the greatest survival chance on Earth. Therefore our ego is attached to survival issues. It clings on to our psychic mind and constantly telling us who we are according to our past conditioning responses to survival issues.  We are trained to think who we are by the factors. 

Evolutionary, we all came from Lucy in Africa and from the Big Bang. On the conscious level, when we take our ego, the "I," completely, only the consciousness exits. We were once one in evolutionary development. We have precluded the truce and educated in the way that "I" must exist.  Since we believe in the "I," next logical step is to think that "I" am different from "you" that creates a separation in our lives. The unity of the sexes is the connection, not the separation. 

Around 2000 BC, something went wrong on Earth. This is when a village or a tribe started to invade each other’s territories, killing people and pillaging, by thinking they were different from us. To this day, the first step in starting a war is to dehumanize enemies by calling them with derogatory words such as monkeys, gooks, etc.  Once we regard enemies are as nonhuman, we justify killing them. The notion of separation has created tremendous sufferings.

Last thing is that we think we can explain everything in words. Most profound experience cannot be explained in words. If we try, it becomes second rate, at worst, cheap.  For example, timelessness or bliss is just IS.  Thinking or thought is a perfect catalyst to move away from the consciousness awareness. It immediately disconnect with WHAT IS experienced. Buddha's last lecture was to raise a flower; no words were spoken, asking you to connect with the present moment. Remember, the most important word in AUM (or OM) is the silence after the "M."

Now the End of the World had passed, I wish there is a positive consciousness arises at this season of givings and reflections.  Happy Holidays!

Namaste.

Japan Acupuncture, Phoenix, AZ （日本鍼灸、アリゾナ）

Japanese Acupuncture Newsletter, Phoenix, Arizona

Volume 3, No. 2, December 2012

Happy Holidays!

Oriental Medicine & On Human Conditions

Chapter Four

Lung:  Sadness, Courage, and Dissolution No. 2

In Asia, there is a proverb that if a person is drowned, check the anal sphincter muscle.  If it is loose and open, he does not survive.  If it is closed and tight, he will.  Ancient Chinese named the anus as the Gate of Po (魄門):  the gate of the corporeal soul (substantive soul that remains with the corpse when we die, the Yin part of the soul, as oppose to the Hun (魂), the Yang soul that departs the body).  The Chinese character of the Po has two parts.  One is the right side of the character, 鬼(gui).  It means Devil or Ghost.  It is a hieroglyph of a skull that still have a few white hairs.  The left side of the character means white (白:  bai).  Together the character symbolizes the white skeletal remains and signifies the appearance of the body, the skeletal system, and the inherited personal characters.  Importance is that the Po belongs to the Lung.  Since the Po represents the inherent personal character, when we face a life and death situation, to live or to die really depends on our character, and the lung function provides the power to choose:  thus the prana is equated with breathing. 

The perineum area (between the anus and the sexual organ) is one of the most sensitive area in our body.  First thing we learn in any marshal art is to protect the area (you can kill a man by hitting the area).  Since the pelvic girdle is a sensitive area, it is protected by strong muscles and ligaments.  Evolutionary, it makes sense to know that the anus to mouth connection is the most ancient of our body system (did you know that the heart emerged from the intestine?)  Other parts such as the eyes came much later.   The anal sphincter does not have antagonistic muscle (i.e., the hams and the quads of the leg), and can be greatly controlled by the will.  As many of you know that tantric and kundalini yoga exercise is based on the contraction of the perineum muscles.  The amount of orgasmic feeling, therefore, can be controlled by exercise.  The prana moves upward along the spine to the front of the body.  It is exactly the same in acupuncture energy movement. 

The first chakra is called muladhara, and it is the area connected with the limbic system of the brain, especially to the amygdala (processes emotions).  The limbic system is primordial and highly interconnected with the pleasure center of the brain. The amygdala relates to the pleasure but interestingly relates also to fear.  The connection brings back to the Gate of Po.  We know that we cannot control defecation and urination when we are scared to death, and at the moment of fear, it is the lung function that chooses life or death.

The Lung meridian starts from the stomach and moves down the arm.  It ends on the tip of the thumb.  As you know, our brain allocates a large space for the motor cortex especially for hands and fingers and they have highly concentrated sensory nerves.  Hands are used for all kinds of healing and spiritual modalities.  The energy emanates from hands and fingers.  Hands are the giver of energy and they are Yang.  Exact counter part of the hands are the feet.  They are Yin and are the receivers of energy.  The Earth energy goes up from the feet, meet with the muladhara chakra.  Once the chakra energy is brought upward, the energy in the hands is intensified.  Hands become healing tools.  When the connection with the hands and the feet is established, a whole body is in balance.  It is therefore the essence of tai chi. The dissolution of sadness (or any other emotion) depends on the awareness of the balance.  When the awareness comes in, we become more compassionate rather than judgmental.

Namaste.

© 2012 Dr. Y. Frank Aoi (NM State)/Japanese Acupuncture, LLC

Before You Make An Appointment

Please consider the followings:

1:            How much do you honor yourself?

2:            Are you ready for acceptance and healing?

3:            Do you have a strong focus on your health?

4:            Is finance still your priority?

During Treatments

Please consider the followings:

1:         Benefits of acupuncture are wide range.

            No other modalities can offer you such healing power.

2:         Without any drug or surgery, you get better.

3:         You save so much money and time not going to

            see other doctors and buying drugs.

4:         Your overall sense of wellbeing increases, and

            you start looking healthy.  Your self-confidence

            increases and you can lead your life as you wish.

            

Japan Acupuncture, Phoenix, AZ （日本鍼灸、アリゾナ）

 

Japanese Acupuncture (480) 246-0624

600 N. 4^th Street, Unit 147, Phoenix, AZ 85004

Japanese Acupuncture Newsletter, Phoenix, Arizona

Volume 3, No. 1, July, 2012

Oriental Medicine & On Human Conditions

Chapter Four

Lung:  Sadness*1, Courage, and Dissolution

I heard a fly buzz when I died;

The stillness round my form

Was like the stillness in the air

Between the heaves of storm.

The eyes beside had wrung them dry,

And breaths were gathering sure

For that last onset, when the king

Be witnessed in his power.

I willed my keepsakes, signed away

What portion of me I

Could make assignable, and then –

There interposed a fly,

With blue, uncertain, stumbling buzz,

Between the light and me,

And then the windows failed, and then

 I could not see to see.

                                                                    Emily Dickinson

This is one of my favorite poems by Emily Dickinson.  It is a zen moment of an experience.  She is contemplating suicide (she is not talking about an experience of a physical death here, but more of a deep meditative stillness), but at the moment of exceptional concentration, a fly buzzed over, and she could not “see to see.” (why did she call the buzz “blue”?)  It was not her time to die, but she was, in a way, resurrected to write this poem.  Samurai longed for death, for his fundamental purpose in life as a worrier was to die; the righteous death that achieved his purpose with honor.  Since he was to face death ultimately, his disciplined life style was to experience death, so that he was no longer afraid in a battle and the battle itself had already been conquered.  Even if he was killed he knew having lived through a transformational life, it was an honorable death.  This concept is important because this chapter and the next one (the Kidney Element) will ask us how we deal with the Death and the Resurrection and how we should live ourselves.

So, how should we live ourselves?  It is in the balance.  Samurai was not a personal actor but as the force of life doing its course, and in it, to find his honorable death.  (How many politicians today can truly say:  I am not of I but of the People?)  There is a greater force, some call it destiny, is with us.  We as individuals rightfully should act as individual but with the sense of greater awareness, of being something more than the self.  The balance is between having an individual self with a certain personality and having a spiritual self acting on what the universe is offering (going up the charkas) through our body.  As in a good marriage, the mutuality of the opposites and the recognition and respect of each other as an individual yet inseparable keeps the unity, and the balance is in the tension*2.  The duality is perceived, but it does not preclude the realization of the unity.  Greater sense or awareness of marriage is the egoless mutuality, a harmonious relationship.  As soon as we let the ego in, we tend to destroy the other with our own righteousness.  A dance of the opposites (of a married couple) is a dance of the self with the Life.

Sadness, which is the main emotion attached to the Lung Element of this chapter, throws away the validation of the Life, dwells on the self and unbalances the equilibrium.  If you are a singer all your life and it is the only thing you know, and the old age deprives of the capability and its joy, you get frustrated and sad.  It is a crisis to some.  If you loose a loved one, you feel the same way.  Indeed, sorrow and love go very well hand in hand in our daily lives. Keeping an individual self and a greater self is a fine balancing act.  Only way to bring the equilibrium back into balance is to recognize that it is not in an act or a consequence, but firmly understanding that it is the Life that is the most important.

When we are sad, the first sensation we feel is the compression of our breathing pattern.  We crouch as if the lungs are compressed.  We protract the shoulders; the neck is brought slightly forward and downward as if we refuse to see the peripheral; the jaw might be dropped a bit, and the mouth is slightly open.  Before we have tears in our eyes, the digestive system is affected.  We wish to be in a quiet and darker room.  It is a withdrawing pattern: a separation of the world around us to the more inner realm of psyche.  We dissociate from the Life and its meanings.  Overwhelming emotions take over, and we are no longer dancing in balance.

Like Dickinson experienced, and as in a dragon slayer*3 mythology, only when we experience the other side (or the other self), do we understand and transform ourselves to higher level of consciousness.  This chapter is about how to die and having courage to face death.

*1:  Spinoza called sadness, the strive to promote what we imagine is joy and to avert is sadness; whatever empowers us (active affect) leads to joy and whatever diminish it leads us to sadness; or greater perfection and lesser perfection.

*2:  Joseph Campbell:  Pathways to Bliss

*3  Siegfried kills Fafnir the dragon and tastes  his blood (one with Fafnir) and hears the birds sing, saves  his life from Regin’s intention.

© 2012 Dr. Y. Frank Aoi (NM State)/Japanese Acupuncture, LLC