Ki

Chinese medicine is a fascinating thing. For over five thousand years they have passed on this incredible knowledge of the human body. How they got the information is something I don't know, but when I try to apply what I do know about the human body and the electro-chemical process used to keep it alive, well, parts of it do make sense to me. I wish there was an easy way to explain it.

First, let me point out that I am a Christian. I am a member of the Seventh-day Adventist church. One aspect of my church's ministry concerns physical health. While we teach vegetarianism as a healthy lifestyle, there are a lot of us who do eat animals. A study conducted a number of years ago showed that vegetarians live on average seven years longer than people who eat animal foods.

I have lived in Asia for nearly four years. I've experienced Thai massage, and it is incredible.

Now to tie these three things together.

The human body runs on an electro-chemical process. The body does generate its own electrical power. I think that this is what is refered to as ki/qui energy. Using a term I first heard when I joined the SDA church, it is the "spark of life."

In college biology class, we took a knife and cut a small section of a leaf and put it under a microscope. I observed a stoma, a small waterway if you will, that was processing water to the rest of the leaf. Even though it was cut off from the rest of the plant, this small part of the leaf was still alive. It had the ki energy or spark of life in it. The proteins in the plant are still living.

When an animal is killed, the life in the animal ceases to exist. The electro-chemical process ends. When we eat the animal, we eat dead protein. When we eat vegetables, we eat living protein. Living protein is better for our bodies than dead protein. The living protein helps keep the electro-chemical process going, while dead protein slows it down. As a biblical philosopher once asked, what does the living have to do with the dead? They are not compatible.

Most martial arts do come from a Buddhist religious tradition. From what I have read, even Buddha was a vegetarian, and taught it to his followers. Most Buddhists I have met since coming to Thailand do eat meat and drink alcohol, and I find this disappointing. Makes it hard for me to find places where I can have a good meal.

The brain and the nervous system run on this electro-chemical process, and the various nerve clusters throughout the body act like junctions or terminals or routers for the electrical impulses that control the five senses. While getting a Thai foot massage, the therapist touched a sensitive part of my foot. She told me that I snore. She also touched another part of my foot and told me something else that was true about me. Granted, most men do snore. But there are also a lot of people who do not. Fifty-fify chance of getting it right. Two for two, however, piques curiosity. Should have gone for seven out of seven, since the foot has a lot of nerve endings that are wired in with other nerve endings, so there is more that our feet can tell us if we paid attention. and took better care of them. The methods of Chinese medicine and Thai massage are designed to keep the nervous system "clean" and operating smoothly. Massage helps work out some of the kinks, not just for muscles, but for the nerves and pressure points, as well.

The breathing exercises associated with ki are important. If we breathed better, we would have less problems with our respiratory system. We do not breathe deep enough. We do not use the muscles in our diaphrams, so we do not get enough air deep enough into our bodies. People who sing or are publi speakers understand the importance of this. Speaking from the diaphram increases our projection of voice, and also prevents sore throats that are brought on from shallow breathing.

So yes, ki is important.

Taoist magic uses ki energy, but that is the stuff of the video games and movies. I think the Force of Star Wars borrows much from this concept. The ki was not meant to do magic tricks, but when it is allowed to do what it is designed to do, it will give us a long life. My Christian belief says that God is the giver of life, and the ki is a gift from God. We should not abuse it, but we should take care of it as such. We have heard that the body is a temple. The best way I can explain this is to compare it to the Old Testament temple in the wilderness used by the Hebrews. At night there was a glow that came from the holy of holies, the dwelling place of God's glory among His people. I see the ki energy in my body in the same way. My body is a temple, and the electro-chemical spark of life is God in me. It does not make me God, but it does make me His child. And the power He gives me is not to be abused.

This is a point of view. I'll probably make changes to it as I continue to grow as a Christian and as a martial artist. For me, this makes sense, and if it doesn't make sense to you, that is okay. We have different life experiences to draw upon, and different ways of saying the same thing. It makes life interesting, and shows that we have much, much more to learn as we grow as human beings.

Clare de Lune - Debussy

From a remastered film. It would have been a part of the original Fantasia, but was deleted.

Toccata and Fuge in D Minor - Mozart

Very cool.



Very cool, indeed.

Firefly Opening Theme Song

Chasing Cars - (cover of Snow Patrol song) - thebathroomgirl

I met Cherry at a place called The Garden in Chiang Mai, Thailand. She has a wonderful voice, and I love her guitar style. I have never heard the original version of "Chasing Cars," but she does an excellent job with it.

Born to Run - Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Lee interview

Iris - Goo Goo Dolls

Take My Hand - Dido

The Hard Line

I try to have a unique view of the world. I don’t like the black and white view of the world, with cut and dried good and evil being the norm. It oversimplifies morality and has a hard line that is too easily straddled or crossed over. Innocence or guilt, good or evil, right or wrong. Hardcore law with no flexibility built into it. Under grace. Under law. Your choice on where to live your life.

What I see in life is a little bit of good in the evil we do, as well as a little bit of evil in the good we do. Every action is a shade of grey, darkness and lightness determined by the intention of the human heart. Unfortunately, the most pure heart in the lives of men is still tarnished by the lightest shade of grey, so much so that there are no men in this world with a pure heart.

I am not a god. If offered, I would hope that I would turn down the position. I know myself too well, and I know that I would somehow screw something up in ways too grand to be imagined. Bruce Almighy, the Jim Carey movie with Morgan Freeman playing God, shows what happens when infinite cosmic power is used for selfish gain, and without infinite wisdom and self-control, let alone the infinite love, required to wield the power effectively in the service of others.

I am a human being, so much smaller than God or any other deity that has at one time been worshipped and adored. I am thankful that I am not Buddha, or that I am not Rama, Shiva, or any other incarnation of some other deity. I do not hold out my hand and speak the magic words, Let there be light, and then watch light magically appear in my hand. I do not go out into the back yard and carve a humanoid shape into the soil and then attempt to breathe life into it. I am good at creating monsters, but they are only figments of my own imagination. There are worse creatures in the world than H. P. Lovecraft’s Cthulu. My monsters would freak out Cthulu.

I do not have a God’s eye view on the world. Being so close to the human race, I have this tendency to see this crazy shading of blacks and whites and greys mixing together, blending into a dark menagerie of hopelessness. And all that is evil in the world takes the paint brush and does all that it can to smear that which is good with the greyness of its own existence. There is no room for goodness, decency, morality, or law.

The greatest tragedy in all of this is seeing how the word “love” has been corrupted. Love is no longer strong. Love is no longer faithful. Love is no longer patient. Love is no longer kind. Love is no longer truthful. Love no longer casts out fear, but becomes something to fear. Love is not something to die for, but one must kill in the name of love. Love must be eradicated from this world craving the darkness at the expense of the light.

I have listened to the words of conservatives, neoconservatives, right-wingers, left-wingers, and liberals. I have never heard a conservative demand the death of a human being, except for Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, and a few other terrorists. From the liberal end of the spectrum I have heard demands for people to be killed, like former Pres. Bush, Alex Jones, Rush Limbaugh, and the list extends right on down to unborn babies, those vile creatures accidentally conceived during one hot, sweaty moment of passion when there was no love to be found.

The only people I know in politics who have dared use “love” to unite voters were the supporters of the Ron Paul rEVOLution. Evil people from the Left and the Right took out their paintbrushes and painted these people as moonbats or political freaks who believed every conspiracy theory ever designed. The Left is angry at the Right, the Right is angry at the Left, and everyone is angry at Ron Paul.

So much anger, so much hatred, so much fear to spread, so many voices calling for violence to end it all, and so little time to make it happen. By the grace of God the blood people are calling for has not yet been spilled. One day God will step aside and many prayers will be answered as the body count uncontrollably spirals into the depths of the earth. The people calling for blood will one day mingle their blood with the blood of their enemies.

I see shades of grey. God sees things in black and white. This is God’s universe. God makes the rules. God has the right to be a hardliner. His way or no way. His way is love. Evil hates Jesus Christ, and as such it hates God the Father. Sin separates us, God’s children who are in love with evil, from the only deity in this universe that has ever claimed to be our Father.

The only reason why a person burns in the lake of fire at the end of time is because he or she rejected Jesus Christ as the only way to get to the Father. God will not coerce a person into believing in Him. God will not force a person to go to Heaven. God will not twist a person’s arm or break a leg or do anything to a person that will violate the individual’s free choice that He gave to him or to her. God does not bodyslam nonbelievers and then demand repentance. God will not bend to the will of a human being if it means believing in Him. God has already done what is required to save a person. The person has to be willing to be saved on God’s terms, or else that person is lost.

The purpose of the lake of fire is to destroy sin. Sin is the breaking of the law. In our society, we have laws. When you are caught breaking a law, there is a penalty that must be paid. God has His laws, and LOVE is the reason the law exists. To paraphrase Jesus Christ, “Love God… Love others… upon these hang the law and the testimony.” People who reject Jesus Christ reject God. They do not love the Father, so hellfire will burn them until they cease to exist.

One of the things about Jonah that bothers me was his desire to see the people of Nineveh destroyed by fire. The Assyrians were a people ruled by brutally oppressive kings who openly bragged about their war crimes and atrocities. One can read about Ashurbanipal and Sennacharib and find similar attributes in Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin and Pol Pot. Jonah knew the reputation of the Assyrians, and he wanted to see God’s judgment poured out on Nineveh. It made him angry when the city repented and he didn’t get to see the fireworks display. On the Left and the Right I see people who are interested in the fireworks of human justice. It is not God’s justice that they seek, but it is their self-righteous judgment against their bogeymen that keeps hatred burning in our world.

I look at the hard line between right and wrong. I see the shades of grey where God’s mercy is painted. God’s paintbrush applies the blood of Jesus Christ to those who know they have sinned and seek to claim their inheritance through Him. They once again claim God as their Father. The snow falling in our world are sinners bowing before Him and seeking an escape from the uncontrolled flames of human passion that knows no mercy. God has a merciful love for us if only we would accept it. The line between black and white, good and evil, right and wrong, is blurred by the mercy I find in God’s heart for us, the love He asks us to accept and to embrace and to share with those who reject Him.

It is called “God’s strange act.” The day comes when fire falls from heaven and hellfire ignites, destroying sin. As sin is consumed, so are the people who loved sin more than they loved God. Their hatred, their self-righteous anger, their brutality are consumed by the flames, and their bodies turn to ash, then they cease to exist. God loves them, and in one final act, He answers their prayers: Dear God, please don’t exist. As each sinner finds eternal rest in the blackness of sleep, God ceases to exist, and so do they. God loves them enough to kiss them good night.

God is a hardliner. All He wants is for us to be on His side of the line, where His banner over us is LOVE. What’s wrong with that?