Flowing On Neutral – Part 1

Zhong Xin Dao Viewpoint Talks
AZ Workshop
May 2019

Sifu: Good morning! Questions first?

What I teach may be hard to understand for those not really into the curriculum. No doubt yesterday I teach the ‘real thing’: it’s the real thing because that’s why you can do, what you’re looking for—from direct.  Direct is that you only can be connecting to see that. It’s not you have to fall back to past experience to get the message or information. Yesterday what I showed you guys is how to get information.

Q: last step is just holding the neutral offense

When you’re neutral offense you can strike any time.  That means you are on the neutral defense or neutral offense…if you’re already on the offensive side you can whack him. When it comes to control you cannot control on DEFENSE; defense is 50/50. Offense is because you understand I’ve already crossed the half line. Offense means I can get you but you can’t get me when you have neutral offense.  I you don’t have neutral offense, he can get you—when you cross he can cross, too. Because you hold on to the neutral to do the close close or open open, then he cannot.

As I’ve said before, holding the space—same time and same space—only 1 can occupy. If I sit here, you can’t sit here. So if I get the space, you cannot, unless it’s a different space, then it’ll be under different time.   So, you can say that in the beginning of the Flow, you try to stay on neutral, but you can also try, at first, to learn with neutral defense: then you know the limits.

Flow Has the Idea Of You Do Things Within the Limits 

Only neutral, it’s sometimes hard to detect the limits. But with Neutral Defense—there are 2 points there, so It’s able to give you a better sense of if you’re still within the limits or not. Flow has the idea of you do things within the limits also—out of the limits, that means you’re following. The Flow will turn into following, you see? So when it comes to CONTROL, we must be in Neutral OFFENSE; you can’t control in Neutral DEFENSE: you can only PREVENT in neutral defense. For control, you must be one step ahead.   That means, if he wants to come into you, he needs to neutralize your defense first, so that’s one step. So, Offense, that means you have to be able to cross the half-line, but I didn’t strike you—I still maintain Neutral Offense. Level 7, then, on control, there will be a moment when Upper Hand can strike. Then, I want to strike but you want to show you can maintain as a control over there. So the training of the procedure must be very clear. You can’t control on defense. That’s why neutral Offense and neutral Defense must be very clear: that means the half-line. There’s a 3-dimension half-line. 

Primordial Energy, the Beginning of Energy, the Balance Energy 

So, as yesterday, we approach it first from One point:  One-point approach means one point of movement that means one point is a rotation…so that rotation you can say that is also spiral energy—Also as Chen style tai chi states, it’s Chan2 Si1 Jing 4 [silk reeling power] –so that’s why Chen style says it’s primary energy—is chan si jing; it’s right, it’s not wrong; in our sense, too:  because he has to hold onto one point; and if you understand one point that one point has 6 directions, 3 dimensions, that reduce—sometimes later they call it the primordial energy, the beginning of energy, the balance energy.

That’s why Feng, Zhi Qiang calls it [ ?? ] Hun4 Yuan2 Tai4 Ji2—source of the beginning—the origin, that’s primordial. They have—I don’t know what he named, that’s the meaning you see, of the very base of things. That means it must come from the balance point. From the balance. So, Balance must come from the center. So the center has conditions to be a center, as the neutral point.

Whatever You Train Must Relate Back to the Philosophy

Like I said before, everything that WE train is based on what philosophy? The philosophy of Tao and Zen which is based on the nature of change. So whatever you train here is to change. Whatever you say must relate there, whatever you train must relate back to the philosophy. If it’s not related, then what you train is still falling back. This I the MOST important point. When you say something—is it related to that? are they comparable with this? If not, don’t say it, unless you use a different philosophy. For our system, we use that philosophy. You must understand that diff philosophy will have different concepts and combine with diff principles. If you use this philosophy, then we have these concepts and principles that align and point back to this philosophy. So all the instructs who give instructions must know how to give instructions—must align to that philosophy.

Don’t teach students you must think about this—or all these things, something to add. In the beginning, yes, you can tell them some things—but only do this but only for this period…the student must know they are only using this as a stepping stone 

Readiness—the readiness must come from the balance point, but sometimes it’s so hard to get alertness and readiness from the balance point. If you don’t know how to use it … how to explain what comes first. Because you must be able to use it, but practically, you must know HOW to do that in order to pay attention also–or else you cannot. So you need to have some attention—then attention needs to have some concentration in order to do something in the first place, where does this come by? It’s very hard to explain.

So, the instruction must be given correctly.  But everything has its own conditions. Readiness sometimes we can use—we can use fear to trigger readiness, to trigger alertness.  But it’s the wrong approach. But sometimes, if you don’t do it, sometimes they can’t figure it out. But the alertness quality is the same but it goes through fear: one layer that changes things. But you need to have fear to trigger it up first so you can see ‘oh, this is how alertness is, how readiness is.’ Then you slowly turn it to get rid of fear to slowly change back into balanced harmony.

Q: Can you train it without fear, with the right philosophical approach…can fear be used as a context

 

Linking, Directing & Reflecting

Sifu: yes, but it’s very, very hard. Fear is based on a past reference—because in the moment you don’t have this thing. In the moment you don’t have fear or happy, that kind of thing. You can say because it’s more of calmness. So whenever you do something, you must explain this is not the final one, but you need this one first.

From yesterday’s training, as I said, it’s because of connecting direct—you need to connect, you need to direct, you need to link, you need to have a reflection. To start big to be in the moment. To hold on the point, to connect on the point. If you connect on the point, that very beginning, then if you want to move on that connecting point, then what is the movement that you can do? —it’s only rotation: rotation up and down and pivot like this…and up and down rotation, that’s all.  And that rotation is the VERTICAL ENERGY under the plane: frontal, sagittal it leaves the point. Only vertical rotation holds—with the gravity first –that means everything must come up from here and go back to here).